New Zealand
CD: Lorde - MelodramaSunday, 18 June 2017
The follow-up to Lorde's multi-platinum, Grammy-nominated album Pure Heroine has been a long time coming after the 16-year-old singer/songwriter withdrew from the limelight and beat a hasty retreat back to her home country of New Zealand.Four years... Read more... |
McLaren review - illuminating portrait of New Zealand's racing aceWednesday, 24 May 2017
We’ve recently seen how Formula One heroes Ayrton Senna, Niki Lauda and James Hunt can become box office gold, in the form of Senna and Rush. Roger Donaldson’s profile of New Zealand race ace Bruce McLaren is more for enthusiasts than a wider public... Read more... |
10 Questions for film director Roger Donaldson – 'motor racing in the 1960s was incredibly dangerous'Tuesday, 23 May 2017
An Australian who emigrated to New Zealand in 1965, Roger Donaldson cut his teeth in documentaries and TV before launching into a career in feature films. His first feature, Sleeping Dogs (1976), on the unlikely theme of a New Zealand plunged into... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Hunt for the WilderpeopleFriday, 13 January 2017
Hunt for the Wilderpeople is the highest-grossing film produced exclusively in New Zealand, and yet it snuck into UK cinemas at the back end of 2016 with less fanfare than it deserved. Its release as a home entertainment gives a better shot at a... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2015: Kieran Hodgson/ Richard Gadd/ Trygve WakenshawSaturday, 29 August 2015
Kieran Hodgson, Voodoo Rooms ★★★★When Kieran Hodgson was growing up in West Yorkshire in the early years of the century, he was obsessed with two things – cycling and Lance Armstrong, then the greatest cyclist the world had ever seen.In 2003,... Read more... |
What We Do in the ShadowsThursday, 20 November 2014
Clearly the makers of this delightful film from New Zealand have watched a lot of movies, as so many are neatly and obliquely referenced – Nosferatu, The Blair Witch Project, The Lost Boys, Grease, to name just a few - in a comic tale about a group... Read more... |
Kiri at 70Friday, 07 March 2014
Even more deserving of the sobriquet “the beautiful voice” than Renée Fleming, the natural successor who virtually copyrighted it, Kiri te Kanawa was one of the great sopranos of the 20th century. With those big, candid brown eyes and bone structure... Read more... |
CD: Connan Mockasin - CaramelMonday, 04 November 2013
Enigmatic troubadour Connan Mockasin returns with his second album, a follow-up to 2010’s critically acclaimed Forever Dolphin Love which won him a cult following. Championed by the likes of Erol Alkan, Radiohead and Charlotte Gainsbourg, the elfin... Read more... |
Top of the Lake, Series Finale, BBC TwoSunday, 18 August 2013
“Everything you think you are, you’re not,” pronounced Holly Hunter’s inscrutable GJ in the final episode of the chilly Top of the Lake. Certainties crumbled as the series progressed, with Elisabeth Moss’s Robin Griffin discovering that almost... Read more... |
Top of the Lake, BBC TwoSunday, 14 July 2013
Jane Campion's much-anticipated series is set amid hauntingly beautiful scenery on New Zealand's South Island, which in its remoteness seems to shake its head gently at the antics of the sparse human population. The people themselves are like a... Read more... |
theartsdesk in New Zealand: WOMAD TaranakiSunday, 24 March 2013
I've been to countless UK Womads yet have never before made it WOMAD Taranaki. Which is almost something to be ashamed about considering I'm a Kiwi. But this expat is never in the South Pacific mid-March. Until, that is, this year. The 11th New... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe: Camille O'Sullivan/The Road That Wasn't ThereMonday, 06 August 2012
Camille O'Sullivan: Changeling, Assembly Rooms *****The Assembly Rooms may have reopened for this year's Fringe following a very swanky refurb, but someone obviously forgot to put sufficient thought into the practicalities of getting people in... Read more... |
