Blog Archives

Huhu Animates the Edible

Huhu Animates the Edible

Auckland animation company Huhu Studios has signed a multi-million dollar deal to produce six all-new direct-to-video episodes of popular children’s show VeggieTales for America’s Big Idea Entertainment studio. Founder and CEO of Huhu Trevor…

New Zealand in Vogue

New Zealand in Vogue

New Zealand is known for its edgy fashion exports such as Kate Sylvester and Zambesi, but a retrospective exhibition on now at Te Papa reveals a lesser known secret: the land of the long…

From Heights in Heels

From Heights in Heels

One of the most sought-after stuntwomen in Hollywood, New Zealander Zoe Bell crashes through glass, slams into book cases and leaps from tall buildings. She has done stunts on more than 2 films and…

Market Prevails

Market Prevails

New Zealand’s stock market, worth a total of around only $48 billion, is one of the world’s best performing this year despite the effects of the Christchurch earthquake, a weak economy and a foreign…

Enough Room for Everyone

Enough Room for Everyone

The New Zealand company behind Toyota people-carriers Spaceships — in the UK now for 18 months — is recommended by the Guardian in a travel feature about campervanning in Britain and mainland Europe. “The…

Relief for Christchurch Residents

Relief for Christchurch Residents

Thousands of Christchurch home owners are breathing a sigh of relief following John Key’s announcement on the future of their properties. Entire suburbs of Christchurch are to be abandoned due to unstable ground following…

Audain’s Professional Legacy

Audain’s Professional Legacy

Thirty years ago this month Auckland-born Olympic middle and long distance athlete Anne Audain accepted $1, for winning a 15km race in Oregon, launching a lucrative road-racing career while forever changing the sport of…

Gillard Makes History

Gillard Makes History

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard is poised to make history on her first official visit to New Zealand this week. Gillard will be the first foreign leader in New Zealand history to address New…

All Blacks: Summer Skills

All Blacks: Summer Skills

Take a look at the All Blacks’ second skills video, this time taking place in a typical Kiwi backyard.

Ash brings business

Ash brings business

New Zealand orchid and salmon suppliers were working overtime after the volcanic eruption beneath Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull glacier caused ash-related delays across the planet. “The phone started ringing hot from the East Coast of North…

Seattle tie tightens

Seattle tie tightens

“The unlikely New Zealand-Sup Pop connection just keeps getting stronger,” writes Anand Balasubrahmanyan for Seattle news site Publicola. “First, the label that once brought you Mudhoney’s Superfuzz/Bigmuff and doom/drone masterpiece, Earth 2, went and…

Oceanic psychedelic goodness

Oceanic psychedelic goodness

The Ruby Suns’ album Fight Softly is reviewed by Will Dean of the Guardian who gives the indie group four stars for their latest effort. Dean concludes: “Like a best-of 2009 mixtape, The Ruby…

Oscar for Kim Sinclair

Oscar for Kim Sinclair

Auckland production designer Kim Sinclair won the Academy Award for Art Direction on Avatar with American colleagues Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg. “Each virtual set had trees and plants that were moveable, like real…

Hooligan comes clean

Hooligan comes clean

Otara MC Karlos Diamond, aka Mr Sicc, who performs at SXSW 2010 in Austin, Texas on March 19, talked to US music site Spinner about his musical influences — including Marvin Gaye, Prince and…

Slump looks likely

Slump looks likely

New Zealand economist Robert Wade, a professor at the London School of Economics, predicts a further slump into global recession in 2010 or 2011. Wade, who made his name analysing East Asia’s economic…

Big Cheers for Danielle

Big Cheers for Danielle

Auckland dancer and Warriors rugby league cheerleader Danielle Miller, 22, has been named Big League’s 2009 Cheergirl of the Year the first time it has been awarded to someone outside NSW or ACT in…

New directions

New directions

Auckland-based playwright Stanley Makuwe, who is originally from Zimbabwe, recently returned to his homeland where his latest production The New Road premiered. The New Road tells the story of Sammy, a Zimbabwean who has…

Wireless lifesavers

Wireless lifesavers

Auckland University scientists have developed the technology to power a wireless heart pump which could eventually be an alternative to heart transplants. Scientists from the University’s Bioengineering Institute, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering…

Preoccupation with Love

Preoccupation with Love

Jane Campion’s Bright Star, which recently opened in New York, won much praise at Cannes, some from unlikely sources. “I’m not really into poetry,” said Quentin Tarantino, who also said he believes Bright Star…

Out With the Old

Out With the Old

Invercargill inventor Grant Ryan, 40, unveiled his YikeBike- an electric 10kg mini penny-farthing for the 21st century- at the Eurobike international trade show in Friedrichshafen, Germany. The Daily Mail’s Paul Harris takes the bike…

Inspired by Wings

Inspired by Wings

New Zealand choreographer and Rambert Dance Company’s artistic director Mark Baldwin is celebrating the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth with The Comedy of Change, a new work inspired by Darwin’s theory of the…

Rising Star

Rising Star

Christchurch-born singer Boh Runga is the “next singer-songwriter to keep your eyes on” according to music site Top40-charts, which goes on to describe LA-based Runga’s latest solo album Right Here as “strongly reflective of…

#109: NZEdege Heroes, Recent Publishing

#109: NZEdege Heroes, Recent Publishing

Edge Message #109 from Brian Sweeney, producer NZEDGE.COM Pictured above: Flight of the Conchords, Anna Paquin, Mils Muliaina, Helen Klisser…

An Amazing Bike Ride

An Amazing Bike Ride

Christchurch-born adventure TV host and producer Phil Keoghan has just completed another ‘Amazing Race’, this time a 3,500 mile coast-to-coast bike ride across the United States to raise funds for Multiple Sclerosis research. He…

Tree Gods Unite

Tree Gods Unite

A ceremony to form a “sister-tree relationship” between Waipoua Forest’s Tane Mahuta and an ancient Japanese cedar tree located on Yakushima Island, a UNESCO World Heritage site, was held this month at the base…

Man of the match

Man of the match

Captain of the Black Caps and Delhi Daredevils player Daniel Vettori, 30, is interviewed by the Hindustan Times about his role as spinner in T20 and his adjustment to the Indian Premier League. “You have to…

Cheap sticks

Cheap sticks

Wellington-based percussion group Strike is in Singapore to play as part of a New Zealand festival. Strike met at Victoria University, when they were mostly playing chamber music, and now are a group of…

Questioning change

Questioning change

New Zealander Bob Rigg has published an extensive analysis of the Obama administration’s initial approach to foreign policy in a paper for the South Asia Strategic Forum, a recently launched thinktank on global geo-political…

Educating Through Dance

Educating Through Dance

Atamira Dance Collective’s production ‘Ngai Tahu 32’ has made its Australian debut, performing in Tasmania’s premier arts festival — Ten Days on the Island 2009 — and is reviewed by Kylie Eastley, writing for…

Top Honours for Bell

Top Honours for Bell

New Zealand dancer Rodney Bell earned an ‘Izzie’ at the 23rd Isadora Duncan Dance Awards in San Francisco last week, for his part in the Axis Dance Company’s ensemble performance ‘To Color Me…

High on the Piste

High on the Piste

Jane Peak is on a remote station in the Southern Alps accessible only by helicopter and “just begging for a beating” in the ski season when the slopes are “covered in fresh, untracked powder”,…

On-screen explosion

On-screen explosion

Wellington director Taika Waititi’s film The Volcano, a follow-up to his 2007 feature Eagle vs Shark, will be distributed by Australian company Transmission Films. The Volcano is inspired by Waititi’s Oscar-nominated short film…

Fondly Remembered

Fondly Remembered

Sir Edmund Hillary is one of 45 individuals remembered in Time magazine’s 2008 ‘Fond Farewell’ tributes. “On May 29, 1953, Hillary, with the help of his Sherpa guide, became the first person to reach…

Clay’s Reading Gift

Clay’s Reading Gift

New Zealand-developed remedial programme Reading Recovery, devised by the late educationalist Dame Marie Clay, is proving successful in the UK with 30,000 British children a year expected to take part by 21. Under the…

Kiwi-Pukapuka Relocate

Kiwi-Pukapuka Relocate

Little Spotted Kiwi, the second rarest kiwi species, have been reintroduced onto Fiordland’s Chalky Island for the first time in a century. Sponsors of the transfer, South Island tour operators Real Journeys, joined iwi…

Beauty in Cold

Beauty in Cold

Winter in New Zealand is captured in seascape images by Independent photographer Hannah Bills, who travelled through Wellington and then south, taking shots in and around Christchurch, “the Oxford of the southern hemisphere.” “Intensely…

Facing New Partnerships

Facing New Partnerships

New Zealand’s population makeup may one day number more Asians than Maori according to a new study called, ‘Asians in New Zealand: Implications of a Changing Demography’, launched in Auckland this month. Authored…

Chip off the Old Block

Chip off the Old Block

Jeremy Coney, as announcer on Sky TV’s ‘Test Match Special’, is “cricket’s answer to the poet and critic Tom Paulin”, according to Guardian sports blogger Rob Bagchi. A guest on TMS for the last 20 years,…

Enigma funds school

Enigma funds school

Though New Zealand tycoon Christopher Chandler keeps a reclusive profile, he has invested $50 million in a business school for students from developing countries in Boston. Chandler, a beekeeper’s son from Matangi who has…

An Intelligence Question

An Intelligence Question

James Flynn, Emeritus Professor of Political Studies at the University of  Otago and moral philosopher, says human intelligence has improved over the last century, rather than declined as was widely thought. “But,” Flynn…

Taylor-made for Shortlives

Taylor-made for Shortlives

Richard Taylor’s animated children’s programme Jane and the Dragon now airs in the US every Sunday afternoon on NBC. Jane and the Dragon is created from drawings so detailed they required even more…

Ancestral Art in UK

Ancestral Art in UK

George Tamihana Nuku, renowned Maori carver and sculptor, is staging his first solo exhibition at the Captain Cook Birthplace Museum in Middlesbrough, UK. Nuku’s exhibition ranges from large carved pieces to traditional Maori weapons, and…

Worthy Splurges and Brilliant Bargains

Worthy Splurges and Brilliant Bargains

Two NZ luxury lodges feature in Tatler’s annual hotel guide for 2008. Otahuna Lodge, Christchurch, and Matakauri Lodge, Queenstown, were named two of the world’s 101 Best Hotels by the British society…

Spoilt for Choice

Spoilt for Choice

An Australian travel guide to NZ’s top 30 lakes covers the length and breadth of Aotearoa, from world-class trout fishing at Lake Turangi, to the “perfectly still bush reflections” at Lake Ianthe, near Mt…

Technology High-fliers

Technology High-fliers

Marketing entrepreneur Andy Lark is the latest New Zealander to land a top job at a leading US technology firm. Lark has been appointed global vice-president of marketing and communications at Dell, one of the world’s…

Saatchi Showdown runner up

Saatchi Showdown runner up

Nelson-born artist Charles Olsen was runner up in the inaugural Saatchi Showdown, an online user-voted art competition run by London’s Saatchi Gallery. Olsen received £750, and priceless media exposure, for…

Tourists Flock to Favourite Destination

Tourists Flock to Favourite Destination

According to new figures released by Statistics NZ a record 2.4 million tourists visited NZ last year – 1.6 per cent more than in 2005. The number was boosted by 903,504 Australian tourists, the most…

Hurricane warning

Hurricane warning

NZ artist Lisa Ferguson is aiming to crack the competitive New York market after a successful period in London. The former graphic designer has already made a strong impression, with Art World News…

Remembrance Made Permanent

Remembrance Made Permanent

The long-awaited NZ war memorial in London’s Hyde Park was officially opened on Remembrance Day, in the presence of Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles, Prince William, Tony Blair and Helen Clark. Described as “striking” by…

All Blacks 7, Opposition 0

All Blacks 7, Opposition 0

The All Blacks remain undefeated in 2006 having secured both Bledisloe and Tri-Nations trophies after a ferocious Eden Park test against Australia on 19 August. The victory puts Graham Henry’s team on the verge of breaking…

The Deal’s Not Just Big, it’s Massive

The Deal’s Not Just Big, it’s Massive

New York based company, Massive Inc, of which Wellingtonian Claudia Batten is a part owner, has been sold to Microsoft for up to $US 400 million. Founded four years ago, Massive Inc pioneered a…

On living legends and future music

On living legends and future music

NZ composer and musicologist Robin Maconie has written a meticulously researched autobiography of the man many believe to be the world’s greatest living composer, German electronic music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Maconie is regarded…

Embracing the positive

Embracing the positive

I left you at the end of my last blog with my being all excited and promising to lighten up. I had the vision then of being able to…

Not Just for Young ‘uns

Not Just for Young ‘uns

MSN writer takes a leaf out of her post-collegiate travelling days and revisits the joy of youth hostels: “I was skeptical, but it turned out to be one of the best decisions we made.” She recommends…

Luna Rendezvous

Luna Rendezvous

New Zealand born, Harvard educated and New York resident Dean Wareham and his band Luna track through Japan promoting their final album Rendevous. “Where the last half of Luna’s career flirted with edgier tempos…

King of the Jungle

King of the Jungle

20-year-old Turanga Merito has assumed the lead role of Simba in the Sydney production of The Lion King, after fellow Kiwi Vincent Harder bowed out for family reasons. The Disney blockbuster draws a minimum…