What happens when your favourite book gets made into a movie?

Moata Tamaira grills The Changeover co-director Stuart McKenzie about bringing her favourite book to life. When I heard that someone was making a movie out of my favourite ever book, The Changeover, it put me in a fragile and rather ambivalent state of mind. On the one hand, it’s about time that someone got around to … Read more

How did Christchurch become Parks and Recreation’s Pawnee? A Spinoff Investigation

Christchurch local Moata Tamaira looks into the greatest sitcom map-related mystery of the 21st century: why was the New Zealand city chosen as a mappelganger for Parks and Recreation’s Pawnee? This post was published in October 2016. Once upon a time the best you could hope for in terms of pop culture references to Christchurch … Read more

From Scandinavia to West Auckland – Were the Vikings really the bogans of the sea?

Moata Tamaira argues that Vikings is really just Outrageous Fortune but with longships instead of V8s. If I’m honest, my knowledge of medieval European history, particularly that of Scandinavia is sketchy at best. It’s pretty much limited to a deep appreciation of True Blood’s Eric Northman with a smattering of “that time I had read … Read more