David Seymour rode to the rescue of publicans and pub-loving rugby fans a couple of months back when he introduced a bill enabling licensed premises to open for World Cup screenings in the early, very early and very, very early morning. Toby Manhire catches up with the one-man ACT caucus over breakfast, beer and All … Read more
Every lazy Sunday we select an excellent local short film from Lightbox’s Show Me Shorts catalogue. Queenie is an animated short film by Paul Neason, following a geography lecturer Danny Mulgan as he works with his students on a mysterious personal project. Through talking heads (that immediately bring all the humanity and agony of David … Read more
Rugby League Columnist and Author Will Evans questions the thinking of the Kiwis as they embark on their tour of England minus a whole heap of world-beating talent. Last year Australia treated the Four Nations tournament with disdain. Test incumbents Johnathan Thurston, Matt Scott, Billy Slater, Brett Morris, Josh Morris, Matt Gillett and James Tamou … Read more
Six typewriters To begin with, my father’s reconditioned German keyboard picked up during the war, with a spiky Gothic ‘o’. Then, I suppose, when I was married, the use of Alistair’s: details forgotten or repressed. In Dunedin I answered a small ad and paid £10 for a museum piece black and upright … Read more
Patrick Evans’s last novel was about Frank Sargeson and Janet Frame – a clever piece of ventriloquism in which the Sargeson voice and character are accurately caught. This new novel takes the theme, or subject, or obsession, one stage further and beyond ‘the facts’. New Zealand (Canterbury) novelist Raymond Thomas Lawrence has won the Nobel … Read more
Alex Casey visits the set of The Brokenwood Mysteries and finds more mystery and murder than you can shake a blood bag at. I couldn’t believe I was staring at my first dead body. He was lying there stiff, a calming shade of pale blue. “That’s going to be me one day,” I thought to … Read more
As we barrel through the international window, Premier League twitter once again becomes a case of the haves and the have-nots. Those who have international duty have not got the time to watch the final of Great British Bake Off and Grand Designs back-to-back like Norwich City’s Matt Jarvis, and for that they deserve nothing … Read more
An occasional series in which we feature an insight or proverb from In the Arena (Penguin Random House, $40), the new book by entrepreneur Diane Foreman and her ghost writer Jenni McManus. On seasoned entrepreneurs: In the Arena, by Diane Foreman with Jenni … Read more
Bringing together the best, worst and weirdest TV moments of the week, including an alarming amount of butt-based broadcasting. Contributions from Alex Casey and Calum Henderson. Rachel Hunter’s Enigmatic Enema This week, Rachel put her arse on the line in the name of beauty… again. Rachel Hunter’s Tour of Beauty travelled to India this week, … Read more
The merging of NZME’s news teams from its various operations in print, radio and online into one all-purpose news gathering is due to be completed by the end of the year. As we’ve previously noted, the great smooshing of 2015 has already begun with a handful of journalists and columnists for The New Zealand Herald now … Read more
Who’s got the best kit in the Premier League this season? Calum Henderson looks at all 51 shirts on offer and ranks the clubs on the strength of their designs. Probably the most exciting thing about the Premier League pre-season isn’t the tours of Malaysia and the USA, the Emirates Cup or even the multi-million … Read more
Claire Adamson is undoubtedly New Zealand’s premiere expert on the 90s What Now series This is Serial Stuff. This week she hit the jackpot after being sent over an hour of kiwi childhood nostalgia on Youtube. The Reddit envelope of doom blinked angrily from the corner of the page. “Read me!” it screamed, a tiny, triangle-filled precursor of terrible, hate-filled, … Read more
Sports Stats Analyst and, ahem, Bucs fan Tea Manuel offers up all you need to know about our ten top match ups for week five of the Biggest Show in America. 1. Kansas City Chiefs v Chicago Bears This is a rare match-up indeed. In fact, the Chiefs have only played the Chicago Bears eleven times since 1973. The … Read more
Premier League Pass kindly loans us NBC’s excellent football pundits Men in Blazers, to bring us up to speed with all the Premier League talking points ahead of this weekend’s games. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKemH61l-vs&feature=youtu.be Watch all this weekend’s Premier League action live and on demand at Premier League Pass.
An occasional series in which we feature an insight or proverb from In the Arena (Penguin Random House, $40), the new book by entrepreneur Diane Foreman and her ghost writer Jenni McManus. On Paul Henry’s wisdom: In the Arena, by Diane Foreman with Jenni McManus is published by Penguin Random House, RRP $40
To celebrate the arbitrary three-day respite TV3 have offered us from The Block NZ: Villa Wars, Calum Henderson looks back at the last week-and-a-bit of daybed dramas, dangerous drilling, dick moves and a hundred pre-line inspections. 1) Cat & Jeremy – House 3 The New Plymouth jokers took out first week honours with their guest bedroom … Read more
Has Paul McCartney ever said anything interesting? Sometimes? Now and then? A couple of times? Once? No. Rock’s most distinguished bore has always chuntered on, yapping and jawing, blathering and babbling, the words pouring out of him like water through a seive. Nothing ever holds. It’s a kind of disease, a neurological disorder. He needs … Read more
The Boobs on Bikes paraded down Auckland’s Queen Street yesterday. Alex Casey and José Barbosa talked to crowd members to get their questions answered. The sun was beating down as the clock struck 12 on Auckland’s Queen Street. It was too hot and I had to keep my jacket on because I had forgotten that my … Read more
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice adaptation, fans share what the soggy shirts and fiberglass statues mean to them. It is a truth universally acknowledged that most women in this country will encounter Pride and Prejudice at some stage in their lives, be it a set of old VHS tapes, … Read more
This morning, rather than using those excellent new electric trains, I drove to work in a Suzuki Swift. It’s an import without a band expander, and thus locks me below 90 on my FM dial. Being a newsy sort of a guy in a newsy sort of a mood, that meant gritting my teeth and … Read more
Now that the dust has settled on the weekend’s Tinderbox Children’s Writers and Illustrators conference in Wellington, time to ask: who are the most powerful people in children’s literature? Tricky thing, power. Are the most powerful people in the New Zealand children’s book world those that are recognised internationally as experts? Do they need to … Read more
A recent Scout video purported to be a peek inside the home of Julie Christie, one of the most powerful people in New Zealand media. But the house was built on land obtained at a bargain price, and Christie admits that she never lived there – raising questions about the nature of the transaction, writes Duncan … Read more
Love Grand Designs but can’t afford to build a concrete oasis? Alex Casey lists the top affordable style tips from the series premiere. Sunday night saw the premiere of New Zealand’s first ever Grand Designs, swapping out Kevin McCloud for Chris Moller and giant glass houses in England for concrete spaceships plopped in the middle of … Read more
Picture an animated cityscape surrounded by water. In the centre, a distinctive tower thrusts into the sky, each side an elongated isosceles. A shadow moves across the city. It’s a spaceship, possibly the one from Independence Day. From beneath the mighty ship we see a portal open. A swarm of robots spills forth, descending into the city. They … Read more
At something like 5am in the Coca-Cola city, the deal was done. The nations’ representatives had presumably been reduced to 12 hangry men – or, more precisely, 11 men and one woman – and after more than five years of negotiation, squabbling and secrecy, a Partenariat Transpacifique, as they like to call it on the … Read more
The sixth episode of our weekly pop music chat for umusic, shot and edited by The Spinoff’s own José Barbosa. It involves two pop rookies – The Spinoff’s Alex Casey and bFM’s Joseph Harper – listening to state-of-the-art pop music and having a chat about it. Simple. This week they discuss why Disclosure should slow … Read more
An essay by Patrick Evans to mark his new novel The Back of His Head, which imagines that “a complete and utter prick” has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. ‘No entry to all vehicles, writer at work’ – the sign in the Jerusalem street the writer known to the West as SY Agnon lived … Read more
It’s official! After all the doubt swirling around Super Rugby’s latest expansion team, Japan’s entry into the southern hemisphere competition now has a name and arguably the greatest logo in rugby history. 1. They’re the Sunwolves. These ain’t no ordinary wolves. That would be far too easy. In Japan things are always better when two … Read more
We got the think tank together to list our favourite television geeks from LAN party monsters to virtual reality pioneers. Today marks the anniversary of the death of Apple Founder Steve Jobs, a man who has done as much for modern computer technology as he has for the black turtleneck. In his honour, we got The … Read more