Sculptured Meaning
At Timaru’s Phar Lap Raceway, a bronze statue of the famed Big Red and his regular jockey, Jim Pike takes pride of place. Today, the South Island city is making full use of the…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Albert Lit Up
Auckland’s 11th annual three-day Chinese Lantern Festival was held in February at Albert Park and featured performances by one of Shanghai’s top music ensembles Moon, Beijing-based Mongolian folk rock group Hanggai and rolling lantern…
Kerretta play SXSW
Auckland three-piece Kerretta make their US debut in March with a show at this year’s SXSW, the festival also marking the release of their debut album, Vilayer. Drawing from influences that seem to…
Missing the Boat
“New Zealand was a 1980s-era beacon of economic reform and rising prosperity,” writes Luke Malpass, an analyst in the New Zealand policy unit of the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney. In an article…
Thinking Outside the Ball
“As I tumbled down the mountainside in a gigantic beach ball filled with water, feeling somewhat like I was in a washing machine, it occurred to me that there had to be…
Seriously moving
Choreographer Neil Ieremia’s contemporary dance group Black Grace’s Gathering Clouds performance in February at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre is reviewed in the New Jersey State Ledger. Reviewer Robert Johnson writes: “Black Grace takes its dancing…
Referendum in Sight
New Zealand is due to hold an election referendum in 2011 to enable the population to decide between using AV or the current ‘first-past-the-post’ system. Ken Ritchie, the chief executive of Britain’s Electoral Reform…
Get Your Jet Pack Now
Inventor Glenn Martin’s jet pack will soon be commercially produced at an undisclosed site in New Zealand having finally secured sufficient investment. The 200 horsepower dual-propeller packs are the brainchild of Martin who unveiled his…
Outsider Made Happy
New Zealand-raised Louise Chunn, Psychologies magazine’s new editor, “is an outsider who made it” according to the Guardian’s Stephen Brook. After stints at, among others, Elle, the Guardian, Vogue, InStyle and Good…
Queenstown’s Quiet Side
The Sydney Morning Herald’s Sarah Maguire visits “adrenalin-central”, but goes against-the-grain with a laid-back luxurious holiday. “Being a full-time working mother puts adrenalin into the system daily, so I don’t need that…
Science for a change
Kumeu neuroscientist and author of The Winner’s Bible Dr Kerry Spackman shares his day, and his work, as part of the Guardian’s Nine to Five series, beginning with a run, which for Spackman is…
Short film revolution
“Could 2010 be the year that New Zealand short filmmakers take over the world?” asks Indie Wire’s Kim Adelman. “The year began promisingly as Mark Albiston and Louis Sutherland’s The Six Dollar Fifty Man…
Seeking an Identity
New Zealand pinot noir has come a long way over the past 10 years, continuing to improve each year, but because the grape is a newcomer to this country, a group of New York-based…
Lending a Hand
Former New Zealand All Black Wellington-born Filo Tiatia, 38, now a back-row forward and coach with the Ospreys rugby region in Wales, is backing a campaign to save Swansea’s Tennis Centre from closure. He…
Debut in Dayton
Pianist Justin Bird, 25, New Zealand’s young musician of the year in 2002, recently played a solo concert at Shiloh Church in Dayton, Ohio as part of the city’s final Soirees Musicales Piano Series….
Graceful turns with clouds
Contemporary dance company Black Grace is touring the US making their debut at Princeton University’s McCarter Theatre in late February, performing their signature work “Minoi” and their latest work “Gathering Clouds”. One…
For the In-crowd in NY
“It’s rare to see people walk out of a fashion show, but that is indeed what happened at Rebecca Taylor — but only because the Salon tent in Bryant Park [at New…
Delightfully Relaxing
On board Russell’s new 46m-long catamaran Ipipiri, which offers overnight cruises around the Bay of Islands, The Sydney Morning Herald’s Rob McFarland learns about the town’s colourful past. “If you’d visited the…
Memories of plasma
The Lovely Bones director Peter Jackson “should forswear sugar next time and reintroduce himself to plasma, brain matter, puke, shit and intestines; all the elements that gave his earlier, sicker, funnier films their kick”,…
Way of life applauded
Hawkes Bay couple Tom and Barbara Burstyn’s documentary This Way of Life about a Maori family living a subsistence lifestyle has screened at the Berlin Film Festival to full houses and a Jury…
Attention to Change
Former prime minister Helen Clark, now head of the United Nation’s Development Agency, was recently at Sydney’s Lowy Institute calling for climate change to be put at the centre of international development strategies. In…
Cattle by Numbers
New Zealanders are now outnumbered by 5.8 million dairy cattle according to Statistics New Zealand’s latest agricultural production survey. New Zealand has a human population of 4.3 million. The number of sheep in the…
Walker’s inspiration
Karen Walker combined The Sound of Music with Bob Dylan and then threw in a snazzy sunglasses to create a collection dubbed “Sun Gods” at this year’s New York Fashion Week. Whether it’s…
Lauded for a lifetime
Soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa will be presented with a lifetime achievement award at the 11th annual Classical Brits to be held at the Royal Albert Hall on May 13. Dame Kiri joins a…
Smokin’ in the US
Singer/songwriter Gin Wigmore makes her US debut in March playing a selection of southern tour dates with US band Citizen Cope. Auckland-born Wigmore, 23, will release her first full-length, Holy Smoke, March 16 via…
Sounds of old and new
The New Zealand String Quartet recently performed a programme entitled “East Meets West” at Ithaca College’s Ford Hall. The programme featured music by Beethoven, Shostakovich and contemporary Chinese, Japanese and Cambodian composers. Quartet member…
Unique Fine Dining
Pipis, paua, tuatua, feijoas, kumara, cervena, puha and horipito are just some of the unfamiliar items found on the menu in New Zealand restaurants, Winsor Dobbins of The Sydney Morning Herald discovers….
Mile Win for Willis
Lower Hutt-born middle distance runner Nick Willis, 27, currently based in Michigan, has won the mile run at the 15th Boston Indoor Games. Willis crossed the finish line in a world leading time of…
On the anchor stone
“There’s a flock of noisy kakas on my front lawn, quarrelling over some croissants left over from breakfast,” describes The Independent’s Kathy Marks, holidaying on Stewart Island, “a place so remote that…
Whiskey Windfall
From the ice outside Shackleton’s Antarctic hut a team from the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust have found three cases of Chas Mackinlay & Co’s whisky and two containing brandy made by…
To Scrap or not to Scrap
The New Zealand Herald has called for the country’s 108-year-old-flag to be scrapped. Under the banner headline “It’s time for a change”, The New Zealand Herald, the country’s largest circulating daily newspaper, devoted almost its…
Bouncing Success
Christchurch engineer Dr Keith Alexander’s Springfree Trampoline has won the “Children’s Product of the Year” in the largest United States consumer product survey, the Product of the Year Awards. Voted top children’s product by…
Multi-tasking Birds
Two female royal albatrosses at Taiaroa Head Royal Albatross Centre on the Otago Peninsula have successfully incubated a chick, after the father — one of scores to recently leave the Centre — disappeared. “It’s…
Seizing the Spirit
Crowded House are proving popular in the UK as a second concert at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall was added “due to phenomenal demand after tickets for the first night went on sale,” the Express &…
Phoenix Survive Playoff
With Phoenix goal keeper Liam Reddy fending off an attack by Perth in a penalty shootout in front of a record crowd of 25,000 at the Cake Tin, the Wellington team prevailed 4-2 to…
Towards the Moon
Wellington mountain-running and marathon champion Melissa Moon, 40, won the women’s section of New York City’s annual Empire State Building Run-Up, passing 300 runners and ascending 1576 steps to the finish line in 13…
McAlpine Stylish By Design
The international career of Waiuku-born, Elam-educated film designer Andrew McAlpine continues to unfurl in ever-larger circles. McAlpine’s most recently-designed film, An Education (produced by Wellington-born Finola Dwyer) is nominated for Best Picture at…
Gusty But Gourmet
“With more than 300 bars, restaurants and cafes in the city alone, Wellington is certainly not short of options,” recommends Winsor Dobbin for The Sydney Morning Herald. Dobbin explores the best dining…
Weta woos Hollywood
Wellington-based Weta Digital, which was behind the effects work on blockbusters Avatar and District 9, has been nominated for nine Academy Awards; CNET Asia’s Daniel Terdiman says the “accolades may finally make Weta a…
Brown Trout Capital
Mataura River, just outside of Gore, is “the world capital of brown trout” and a “world-class fly-fishing destination”. The Mataura extends for an impressive 140 miles of trout water in the heart…
One and Only
Pauly Fuemana, the man behind the 1995 hit single ‘How Bizarre’, has died, aged 40. Frontman of the band OMC (Otara Millionaires Club), Fuemana’s debut album How Bizarre and its breezy title track topped…
Perfect with Pimms
Worchester Street in Christchurch is the feature promenade in The Age’s ‘Street Smart’ travel section. Christchurch is a walking city and Worcester Street one of its loveliest promenades. Stretching from Canterbury Museum and the…
Getting Stuck In
Rotorua-raised Northampton hooker Dylan Hartley, 23, hopes to play for England in the Six Nations and, according to the Telegraph’s Paul Ackford, “Hartley is a find for England because he plays with a rage that all…
Great Appointment
Former New Zealand Test batsman Mark Greatbatch, 46, has been appointed Black Caps coach joining Mark O’Donnell and Shane Jurgensen on the team’s coaching panel. Greatbatch, who is already on the national selection panel,…
Peter Andre’s flat white
“No one knows exactly where the flat white came from,” ponders Guardian columnist Zoe Williams. “Some people say New Zealand, while others believe it’s an Australian invention.” “Has anybody ever seriously had that conversation?…
Lounging on Air
Air New Zealand is to introduce 22 “Skycouches” — formed out of three economy seats abreast that fold out to create a lie-flat space — in the first 11 rows in the economy cabin…
Barclay a big presence
Auckland actress Emily Barclay, 25, “is in no danger of not being cast” and “right now is one of the hottest new talents in the business — on stage and on screen”, writes The…
Abattoirs maketh the man
Director Martin Campbell is “one of the world’s most revered action directors, twice rescuing the Bond franchise” writes the Guardian’s John Patterson. Now Campbell has returned to Edge of Darkness, the 1980s TV drama…
Beijing Top Spot
Southland sprinter Edward Dawkins, 20, took the men’s individual gold at the Beijing stop of the UCI track cycling World Cup. Dawkins claimed the sprint title with two straight wins against Frenchman Michael D’almeida…
Lonely’s lingerie
Auckland-based label Lonely Hearts has recently released a new lingerie line, Lonely, inspired by vintage corsetry and designed by Aimee McFarlane, Helene Morris and Steve Ferguson. With all bras featuring a Seventies-look soft-cup design,…
Musher Says Hike
Christchurch dog sledder Curt Perano made the list of top mushers for the John Beargrease 150-mile mid-distance sled dog race from Minnesota towns Duluth to Tofte. Perano and his wife, Fleur, began dog sledding…
Campbell’s Big Gun
Hastings-born director Martin Campbell, 66, best known for the 2006 Bond film Casino Royale, has told the Los Angeles Times that “there was nobody else” but Mel Gibson for the role of Boston cop…
Green Hankshake
New Zealand will share its expertise in green technology with India to help the East Asian country produce clean energy and build an eco-friendly transport system. “New Zealand has a competitive advantage in green…
Super scenery
Lochnagar in Otago provided the backdrop for a David Jones fashion shoot featuring Australian super model Miranda Kerr, 26. Kerr made sub-zero sexy, starring in David Jones’ latest winter catalogue dressed in…
Bent to Every Whim
“The beauty of train journeys is that you can appreciate the dominance of New Zealand’s landscape over its inhabitants,” writes The Independent’s Dan Poole post-Tranz Scenic trip down through both islands. “Over…
Part of the whole
New Zealand-born choreographer and video artist Olive Bieringa — who with American Otto Ramstad form the San Francisco-based BodyCartography Project — …
