One party well worth skipping
AUCKLAND is in for a transAtlantic hip-hop gig in March, when American producer Kid Ink and British Rapper Tinie Tempah arrive for a one-off show. The musicians are set to perform at Auckland’s Logan Campbell Centre on March 1.
Kid Ink shot to fame last year with his single Promise, featuring Fetty Wap, which spent 14 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 and clocked over 100 million views on YouTube. He’s also known for his collaboration track Show Me with Chris Brown, and has worked with fellow big name rappers Ty Dolla Sign and Tyga.
Award-winning, London-based rapper Tinie Tempah is known for hits like Pass Out, Written in the Stars and Trampoline.
He is due to release his third studio album Youth in January. Tickets to the Kid Ink and Tinie Tempah show go on sale on Tuesday (December 20) at 9am at Just The Ticket NZ.
Rhythm and Alps has confirmed 60 acts for the two-day New Year festival on Robrosa Station in the Cardrona Valley, including the popular former Dunedin band Six60.
Six60 formed in Dunedin in 2008 and is responsible for such hits as Rise Up 2.0, Don’t Forget Your Roots and Someone to Be Around.
Six60 will ring in 2017 on the Alpine Arena main stage with Kiwi electronic pioneers Pitch Black, who celebrate the 20th anniversary of their first gig on December 31.
Producer Devin Abrams, formerly of Shapeshifter, brings his award-winning solo project Pacific Heights to the festival on Friday, December 30.
The hugely popular alternative metal band Devilskin, whose new album rocketed straight to the top of the Kiwi charts last month, will also command the stage on the Friday night.
The festival also has an strong international flavour, with Los Angeles-based rapper Dante Givens (Akil the MC) among the overseas acts signed to appear. He is the founding member of legendary hip hop group Jurassic 5, which formed in 1993 and split in 2007.
Festival director Alex Turnbull said the lineup was one of the event’s most diverse to date. Office Christmas Party (R16) Starring Jason Bateman, Jennifer Aniston, T.J. Miller Directed by Will Speck and Josh Gordon 105 mins JASON Bateman and Jennifer Aniston are in another comedy together, and so you can pretty much guess what that means – he’ll sleepwalk through being the everyman emotional core of the pic, and she’ll be some version of ALBI & the Wolves have built up incredible momentum in the past 18 months, playing more than 200 live shows, including the Auckland and Wellington Folk Festivals. They – Chris Dent aka Albi, Pascal Roggen and Michael Young – have released both an EP and single with video, and racked up more than 28,000 listens on Soundcloud alone. What prompted your move to Auckland in 2014 and where did you originally hail from?
Originally, I was from a small town called Maungaturoto and that was where I did most of my growing up. It’s a small, but very proactive town about an hourand-a-half north of Auckland and I loved my time there. After that, I did move to Auckland for two years and I tried a year in Wellington but, due to a lot of reasons, I hadn’t achieved a huge amount over that time. So when I mainstream-friendly outrageous.
They’re but two of the core cast of Office Christmas Party, which at times resembles a Frankenstein’s hybrid between their prior generic comedy fare like Horrible Bosses and sprawling ensemble-driven multi-narratives in the vein of Love Actually or New Year’s Eve.
As the title suggests, Office Christmas Party relies on a got the opportunity to fill a space in a beautiful house in Mt Eden, which is still my residence today, I moved back to seriously act on my plans of becoming a full-time musician.
I presume the name of the band is inspired by the fact you are a proud albino, but why the Wolves?
Well yes, it most definitely is – and the Wolves? Well, Wolves are a pretty rad animal aren’t they? But in all seriousness, naming your band can be hard so we were happy when we found that as it just felt right.
What happened to Matt threadbare comedy trope – the crazy, out-of-control party - and comedians stranded midway between cameos and true supporting roles (T.J. Miller, Kate McKinnon, Vanessa Bayer, Rob Corddry).
No-one really steps up to own proceedings, let alone the writers, and as a consequence the film drifts along from familiar beat to familiar beat without anyone giving the 100 per cent needed to elevate this beyond a simply functional comedy.
In fact, it falls to Courtney B. Vance (deserving Emmy-winner Owens, whomI gather was the catalyst behind connecting you with Pascal and Michael?
Unfortunately, we had creative and personal differences and that’s that, but he definitely knew Pascal. Matt had convinced him to play in a couple of previous bands and luckily for Michael and I, he was able to convince him to play with us too. Michael and I had been in the same circuit for a long time, since I was a boy really, and we had played a couple of shows together. For this ensemble, he put down the mandolin and the guitar and picked up the double bass, something tells me he hasn’t as Johnny Cochran in The People v. OJ Simpson) to ramp things up, playing against type as a straightlaced dude who – wait for it – loses his s... when – hold on – he gets a faceful of cocaine due to a mishap with a snow machine.
Like many a real office Christmas, you’d be correct to go into this film with low expectations.
They’ll eventually be met – but no more – with a few chuckles, even a laugh along the way, but the overall experience won’t be anything you’ll particularly care to remember the following day.