Archive

Selected Works from Quadrant Gallery

Posted 12:43am Friday 1st July 2011 by Hana Aoake

To enter Quadrant Gallery is to experience a serene, mesmerising atmosphere. Located on Moray Place, Quadrant showcases and sells jewellery, sculpture and other such objects. Immediately I was hypnotised by Nicole McLaren’s apocalyptic sculptures, which are constructed from ceramic, plaster and Read more...

My First Attempt

Posted 11:54pm Monday 30th May 2011 by Bronwyn Wallace

Theatre As Is. Jimmy Currin, Luke Agnew, Feather Shaw and Hahna Briggs, (4/5). As I arrived at Allen Hall Theatre, joining an already eager audience in the foyer, My First Attempt was giving nothing away. This latest piece from the Theatre As Is was devised “using chance operations by Read more...

Marrow Zine's May Release Launch Party

Posted 7:36am Thursday 26th May 2011 by Sam Valentine

May 14, Re:Fuel Bar. With Thundercub, Black Yoghurt, Surgical Department, Max Waots, Nicole Van Vuuren (DJ).  “The little zine that could?” With the current flood of self-produced gig guides (INK), comic collections, (DUD), culture mags (Crop) and zines, Dunedin’s Read more...

Die Antwoord - $O$

Posted 7:33am Thursday 26th May 2011 by Kari Schmidt

From their Afrikaans accents, wack dance moves, insane videos, rapping skills, attitude, sex appeal, haircuts, fashion, names, use of rats, incorporation of South African references (e.g. tokoloshes, fish paste, racial culture) and the female gaze, there is nothing that doesn’t appeal to me about Read more...

Cult Classic: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Posted 7:30am Thursday 26th May 2011 by Toby Hills

Platforms: PC, Xbox I'm still not certain what the elder scrolls actually are. Old rolled-up papers, presumably with something mega-important written on them. I guess. If the third in the seventeen-year old series, Morrowind, doesn't ring a bell then maybe the forth will: 2006's Oblivion. No? What Read more...

Lume

Posted 7:29am Thursday 26th May 2011 by Toby Hills

Platforms: PC, OSX, (2.5/5). I payed $8.13 for Lume, which follows from prices listed in round US dollar figures. As cheap as Steam's prices tend to be (I got Portal 2 for about $62.73, give or take $3.09), I can't say that Lume was worth it. The question then becomes then what to say about an Read more...

Homage to a domestic goddess

Posted 7:27am Thursday 26th May 2011 by Niki Lomax

Nigella Lawson is the only deity I worship. This being the food issue, I felt a reasonable amount of pressure to write something awesome. I ended up deciding that the most awesome thing/person of all is Nigella Lawson. Thus in the food column this week I pay homage to Nigella Lawson, a true Read more...

Source Code

Posted 7:24am Thursday 26th May 2011 by Loulou Callister-Baker

Director: Duncan Jones, (4/5). Source Code is 2011's Inception but with less ambiguity and fewer close ups on Leonardo DiCaprio’s concerned, faraway gaze (just kidding, love you Leo). Bird’s-eye view and panning shots of Chicago open this action/sci-fi gift of a Read more...

Queen of the Sun

Posted 7:23am Thursday 26th May 2011 by Gareth Barton

Director: Taggart Siegel, (3.5/5). One of the hardest things to do with documentary filmmaking is find the perfect “talent”. Talent in a documentary is the person or people who represent the face of the film, building the story with their dialogue, and, importantly, creating an Read more...

King George VI: The Man Behind the King's Speech

Posted 7:20am Thursday 26th May 2011 by Lauren Hayes

No director credited, (2/5). You can't blame a guy for trying to cash in on The King's Speech. The film was massive, winning an awful amount of awards. It doesn't take a movie mogul to realise that the real-life “spinoff “ could make a serious quick buck, especially amidst Read more...

Water for Elephants

Posted 7:16am Thursday 26th May 2011 by Nicole Muriel

Director: Francis Lawrence, (3/5). Water for Elephants combines two fantasies – running away to the circus and a forbidden romance – offering itself as the ultimate escapist movie. The story: hopeful student Jacob Jancowski (Robert Pattinson) is about to finish veterinary school Read more...

Bad Taste (1987)

Posted 7:14am Thursday 26th May 2011 by Ben Blakely

Written/Directed by: Peter Jackson. Starring: Terry Potter, Peter O’Herne, Craig Smith, Mike Minett, Peter Jackson and Doug Wren Imagine if your dad and a bunch of his mates got together and decided to film a Mothra. It’s kinda naff cause it’s your dad and he’s a bit naff and Read more...

No More Fat Pants

Posted 6:30am Thursday 26th May 2011 by Melissa Letica

Fat pants. The Warehouse’s finest. Whatever you call them, I think they are disgusting. You know what I’m talking about; those dirty grey fleecy-lined track pants that everyone seems to be sporting these days. Retailing for $8.50 during the holy grail of yellow dot sales, a recently conducted survey Read more...

Teetering Precariously

Posted 6:27am Thursday 26th May 2011 by Ines Shennan

Here goes a rant on a particular craze that a small minority seem to mindlessly follow on campus. As Peter Griffin would say, it’s really grinding my gears. Let me preface this by saying it is not the item itself which causes me to do double-takes, but rather the times and places in which this item Read more...

Sweet Valley Confidential - Ten Years Later

Posted 6:15am Thursday 26th May 2011 by Ilka Fedor

Author: Francine Pascal. Publisher: St. Martin’s Press, (3.5/5). This is a must-read if you ever read the Sweet Valley High series. Set 10 years on, twins Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield from sunny Sweet Valley, Southern California, are now archrivals. Jessica, the ever flirtatious, popular and Read more...

Atheist Manifesto – The Case Against Christianity, Judaism and Islam

Posted 6:13am Thursday 26th May 2011 by Stefan Fairweather

Author: Michel Onfray. Publisher: Arcade Publishing. (5/5). In a modern world that is (sadly) still bombarded with the irrationality of religion, Onfray’s Atheist Manifesto book is a welcome read, arming the rationalist with arguments, counter-arguments, and facts to rebut the Read more...

SUJI PARK: That which opens.

Posted 6:10am Thursday 26th May 2011 by Hana Aoake

BRETT MCDOWELL GALLERY. Closes May 26. The question which I often ask myself when encountering any ceramicist’s work is how have they transferred a medium which is thousands of years old and which always appears to me to be static into something dynamic.   Suji Park is an Read more...

Let There Be Capping Show

Posted 6:07am Thursday 26th May 2011 by Chad Huffington

Main sketch written by: Thom Adams, Rest of the show performed/written by ensemble cast. Directed by: Alex Wilson and Trubie-Dylan Smith. Assistant Director: Aaron Mayes, (5/5). By the time you read this, Capping Show will probably be completely sold out – because it sells out Read more...

Fight the Fat

Posted 6:05am Thursday 26th May 2011 by Jen Aitken

Written by Arthur Meek, Directed by Lisa Warrington. Staring Hilary Halba and Ben Blakely, (2/5). This show sees Laurel (Halba) and Ben (Blakely), two down-and-out actors kicked out of a theatre-in-education programme, struggle to get the “money and mandate” to re-launch their Read more...

Beastwars Preview

Posted 6:33am Wednesday 25th May 2011 by Sam Valentine

Beastwars are the result of a barbaric and brutal world sliding into the abyss. Where we see war and disaster surrounding us on all sides. Where half-truths and hidden agendas lurk behind every act of the world’s eroding empires. And where all these things are channelled into righteous and Read more...

MEN FROM ANOTHER PLANET

Posted 6:31am Wednesday 25th May 2011 by Isaac McFarlane

State Of Mind subscribe to a different reality than the rest of us; a reality that involves ridiculously heavy bass, a ridiculously energetic full-noise set and, to top it all off, dancing spacemen. Yes, fucking spacemen. Dressed from head to toe in reflective black material, they sauntered up to Read more...

CULT CLASSIC: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

Posted 6:29am Wednesday 25th May 2011 by Toby Hills

Platform: Nintendo 64 It's become a cliché to criticise each new Zelda release as being just like all the rest. “Yawn”, they chorus. “You start off as some sort of fey-leaf elfin dude in a forest wearing green pyjamas. You find the wooden sword and shield, hack some plants Read more...

Bangai-O HD: Missle Fury

Posted 6:28am Wednesday 25th May 2011 by Toby Hills

Platforms: XBLA (Dreamcast), (3/5). Bangai-O HD: Missile Fury is arcade-y almost to the point of absurdity. Developer Treasure sets a mature example by presenting mecha that seem to run on carbon neutral bio-ethanol, regaining health from fruit. I guess they had to do all they could to offset the Read more...

Granny’s Tupperware

Posted 6:26am Wednesday 25th May 2011 by Niki Lomax

My granny has an impressive Tupperware collection. Cylindrical containers, rectangular containers, square containers, triangular containers, massive ones, miniature ones, white ones, brown ones, blue ones, green ones, jelly moulds… you name it, she’s probably got two. As a kid I assumed all grannies Read more...

Thor

Posted 6:23am Wednesday 25th May 2011 by Matt Chapman

Directed by Kenneth Branagh, (1.5/5). You might think that Viking gods, hammers of mass destruction, “Frost Giants”, and rainbow bridges to outer space would make for a pretty awesome movie. I thought that too. Damn. Thor, directed by Kenneth Branagh, seemed poised to blow my mind with Read more...

Mars Needs Moms

Posted 6:22am Wednesday 25th May 2011 by Loulou Callister-Baker

Directed by Simon Wells, (2.5/5). Mars is named after the Roman god of war and is often described as the "Red Planet" due to the iron oxide in its surface. A mother is a woman who has given birth to or raised a child in the role of a parent. Mars Needs Moms is a 3D computer-animated film about a Read more...

Arthur

Posted 6:20am Wednesday 25th May 2011 by Alec Dawson

Directed by Jason Winer, (2/5). Russell Brand and Helen Mirren make for an intriguing pair to place in a film together. Given that one is famous for playing a drunk rock star and the other the Queen, I went into this film with some interest. Unfortunately they are given dull typecasts Read more...

Heartbreaker

Posted 6:18am Wednesday 25th May 2011 by Tom Ainge-Roy

Directed by Pascal Chaumeil, (3.5/5). My first foreign rom-com, and it was simply charming. It’s no Love Actually or Notting Hill, but it sure was a pleasant way to spend two hours. Think afternoon delight; not necessary, but you’re really glad it happened.   A Read more...

Lesbian Vampire Killers

Posted 6:16am Wednesday 25th May 2011 by Ben Blakely

Directed by Phil Claydon. Starring James Cordon, Mathew Horne, MyAnna Buring, Paul McGann. Having only heard the title of this film, I expected a B-grade movie with fairly low production values, lots of blood and gore, and acting that was a wee bit shit. I guess I was expecting something akin Read more...

The Mystique of Menswear

Posted 7:11am Thursday 19th May 2011 by Jonathan Jong

This last week, three things popped up in my RSS aggregator which have been in the back of my mind ever since. The first was an article about the appalling working conditions at a large Chinese factory, which had led seven workers to commit suicide. The second was Isaac Likes’s blog post entitled, Read more...

Tyranny – I Keep You Thin

Posted 6:40am Thursday 19th May 2011 by Stefan Fairfield

Author: Lesley Fairfield, Publisher: Walker Books, (3/5). This is a quick read, a graphic novel about a teenage girl’s battle with the eating disorders anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. It’s a story of how a young woman spirals from a picture of good health to the depths of Read more...

Dragon Ball books 1-16

Posted 6:37am Thursday 19th May 2011 by Sarah Maessen

Author: Akira Toriyama, Publisher: Vizbig, (5/5). Dragon Ball is the creation of the prolific manga writer/illustrator Akira Toriyama. It was successful from the start and went on to sell a record-breaking 120 million copies, was made into a television series, continued with Dragon Ball Z and Read more...

Graffiti in Chernobyl

Posted 6:34am Thursday 19th May 2011 by Hana Aoake

In the last few years, images have surfaced of street art in the abandoned city of Chernobyl, which was victim to a nuclear explosion in 1986 after a reactor malfunctioned. Like Hiroshima, the desolate landscape in Chernobyl highlights the city’s process of being moulded and manipulated, but in a Read more...

Fiona Amundsen: First city in history.

Posted 6:33am Thursday 19th May 2011 by Hana Aoake

Dunedin Public Art Gallery At 2:45am on August 6, 1945 a B-29 under the command of Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, a twenty-nine year old veteran pilot, began to roll down a runway on Tinian Island to take off on its historic mission to Hiroshima.   The title of New Zealand artist Fiona Read more...

God of Carnage

Posted 5:04am Thursday 12th May 2011 by Jen Aitken

Directed by Lara MacGregor. Starring Phil Vaughn, John Glass, Claire Dougan and Barbara Power. Written by Yasmina Reza and translated by Christopher Hampton, (4/5). Carnage: the killing of a large number of people. Although God of Carnage did not actually present on stage the killing of a Read more...

Feastock; The Arrival of the Invercargill Sound

Posted 11:44pm Monday 9th May 2011 by Sam Valentine

Say the word “Invercargill” to many musicians, and you’ll probably get a rather mixed response. But standing amongst the damp, leafy surroundings of 3 Fea Street, in secluded Pine Hill, I was struck by an interesting concept. Has the country’s most southern city better known for, um, well let’s be Read more...

Outland

Posted 11:42pm Monday 9th May 2011 by Toby Hills

Platforms: XBLA, PSN, (4/5). Outland is alchemy. Take a sickle's worth of Mario Bros 2D platforming, and heat in a geothermal pool with the polarity mechanic most famous in Ikaruga. Distill a generous ounce of Metroid's adventuring with a batch of art and sound design reminiscent  of Shadow Read more...

Hector: Badge of Carnage: Episode 1 - We Negotiate With Terrorists

Posted 11:41pm Monday 9th May 2011 by Toby Hills

Platforms: IOS, MAC, PC, (3.5/5). A trend is developing, and it's kind of frustrating. Twice this year I've had to admit that - despite proudly displaying the juvenile shades that are kind-of-sort-of crippling the industry's artsy potential - I really appreciate it when games like Bulletstorm and Read more...

Three Mince Recipes

Posted 11:37pm Monday 9th May 2011 by Leah Hamilton

Mince is really cheap, isn't it? Doesn't taste too shabby either. Well, unless your flatmate, like mine, simply fries it and serves it plain on gooey rice. Mmmm. To save you all from Mincezilla, here are three delicious recipes that will put your mince to good use. Enjoy! Chilli Con Carne Read more...

Sarah’s Key

Posted 11:34pm Monday 9th May 2011 by Zane Pocock

Directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner, (4/5). I haven’t read the best-selling novel by journalist Tatiana de Rosnay on which this film is based, but going by what director Gilles Paquet-Brenner has produced, my guess is that it would be well worth it. Like most Holocaust films, this will bring Read more...

Mozart’s Sister

Posted 11:26pm Monday 9th May 2011 by Nick Hornstein

Directed by René Féret, (2.5/5).   Mozart’s Sister portrays the life of Anna Maria Mozart (nicknamed “Nannerl”), who was denied a similar path to that of her younger brother, Wolfgang. In the beginning, she is still performing, though overshadowed and sidelined as Read more...

Fast Five

Posted 11:17pm Monday 9th May 2011 by Matt Chapman

Directed by Justin Lin, (3.5/5). We’ve come a long way since 2 Fast 2 Furious, and Fast Five wants to make that known. Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster return for the fifth installment in the Fast and the Furious series, and Justin Lin returns as director. Yet, Lin takes a Read more...

Justin Bieber: Never Say Never (3D)

Posted 11:14pm Monday 9th May 2011 by Sarah Baillie

Directed by Jon Chu, (4/5). I am not afraid to admit it; I am in love with Justin Bieber. Knowing little about the phenomenon of Bieber fever but thinking it would be hilariously awesome to go and see “the Justin Bieber movie”, I headed down to Hoyts, 3D glasses in hand. Little did I Read more...

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Posted 11:11pm Monday 9th May 2011 by Ben Blakely

Directed and written by John Cameron Mitchell. Starring: John Cameron Mitchell, Miriam Shor, Andrea Martin, Michael Pitt. Hedwig is in a bit of a slump. She’s on tour with the band the Angry Inch, but the gigs they play aren’t in flashy arenas; they are in fast food and Read more...

Style shepherds

Posted 10:13pm Monday 9th May 2011 by Eloise Callister-Baker

In New Zealand we seem to be living in the time of choice, so why do we limit our outfits to clothing that will blend into a crowd? Why do girls enjoy oversized off-the-shoulder knits with black tights; why do boys save up for their Lower jeans and black t-shirts? It seems that there is such a Read more...

Queen gives McQueen the royal seal of approval

Posted 10:10pm Monday 9th May 2011 by Mahoney Turnbull

Sarah Burton, quiet achiever of the House of McQueen; what a stunner of a dress. Make that plural sorry, dresses, even if they were curiously similar - you’d swear the latter was a refinement of the first. But when Westminster’s at stake, hell, why not? As the newest addition to the Royal Read more...

From Under the Overcoat

Posted 9:44pm Monday 9th May 2011 by Charlotte Doyle

Author: Sue Orr. Publisher : Vintage, (3/5). You are told all your life to never judge a book by its cover, but secretly everyone does. The cover of From Under the Overcoat by Sue Orr isn’t exactly the most appealing. It first gave me the impression that it would be a light-hearted, Read more...

Sacha Lauchlan: Dunedin sculptress

Posted 9:40pm Monday 9th May 2011 by Elaine Stevens

While Dunedin's art scene may attract less attention than our famous music scene, promising young graduates from the Dunedin School of Art have the potential to reverse the “underground” nature of Dunedin art. One such artist is sculptress Sacha Lauchlan, the inaugural winner of the Feldspar Award, Read more...

Critic reviews the Easter Weekender

Posted 5:02am Monday 9th May 2011 by Sam Reynolds

Warning, warning, warning; the monotonous sounds of MC Beau bounce across a wave of moving bodies, all swaying in time to the rhythmic wop wop of Nero’s beat. The crowd only stops moving for a split second to catch the Foreign Beggars MC as he jumps off a speaker; once he’s back on stage the Read more...

Mortal Kombat

Posted 4:59am Monday 9th May 2011 by Toby Hills

Platforms: Playstation 3, Xbox 360, (4/5). Some fool somewhere said that videogames couldn't possibly get any more violent. That's exactly what they said at the beginning of the twentieth century and look where we ended up. Despite the series being as old as I am, Mortal Kombat hasn't yet Read more...