Archive

Suffragette

Posted 1:22pm Sunday 28th February 2016 by Jessica Thompson

Rating: B I had high hopes for this film after watching the trailer. With a respectable cast, a female director, female writer and killer trailer music, who could blame me? Despite this, I was determined to enter the cinema with a completely blank mind then exit with an unbiased and logical Read more...

The Hateful Eight

Posted 1:19pm Sunday 28th February 2016 by Basti Menkes

Rating: B Over the course of his career, Quentin Tarantino has dabbled in an eclectic mix of styles. He’s done a crime thriller that functions as a stage play (Reservoir Dogs), martial art revenge flicks (Kill Bill 1 & 2), an alternate-history war movie (Inglourious Basterds), and Read more...

Kings Of The Gym

Posted 1:17pm Sunday 28th February 2016 by Nita Sullivan

Rating: B- For a long overdue and largely enjoyable foray back into local theatre, I went along to the opening night of Kings of the Gym, written by Dave Armstrong. A comedy product of the Fortune Theatre, the play is centred on the Phys-Ed department of a low decile South Auckland School. The Read more...

Caro

Posted 1:14pm Sunday 28th February 2016 by Andrew Kwiatkowski

Rating: B- After viewing this film, one is left with bruises from being bashed over the head with the themes. Carol is an adaptation of the novel The Price of Salt, which follows two women falling in love in 1950s USA. The social norms of that time and place, of course, do not permit Read more...

Blue Oyster Gallery

Posted 12:58pm Sunday 28th February 2016 by Chloe Geoghegan

Most of the time, the Blue Oyster Gallery is quiet, almost too quiet. My shoes, my squeaky office chair, the phone, the stapler, and my keyboard form the percussion section of an administrative orchestra that intermittently plays through the quiet gallery spaces, a new verse every minute from 11am Read more...

Objectivity & Positivity

Posted 12:52pm Sunday 28th February 2016 by Millicent Lovelock

Music writing is fraught. For the past four years of my life I have studied English Literature, and I understand all too well that often, to write with clarity and objectivity, there needs to be, in the mind of the critic, a clear distinction between author and text. I also understand that sometimes Read more...

Why Do We Need…Revolution 4.0?

Posted 12:48pm Sunday 28th February 2016 by Anthony Marris

Revolution 4.0 (which I will call Rev4.0) is the ménage a trois that connects robotics, the internet we use for shopping, streaming etc, and cloud computing. The aim of Rev4.0 is to create “smart factories”, a more intelligent (read efficient) means to manufacture Read more...

Down the Rabbit Hole

Posted 12:37pm Sunday 28th February 2016 by Hayleigh Clarkson

For those of you like me who spent their teenage years in the early 2000s, you will already be familiar with the pop-culture take over that was Playboy. Ranging from bedspreads, jewellery and temporary tattoos through to the popular hit TV show The Girls Next Door, Playboy took over every teenaged Read more...

Disclosure - Caracal

Posted 3:20pm Sunday 4th October 2015 by Veronika Bell

Rating: 2/5 After the announcement of Disclosure’s new album, I was beyond excited. I felt like Christmas was just around the corner. I was ready to be blown away. Instead, the experience was much like Santa forgetting about me. Miserable. With the amount of hype that surrounded the album, Read more...

Theatre: Time Stands Still

Posted 3:12pm Sunday 4th October 2015 by Shaun Swain

Rating: 4/5 "When you’re looking down that lens, time comes to a stop.” We all try, in one way or another, to capture some aspect of life and keep it forever; sometimes to preserve it, sometimes to just let it go. Lara Macgregor’s rendition of Time Stands Still, written Read more...

Everest

Posted 3:07pm Sunday 4th October 2015 by Nita Sullivan

Rating: 4/5 This film depicts the real events of a Kiwi company, Adventure Consultants, and its disastrous expedition to Mount Everest. Based on Rob Hall’s 1996 trip, Everest follows Rob (Jason Clarke) as he leads eight climbers through Nepal towards the highest peak on earth. Read more...

Sicario

Posted 3:05pm Sunday 4th October 2015 by Maya Dodd

Rating: 4/5 Sicario follows FBI agent, Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), as she enters into the CIA’s secretive world. The agency has been trying to shut down the Mexican drug cartel that governs the border between the USA and Mexico. As a drug taskforce agent, Kate has dealt with many domestic Read more...

Tangerine

Posted 3:03pm Sunday 4th October 2015 by Greta Melvin

Rating: 3/5 Having seen my fair share of short iPhone-made videos, I was sceptical about how high the cinematic quality of an entire film would be. Baker’s use of an iPhone aptly reflects the fast-paced movements of the characters and the dialogue, making for a dynamic experience. But while Read more...

Big Pharma

Posted 2:58pm Sunday 4th October 2015 by Carl Dingwall

Rating: 4/5 In an industry where saving people can make you a tidy profit, there have been many accusations of putting money before people’s lives. The Big Pharma conspiracy has always been a scary idea, and it isn’t helped by recent examples of corporations hiking up prices of Read more...

Disclaimer

Posted 2:55pm Sunday 4th October 2015 by Bridget Vosburgh

Disclaimer, by Renee Knight, is a thriller. Catherine Ravenscroft, after recently moving house with her husband, Robert, finds a book called The Perfect Stranger among her possessions. She has no recollection of buying the book. While reading it, she realises that the main character is a Read more...

Stranger in Strange Land, Jae Hoon Lee

Posted 2:52pm Sunday 4th October 2015 by Ruby Heyward

Stranger in Stranger Land currently on display at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, is an atmospheric, moody installation by Korean artist Jae Hoon Lee. Lee (born in 1973) is a self-proclaimed “cultural wanderer”. His work features “observations” of Arab and Thai culture Read more...

Peanut Noodle Salad

Posted 2:47pm Sunday 4th October 2015 by Sophie Edmonds

I thought I had escaped the joy of 21sts but, before I knew it, it was my own brother’s turn. He decided to have it at the local bowls club and invite 100 of his closest friends. Of course it went without saying I was volunteered to the catering post. Mum was a little ambitious on the menu Read more...

Procrastibaking: Vanilla Cupcakes

Posted 2:42pm Sunday 4th October 2015 by Sophie Edmonds

During my day at home being the world’s worst sick person, I not only managed to make a cake and a batch of meringues, clean the kitchen, vacuum the flat and write a blog post, I also whipped up some classic vanilla cupcakes for SPCA cupcake day. While there are oodles of recipes out there Read more...

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials

Posted 1:52pm Sunday 27th September 2015 by Maya Dodd

Rating: 3/5 Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials is the second instalment of The Maze Runner series, following the survivors from the first film as they discover that the world outside the maze is just as dangerous as the one within it — if not more so. I first stumbled across Dylan O’Brien Read more...

People Places Things

Posted 1:47pm Sunday 27th September 2015 by Nita Sullivan

Rating: 3/5 People Places Things follows Will Henry (Jemaine Clement), a Kiwi man who teaches at a local university in New York. He is also a graphic novelist and spends his evenings writing his own semi-autobiographical novel. During their five-year-old twins’ birthday party, Will walks in Read more...