Only very rarely does the prime minister’s diary throw up an empty page, but so it was in the year of our lord 2016, after John Key decided he wouldn’t after all be travelling to Waitangi. It may be true that he once insisted he would mark the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty … Read more
In Undertale, monsters aren’t bad, they’re just misunderstood – but that doesn’t mean you can’t slay them anyway. Liam Maguren holds the power of life and death in a game that straddles the line between hilarious and ridiculous. Standing alongside the beautiful brutality of Bloodborne, the social life-crumbling world of The Witcher 3, and the skin-itching addiction … Read more
Inside the Lightbox is a sponsored post where we mine their extensive catalogue for shows that you might want to watch. This week we plate up some cooking shows full of tips and tricks to have you cooking like a celebrity chef in just one long weekend. How to Cook like Heston What’s the vibe? Heston … Read more
Leicester are the new Barcelona (at least until Pep Guardiola arrives in Manchester), Spurs are inching ever closer to the top of the table, and a rare start for Peter Crouch can’t help Stoke as Manchester United finally rediscover the joy of scoring goals. The January transfer window slammed shut with a hint of passive-aggression … Read more
Don’t biff it and don’t burn me either I was thinking About how French women In the magazines Obey the law of decades When it comes to their hair Ascending the matron ladder And shutting their witch down With knee length hems. I said I’ve gone normal With the tree this year son Lies! I … Read more
Alex Casey discovers the legendary stony-faced female detectives in Scandinavian thrillers The Bridge and The Killing, who swap the pantsuits for chunky knit jumpers and the smiles for scowls. It’s a pretty grim state of affairs when one simple Google search for “woman cop” yields these sort of results: Now that is just unrealistic. There’s not … Read more
Chaos reigned, if only briefly, over the Auckland CBD today. Don Rowe moves through a world of swirling ideology and takes an exhilirating walk down Queen Street with a few thousand other people. “You’re a very loud minority!” sneered a solitary businessman in an off-pink dress shirt. A few people turned their heads, someone called … Read more
Our recent list of the greatest New Zealand works of non-fiction featured a glaring lack of books by and about Māori. We invited a panel of indigenous experts to come up with an alternative Top 50. The Spinoff straight messed up. When it published its list of 100 greatest New Zealand works of non-fiction last … Read more
Greg Bruce charts the agony of the five-time major winner, who has met the bane of his golfing life in the form of a young man mere weeks out of high school. What must it be like to be Phil Mickelson? For a long time, he lived in the shadow of Tiger; he may have … Read more
Alex Casey revisits the 1998 Hero parade coverage on NZ On Screen with a little help from parade highlight, international model and TV legend Colin Mathura-Jeffree. It’s no secret that most parades are pretty terrible. The Santa parade is a hot mess of Farmers flyers, sticky children and begrudging Shortland Street cast members. The All Blacks … Read more
In Gone By Lunchtime, the Spinoff’s new politics podcast, Toby Manhire is joined by former Native Affairs producer Annabelle Lee and Ben Thomas of political PR outfit Exceltium to discuss the Waitangi kerfuffles, the trade deal row, state of the nation speeches from the four main party leaders, and home baking. Listen on iTunes or … Read more
Rosemary McLeod reviews Unearthly Landscapes, New Zealand’s early churchyards, cemeteries and urupa by Stephen Deed (Otago University Press, $50.00). Death can bring out the worst in people. Families seethe their way through funeral services, burials and lawyers’ offices, and yes, they also mourn the person who has gone forever, though they have different ways of … Read more
Welcome to the first episode of TV Mum, a weekly podcast starring Brendon Green and his Mum, Dianne. Every week Brendon will try and get Dianne to remember the details of a TV show she’s recently watched. The resulting discussion is a journey through Dianne’s shaky memory and never ends up where you’d expect. This … Read more
Don’t let the shiny new desk distract you – there is something very bleak going on in the background of NewsHub Live at 6. Hayden Donnell investigates. As the Herald reported last month, 3News is dead. A completely new programme called NewsHub Live at 6 replaced it on air last night, shamelessly dancing on the … Read more
Amy Potter always had trouble finding friends to play videogames with – which led her to co-found Kiwi gaming startup Leaping Tiger, a matchmaking app for video games. She talks about life as a girl gamer and what it’s like to find her way in the hyper-masculine world of technology startups. In early 2014, when … Read more
YouTube is packed to the gills with expert makeup vloggers telling you how to contour your features, fill out your lips and generally draw a better face on your own face. In her first weekly column looking at beauty issues, Zoe Scheltema picks her favourite 10. I sometimes wonder how people ever did anything before … Read more
Joseph Harper takes a long, taxing, circuitous and satisfying walk through the world of The Witness, a 3D puzzle game set on a pastel-colored island with a mysterious secret. The Witness, the latest game from Braid creator Jonathan Blow, has been in the works since 2008. It’s a 3D puzzle adventure game vaguely in the mode of … Read more
Ian Wishart’s new book Elementary went on sale last week, promptly got pulled from bookstores scared off by a threat of legal action, then was put back on the shelves. The following excerpt makes it clear that Wishart believes people have been duped into thinking Scott Watson is innocent of the murders of Ben Smart … Read more
Tara Ward brings you her Shortland Street Power Rankings for last week, including Lucy’s evil twin, TK’s vile virility and Drew’s detective nose. 1) Wendy sails into the west Grab the tissues and the smelling salts, peeps, as we say a final farewell to Wendy and Len. A bumper crowd of approximately fifteen people gathered at … Read more
Played by Gabriel Macht, Harvey Specter of Suits once saved Tim Lambourne during a tenancy dispute. Years later, Tim rings Gabriel for a chat about the success of the show, and the mystery surrounding the returning season (arriving express to Lightbox weekly). Suits is a show about lawyers, fancy ass New York lawyers, lawyers that make … Read more
The Wellington Sevens has gone from madcap, boozy sell-out spectacle to one hell of a tough sell, and it’s a bloody tragedy, writes Scotty Stevenson. It is a Friday in late January in the nation’s capital, the day before the Wellington leg of the Sevens World Series begins. The harbour is green and glassy, the … Read more
The smartphone game/cat simulator Neko Atsume (“kitty collector”) has become an obsession for many around the world. We’ve raved about its charm and relaxing backyard vibe. However for one man the constant bombardment of cats and the never-ending pressure to keep them fed was too much. Over the course of a few months the twitter … Read more
While we enjoy the magic of the FA Cup’s fourth round and await confirmation of Chelsea’s transfer deadline-busting signing of Neymar this weekend, let’s have a long hard think about the reality that Tottenham might win the Premiership. This weekend’s round of Premier League games has been pushed back to midweek to accommodate the fourth … Read more
Voznesensky Voznesensky meeting his girlfriend in the rain is taking place tonight. There’s the same telephone box, late fifties, Voznesensky & girlfriend rooting like rattlesnakes. The whole world is shaking. Voznesensky himself is shaking. It must be love, he thought. Or a bad night. Or good … Read more
The Beauty Book is a publication aimed at making aging women feel terrible about their faces, bodies, brains and insides to sell them expensive procedures and snake venom. Alex Casey gifted the book to her Mum and noted her reactions. My mother is fifty-something years old. It’s not because she’s ashamed of her age that … Read more
The second episode of On the Rag, a podcast hosted by Alex Casey which looks at, laughs at and questions the state of women in pop culture, news and the world. To dissect January’s issues in the searing heat of The Spinoff boardroom, she is joined by comedian and author Michele A’Court and marketing guru … Read more
In which we take a deep breath and declare the best 50 works of New Zealand non-fiction – books, journals, and various assorted printed material. Yow! Right then! Let us continue with the countdown to the greatest works of non-fiction ever published in New Zealand, as selected by a conscientious, hand-wringing panel of male and … Read more
Could the NRL’s latest off-field scandal have been predicted with the help of a mathematical formula similar to cricket’s WASP? Probably the weirdest thing about the NRL’s latest boozy scandal, in which Mitchell Pearce was filmed simulating a sex act on a dog after an Australia Day booze cruise, is that it’s not even the … Read more
Tonight the X-Files returns to our screens with the first new episodes since the original series – now streaming in its entirety on Lightbox – bowed out in 2002. In celebration of this momentous occasion, Ellen Moorhead picks her most ridiculous ‘monster of the week’ episodes of all time. Fox Mulder and Dana Scully AKA … Read more