Archive

Ha the Unclear - Bacterium, look at your motor go

Posted 2:58pm Sunday 28th September 2014 by Adrian Ng

Rating: A- After releasing a handful of lo-fi pop albums, EPs and singles under the moniker Brown, no one suspected that the Dunedin/Auckland quartet was gearing up for a drastic makeover. In December last year the group released “Apostate,” the first single from Bacterium, Look At Your Motor Read more...

Download of the week: Bandicoot - Happy Talking (NZ)

Posted 2:58pm Sunday 28th September 2014 by Adrian Ng

Perhaps one of the most important releases in the history of alternative New Zealand music, this little EP from short-lived Auckland three-piece Bandicoot really put the spotlight on local DIY music and influenced a handful of musicians in the process. A four-track explosion of noisy, lo-fi, Read more...

New this week / Singles in review

Posted 2:58pm Sunday 28th September 2014 by Adrian Ng

Lydia Ainsworth - Hologram Whilst a student of film scoring, Canadian artist Lydia Ainsworth was secretly working on songs for her upcoming debut, Right From Real. “Hologram” is the first single to drop from the intriguing new artist. “Hologram” is an ethereal, piano-based, pop Read more...

Mrs. Doubtfire

Posted 2:58pm Sunday 28th September 2014 by Mandy Te

Classic Film Through the eyes of young me, Mrs Doubtfire was a hilarious film that made me cry with laughter. However, through the eyes of “adult” me, Mrs Doubtfire is actually a pretty heart-breaking film that just made me cry. Blame it on the cold, harsh realities that my sheltered, Read more...

Coco Avant Chanel

Posted 2:58pm Sunday 28th September 2014 by CJ O'Connor

Foreign Film I don't often watch foreign language films. It's not because they're hard to understand, because the ones I watch are usually in French or Spanish, and I speak both. It's because I find foreign films just ... odd. Especially French ones, and especially French ones that aren't Read more...

Night Moves

Posted 2:58pm Sunday 28th September 2014 by CJ O'Connor

Rating: B Night Moves is one of the most psychologically interesting movies I have seen this year. Shunning the paradigmatic fast pace and drama of the usual terrorism plot, Reichardt instead focuses her latest flick on the development of the characters in the undertaking. The three Read more...

Predestination

Posted 2:58pm Sunday 28th September 2014 by Baz Macdonald

Rating: B+ You may not know it, but there is a huge difference between cinematic and literary science fiction. Cinematic Science Fiction is interested in, almost exclusively, the spectacular side of science fiction, as speculative science allows you to explore aesthetically unexplored worlds Read more...

Unpainted

Posted 2:58pm Sunday 28th September 2014 by Hannah Collier

Blue Oyster Art Project Space Exhibited until 18 October 2014 I rarely get down to the Blue Oyster on Dowling Street, but every time I go there, I am always pleasantly surprised. Briar Holt’s Unpainted curation is a series of work by artists Kim Pieters, James Bellaney, Helen Calder Read more...

Croque-Monsieur (A glorified toasted sandwich)

Posted 2:58pm Sunday 28th September 2014 by Sophie Edmonds

Somehow Aucklanders have managed to charge $8.50 for a glorified toasted sandwich by calling them croque-monsieurs. Essentially a ham and cheese toastie covered in a white cheese sauce, these things have suddenly become all the rage, and for good reason too. Think along the lines of the cheese Read more...

Interview: Rima Te Wiata

Posted 3:00pm Sunday 21st September 2014 by Sydney Lehman

Rima: I’m just sitting in a park in Wellington; it’s very nice, it’s very sunny. Critic: Oh wonderful! So, yeah, one of our reviewer’s here at Critic for our film section finished their review saying that Housebound was “International funny,” not just “Kiwi funny.” I guess in terms of the Read more...

Sims 4

Posted 3:00pm Sunday 21st September 2014 by Baz Macdonald

The concept of simulation games, on paper, is truly absurd. Especially when you consider what many of these games simulate are often the most mundane aspects of our lives. Managing and planning city infrastructure, businesses, sport’s teams, the most boring aspects of flying a plane. All of these Read more...

Unaccustomed Earth

Posted 3:00pm Sunday 21st September 2014 by Chelsea Boyle

Jhumpa Lahiri’s second collection of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth, is another stunning contribution from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author. The fictional collection includes eight short stories, divided into two parts. The narrative works as a unified whole yet simultaneously each story Read more...

Zola Jesus - Taiga

Posted 3:00pm Sunday 21st September 2014 by Adrian Ng

Rating: A- For me, it's always an interesting little storyline when a mainstream pop artist decides to make a more adventurous, more authentic, record. When they feel that urge to break out of their contrived pop shell and validate themselves as true artists and not just a product of the Read more...

Download of the week: Fazed on a Pony - Alone / Mary like me (NZ)

Posted 3:00pm Sunday 21st September 2014 by Adrian Ng

Fazed on a Pony is Peter McCall, a talented songwriter who is also part of two great Dunedin bands, Yawny and the Apocalypse, and Dasepo Girls. Over the last month or so he's released two singles, “Alone” and “Mary Like Me.” This is hopefully a precursor for things to come. His laid back, Read more...

New this week / Singles in review

Posted 3:00pm Sunday 21st September 2014 by Adrian Ng

Ariel Pink - Put Your Number In My Phone Ariel Pink is an experimental pop musician based in Los Angeles, known for his prolific nature and his pioneering of lo-fi home recording during the earlier stages of his career. “Put Your Number In My Phone” is the first single to drop from Read more...

Good Morning, Vietnam

Posted 3:00pm Sunday 21st September 2014 by Mandy Te

Classic Film First on my road of escapism (the post-mid-semester-blues haven’t left) was Good Morning, Vietnam. Settling in the lounge, a place incredibly similar to a bus stop, I was instantly met with approval for watching such “a good, classic film.” Good Morning, Vietnam is set Read more...

The Keeper of Lost Causes (Kvinden I Buret)

Posted 3:00pm Sunday 21st September 2014 by Alex Campbell-Hunt

Rating: B Scandinavian cinema has a tendency to be kind of grim and morbid, and the recent wave of crime-dramas is no exception. After watching this movie, or The Bridge or the Millennium trilogy, one might be left with two strong impressions of Scandinavia: that it’s completely grey and Read more...

Into the Storm

Posted 3:00pm Sunday 21st September 2014 by Baz Macdonald

Rating: B- Disaster movies can be approached in one of two ways. It can either be a character film, in which you follow interesting and dynamic characters as they deal with the disaster, or it can be disaster porn in which everything constructed is solely for the purpose of producing Read more...

Before I Go to Sleep

Posted 3:00pm Sunday 21st September 2014 by Andrew Kwiatkowski

Rating: A Okay, so if you are anything like me, and you hear that this movie is about a woman with amnesia waking up every day with no memory of who she (or her husband) is, you immediately think it’s going to be a crappy re-hash of Memento or 50 First Dates, right? Wrong. While Read more...

Barry Brickell - His Own Steam

Posted 3:00pm Sunday 21st September 2014 by Hannah Collier

Dunedin Public Art Gallery (DPAG) Exhibited until 1 March 2015 The DPAG is clearly into ceramics at the moment and I have been enjoying the refreshing change from paintings to pottery. Barry Brickell is one of the pre-eminent contemporary potters working in New Zealand and is a Read more...