Features
Freelance writer and post-graduate student journalist at AUT with an MA in Film, Television and Media Studies
Features
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were the greatest Hollywood power couple of their generation. And now they're over. When you woke up this morning you probably thought all was right with the world: sure it's been pretty drizzly, the housing crisis continues afoot and the the racist housewives are still on the loose.
She's bright, she's bold, she's running for mayor. And yes, she's 22. Katie Parker talks to Chloe Swarbrick about age, experience, and why she wants to be the big kahuna. Chloe Swarbrick, in person, is professional, earnest and engaging. She talks quickly and persuasively, holds your gaze confide
For today's short memories, Mike Hosking is but a beloved national icon, speaking truths and setting fashion trends. But not so long ago, he fought a bitter, brutal war to change privacy laws in New Zealand forever. Click here for the rest of our Hosking Week content.
The Olympics are a radical season of sport watching, which gives our rugby-obsessed little country other things to think about for a change, writes Katie Parker. Clearly things are not looking great for the Rio Olympics: the Zika virus, super gross pollution, kidnappings and a corrupt government are rarely conducive to a fun mass international sporting event.
Do religious young people watch less porn? The effect porn has on young people's brains is constantly ew under review, but young people don't care - they're too busy watching porn. Nothing can stop them! Except maybe God?
Confused about the film festival? Don't want to take a wild stab in the dark? Allow us to ease your fears and arm you for the season ahead. The NZ International Film Festival season is upon us and yet again we are faced with a programme full to the brim of films everyone pretends to have heard of.
You know when that hotline bling, that can only mean one thing. You are drifting off to sleep on a peaceful Tuesday night when hear your phone buzz. It's that guy. You see it is a picture. You open the picture. The lighting is unflattering. The composition is awful.
With the NBA playoffs well underway, our very own Steven Adams is taking the world by storm with a potent mixture of talent and loveliness and, writes Katie Parker, he's not the only one.
As the franchise splutters to a halt, Katie Parker examines why The Sims 2 remains the gleaming jewel in the Maxis simulation game crown.
The era of MS-DOS games may have been a bizarro haze of hit and miss, but for the burgeoning millennial they were the last vestige of PC innocence. 35 years since their debut, Katie Parker reminisces.
Katie Parker reopens the locker of her adolescence in Being Eve, the local teen series brimming with asymmetrical tank tops, IRL dating and fourth wall-breaking. Like all naive pre-teens, at the age of 10 all I wanted in the world was to hit adolescence. Whether I was trimming my non-existent
Alan Dale is a national treasure, acting legend and generally lovely man, who has for far too long flown under the radar. Katie Parker celebrates this humble kiwi great of the small screen. It was out of unconditional love that I joined my boyfriend to see the Entourage movie last year.
Why do we always demonise the dump-er, never the dump-ee? This feature is part of our two-week series on choices. Click here for more. The decision to breakup may not feel like a decision at all.
Reviews
Welcome to weekly series The Singles Life, where known experts Katie Parker and Hussein Moses peruse, ponder and pontificate on the latest and (maybe) greatest in New Zealand music. Kimbra is back and better than ever. But did she wait too long? Katie Parker and Hussein Moses have been watching the clock.
Welcome to weekly series The Singles Life, where known experts Katie Parker and Hussein Moses peruse, ponder and pontificate on the latest and (maybe) greatest in New Zealand music. This year's APRA Silver Scrolls are going down tonight, with Street Chant, Tami Neilson, Thomas Oliver, Lydia Cole and The Phoenix Foundation making up the top five finalists for the main award.
Welcome to weekly series The Singles Life, where known experts Katie Parker and Hussein Moses peruse, ponder and pontificate on the latest and (maybe) greatest in New Zealand music. Callum Rei McDougall, better known simply as Rei, may be that most feared and sinister thing - a Wellington rapper - but we mustn't hold that against him.
The First Monday In May sees cultural tensions swept under the rug in exchange for the kind of red carpet porn you can only dream of, writes Katie Parker. In this age of the beautiful Instagram, so-so Snapchat and shameful, shameful Vine, celebrity access is at an all-time high, and yet certain events, certain moments, still elude us.
Welcome to weekly series The Singles Life, where known experts Katie Parker and Hussein Moses peruse, ponder and pontificate on the latest and (maybe) greatest in New Zealand music. The New Zealand top 40 singles chart can be a pretty dire place for local music, but Stan Walker's latest summer jam might be just what we need to turn things around.
Blair Witch might suffer from the inevitable comparison to its predecessor, but in the year of the reboot, it isn't dead in the water. When The Blair Witch Project came out in 1999, it was the movie everyone talked about.
Welcome to weekly series The Singles Life, where known experts Katie Parker and Hussein Moses peruse, ponder and pontificate on the latest and (maybe) greatest in New Zealand music. Everyone knows Parris Goebel for being our very own superstar choreographer expat extraordinaire, but did you know she's got a burgeoning music career in the works?
Welcome to weekly series The Singles Life, where known experts Katie Parker and Hussein Moses peruse, ponder and pontificate on the latest and (maybe) greatest in New Zealand music. If his record label is to be believed, pop singer Graham Candy is about to become New Zealand's next big export.
Comedies for and about women should be a wonderful thing, but as Katie Parker finds, these mums aren't bad, just mediocre. Female-driven comedy has a bad, checkered history, mostly in the sense that there often isn't any.
Welcome to weekly series The Singles Life, where known experts Katie Parker and Hussein Moses peruse, ponder and pontificate on the latest and (maybe) greatest in New Zealand music. Remember Naz from The Bachelor NZ? Of course you do. Somehow she ended up in a music video by a reggae artist who goes by the name of K Dread.
War Dogs pitches for Goodfellas-style drama as often as it does stoner comedy. The marketing for War Dogs is deceptive. The poster pays homage to Scarface; the coupling of Jonah Hill and Miles Teller suggest a bromance; and the trailer makes it look like Pineapple Express. But it's not really any of these things.
Yes, it's as hideously incoherent as you've heard. Remember when Taylor Swift put out ? For months maybe, years it seemed, she released poster after poster of her squad, introducing their super girl personas. "Lena Dunham is 'Lucky Fiori'"; "Cindy Crawford is 'headmistress'"; "Ellie Goulding is 'Destructa X'" etc etc.
White guy character studies are dime a dozen, but NZIFF entry Paterson manages to avoid a bevy of the classic pitfalls. A week ago, were you to tell me I'd love a movie about a white male poet bus driver who refuses to get a smartphone, I would have been very stern with you.
NZIFF's Personal Shopper has all the hallmarks of a terrible film, writes Katie Parker Sometimes you go to see a movie and you think it's going to be about something cool - for instance, ghosts and rich people - and then it turns out it's all about something else altogether - say, closure and self-discovery and coming to terms with things - and you don't quite know what to think.
Antipodean angst and melancholy melodrama rule in the NZ International Film Festival's Aussie drama The Daughter. The melodrama is a staple of antipodean cinema. Every few years another tale of family, secrets, the past and adolescence surfaces to show the melancholy and mayhem of our little corner of the world: Crush; Jindabyne; Rain; Lantana...
The NZ International Film Festival gets bleak and brutal with Green Room's realist take on the monster genre. Monsters aren't scary. People are scary. It's a line of thinking adopted by much modern horror, and in particular prestige horror. And it's so hot right now.
Eli Matthewson's latest show poses a simple question: What hath this internet age wrought? Some crazy things it seems. From clickbait to vlogs to podcasts, Matthewson explores the dystopian cloud that hovers over our digital dream; a comedic Black Mirror, if you will. That's not to say that Wow!
It's been 20 years since Rhys Darby and Grant Lobban formed sketch comedy/music duo Rhysently Granted and, as we are told from the outset they struggled to find their audience in early-90s Christchurch. Were they ahead of their time? Darby and Lobban are back together to find out.
What does it take to become the Greatest Of All Time? With G.O.A.T, young comedy up-and-comers Frickin Dangerous Bro - comprised of Jamaine Ross, James Roque & Pax Assadi - endeavor to find out. Peering at their set list just off-stage, and often beginning a sketch with "Shall we just launch into the next one?"
It might not be his best, but Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight feels like his darkest release so far. At the Auckland premiere of Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, it was abundantly clear that this kind of thing doesn't happen very often. For one thing, who bothers to hold premieres here?
Death Cab For Cutie deliver an unexpectedly fun and fast-paced Auckland show. Are Death Cab for Cutie a nostalgia act? It was this question that puzzled me as I arrived at last night's concert at the St James Theatre, the band's first ever Auckland show and a leisurely three days since their performance in Wellington on Saturday.
Tickled finds humour in the absurd, but its subjects truly shine once David Farrier steps aside. Tickled opens with Hilary Barry's disembodied voice declaring David Farrier "everyone's favourite pop culture journalist", a clip no doubt extracted from his days at TV3.
If developing these contestants into marketable singers is the aim, why do they seem so anonymous? The theme of this week's X Factor performance show was the bleakly ironic 'One Hit Wonders' and in an act of total sadism our dear sweet X Factees were asked to peer into their futures: "Who are they, exactly?"
In Spectre, James Bond has an origin story fit for a marvel superhero. Unfortunately, it ends up feeling tacked on, unnecessary and cynical. There's a moment in Spectre when, having narrowly scrambled free from a particularly explosive penultimate showdown, Daniel Craig turns to Bond girl Lea Seydoux and announces briskly "It's not over yet".
How much you enjoy The Martian will depend heavily on just how charming you find Matt Damon. Ridley Scott, on the back of a slew of disappointments, is rolling the dice once again with the release of space epic The Martian.
After a long tedious period of gestation a star is finally born, and last night we welcomed Beau into the world as X Factor NZ victor and proud new car owner. Taking out smug Shore boys Brendon Thomas and the Vibes and sweet, lovely Nyssa, Beau's inconsistencies paled in comparison to his much-celebrated "uniqueness" and I guess that means he's as deserving as anyone.
This week we arrived at the X Factor NZ semi-finals, "the toughest of all the rounds," according to Dominic Bowden. With the loss of Stevie "Hatbeard" Tonks, our burgeoning baby stars are now whittled down to three and we have but a week left to find out just who wins that car.
Why does The X Factor NZ seem infinitely more interested in what's going on with the judges? This week our dear X Factees performed New Zealand hits from the past 25 years, and while one might think "ah because it is May which is New Zealand Music month" one would be mistaken as that was never mentioned, and instead this week The X Factor celebrated 25 years of NZ On Air.
This week was yet another reminder that beneath a thin veneer of order, chaos still reigns at X Factor NZ. With the announcement this week that Dominic Bowden is to be hosting Dancing with the Stars, it seems timely to query, what the hell is the deal with this guy?
This week's recap + a very serious examination of the sexy emotions that are running high on The X Factor NZ.
A double elimination brings a harrowing ordeal of shock and dread. Presumably in an effort to spice things up and trim the fat, this week we awaited the first double elimination of the X Factor season.
Improvements have been made, true contenders are emerging and Dominic Bowden only grows in power. Coming in the wake of the sad cricket game and following a lot of very public turmoil on the show, the stakes were high this week for things to get back on track.
News
Morning music the fast track way to feeling good
H&M arrival clouded by allegations of unethical practices (+VIDEO)
Things take a lively twist at a mayoral debate with candidates Alezix Heneti and David Hay going head to head in a furious war of words (+VIDEO)
University staff and drama lovers are still waiting for the University of Auckland's Maidment Theatre to re-open after a sudden closure last year The doors of the University of Auckland's Maidment Theatre have been closed for months, and members of the local arts and culture community are starting to wonder if they will ever open again.
Events to benefit the city's homeless have been praised for engaging with the rough sleeping community The success of a book club for the homeless at Auckland's Central City Library has led to weekly Monday movie sessions attracting around 40 attendees every week.
AUT is being praised for promising to include gender-neutral bathroom facilities in new buildings
Protesters gathered in central Auckland on Saturday to call for better access to cannabis for medicinal purposes Protesters called for access to safe and legal medicinal cannabis in New Zealand at the Medical Cannabis March held in central Auckland on Saturday afternoon.
Residents are protesting about a proposed development on public land in Takapuna