Ted 2

Posted 2:05pm Sunday 19th July 2015 by Shaun Swain

Rating: 1/5 If I described Seth MacFarlane’s sequel to Ted as incredibly masturbatory, I would only be lowering myself to the level of MacFarlane’s tasteless sense of humour. But it doesn’t matter. Ted 2, despite its painfully large budget, provides no inspiration for good Read more...

The Goddess of Buttercups and Daisies

Posted 1:31pm Sunday 19th July 2015 by Bridget Vosburgh

Martin Millar’s novel, The Goddess of Buttercups and Daisies, is set in Athens, 421 BC. During this time, the city-state of Athens is at war with Sparta, and has been for ten years. The playwright Aristophanes wants to put on a comedy called Peace for the Dionysia Festival, as his entry in a Read more...

Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward

Posted 1:37pm Sunday 19th July 2015 by Cheyanne Intemann

Rating: 4/5 Heavensward is the recent expansion to the Square Enix massively multiplayer online (MMO) game, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. Final Fantasy XIV had a particularly bad 1.0 launch, with daily experience gain limits, huge empty maps, shockingly poor optimisation and clunky combat. Read more...

High On Fire - Luminiferous

Posted 1:44pm Sunday 19th July 2015 by Basti Menkes

Rating: 3/5 High On Fire is a heavy metal trio from Oakland, California. The band was formed in 1998 by Matt Pike, the once and future guitarist of pioneering doom metal group, Sleep. High On Fire has since earned itself a reputation for its genre-straddling style and vehement live shows. On its Read more...

Son Lux - Bones

Posted 1:48pm Sunday 19th July 2015 by Basti Menkes

Son Lux is the stage name of American composer, Ryan Lott. Appearing in 2008 with his spine-tingling debut album At War with Walls & Mazes, Son Lux quickly established himself as a force to be reckoned with.  Son Lux’s songs have the deliberate architecture of a classical composer, Read more...

Madame Bovary

Posted 1:56pm Sunday 19th July 2015 by Mandy Te

Rating: 3/5 As a writer, Gustave Flaubert spent his career chasing after “le mot juste” — “the right word” — and, for many people, Madame Bovary truly captures his perfectionist style. However, film adaptations of Madame Bovary have yet to embody that Read more...

NZIFF Programme Launch Film: Mavis!

Posted 1:59pm Sunday 19th July 2015 by Mandy Te

Rating: 3/5 This year’s New Zealand International Film Festival (NZIFF) is Dunedin’s biggest film festival to date. With almost 100 films from 25 countries, the 39th Dunedin International Film Festival celebrated the launch of its programme with a delicious array of macarons, dips, Read more...

Vital Bodies

Posted 1:06pm Sunday 19th July 2015 by Loulou Callister-Baker

Artists: Georgette Brown, Wendelien Bakker, Anna Rankin, Sam Norton, Virginia Overell and Holly Childs. Curated by: Georgina Watson   Seeking out the vital bodies in the current Blue Oyster show curated by Georgina Watson is an experience that crosses the disciplines of writing, Read more...

The Falling

Posted 2:02pm Sunday 19th July 2015 by Jaxon Langley

Rating: 3/5 Following her heartbreaking docu-drama, Dreams of a Life, Carol Morley brings us The Falling — a bewitching, deadpan period portrait of female adolescence that explores the subject of mass psychogenic illness and treads into other dark territory. Although it is well-written and Read more...

Far from the Madding Crowd

Posted 1:43pm Sunday 12th July 2015 by Simon Kingsley-Holmes

Rating: 2/5 The success of Nicolas Winding Refn’s operatic kick in the teeth with Bronson and Tomas Alfredson’s hushed, emotionally muzzled Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy has given audiences high expectations when it comes to Scandinavian directors and the films they are tied Read more...