Other Voices, Other Rooms
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GUEST WRITER SARAH JANE ROWLAND on a classic British crime movie
12 Mar 2012 | 4 min read
Get Carter (1971) is a British crime thriller, about gangsters, corruption and family loyalty, set against the grime of a declining Northern town. The film marked the directorial debut for Mike Hodges and stars Michael Caine as Jack Carter, a London gangster, who returns to his hometown Newcastle, to violently avenge the death of his brother Frank. Poking around in the criminal... > Read more
Carter Takes a Train
GUEST WRITER JEFFREY PAPAROA HOLMAN goes bird watching
Jeffrey Paparoa Holman | 5 Mar 2012 | 3 min read
Everybody knows about the gannet colony at Cape Kidnappers: it’s famous for sure, but far from most urban centres and off the beaten tourist track. Not so, the less well-known colony at Muriwai Beach close to Auckland: it’s only 40 kms and 35 minutes from Queen Street. We discovered it at the tailfeather end of Northland round trip in December: from Devonport to Te... > Read more
GUEST WRITER NICK SMITH concludes communism is good for something . . .
27 Feb 2012 | 2 min read
Some of the best pop music ever written sprang from the need to sing about the forbidden, particularly by dipping into that well-spring of denied human desire. In western culture, forbidden desire yielded pop classics such as Cyndi Lauper’s She Bop and Turning Japanese by the Vapours, songs that topped the pops despite their implied rude lyrical content. Behind the Iron... > Read more