Heavenly Pop Hits
Morr Music, an independent record label based in Berlin, Germany, has recently released “a double-disc salute to New Zealand’s ever-influential ’80s indie pop scene”. The album, entitled Not Given Lightly – A…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
With breath for peace
Richard Nunns, an authority on Maori traditional instruments or taonga puoro, performed the Gillian Whitehead composed “Hineputehue” at Luther College, Minnesota with the New Zealand String Quartet last month. Dunedin based Whitehead wrote “Hineputehue”…
Out on her own
Annabel Alpers has put New Zealand on the tech-pop map writes Guelph Mercury reviewer Jake O’Connell. Recording as Bachelorette, the Christchurch musician’s first album for the American Drag City label is a pop treatise…
Bully for them
Wellington writers and directors, Sticky Pictures’ Mark Albiston and Louis Sutherland’s short film Six Dollar Fifty Man was awarded a special distinction at the Cannes Film Festival. The pair’s 2007 short film Run was…
They’re Rock n’ Roll
The Flight of the Conchords near the end of their 2009 Spring US tour with a pit stop in Las Vegas, playing at The Joint and reviewed by the local paper, which says the…
Holiday reading
Wellington author and high school teacher Bernard Beckett’s novel Genesis is recommended by American bookseller Roxanne J. Coady on the Women On The Web site, which also includes an excerpt from the first chapter…
Eruption Earns Bafta
Visual effects producer Marie Jones, formerly of Invercargill, has won a Bafta for her special effects work on BBC1’s sci-fi drama Doctor Who in an episode called Fires of Pompeii, as part of London…
Cannes call to arms
From this year’s Cannes Film Festival, director Jane Campion urged her female counterparts — which number only 6 per cent — to “put on their coats of armour” and take on the “old boys’…
Needing Fiction Like Water
Brian Boyd, a distinguished professor of English at the University of Auckland, defends fiction in his new book On the Origin of Stories, which offers an overview and defense of Darwinian literary criticism, though…
Weekend reflections
Grace Cleave, the protagonist of Janet Frame’s 1963 novel Towards Another Summer, is critiqued by columnist and author David Gates in The New York Times’ Sunday Book Review. “Except for David Copperfield, few novels…
Celebrating women
Director Jane Campion, 55, the only woman ever to have won the Palm d’Or award at Cannes for her movie The Piano, is returning to the French film capital with her latest, Bright Star,…
Dunedin’s Sound
“There’s something about the antipodes that irritates Britain,” reckons Chills’ frontman Martin Phillipps, on the phone from Dunedin to the Guardian’s Martin Aston. Phillipps tries to explain why New Zealand’s 1980s music scene, one…
Adieu to a Comedienne
Opera singer Heather Begg, a mezzo-soprano who last month was made a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, has died in New South Wales, aged 76. Begg was the first person…
Flight of fancy
Air New Zealand has launched a raunchy new ad campaign called ‘Nothing to Hide‘ in which eight staff members, including chief executive Rob Fyfe, appear in just body paint. Amid these tough days…
War stories recounted
Bluff-born journalist Peter Arnett was the VIP guest speaker at a recent function to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Caravelle Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). The Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, who filed…
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…
Art with Love
Auckland Art Gallery has been gifted 15 major works of art, including Picasso’s “Femme à la résille (Woman in a hairnet),” at a total of $115 million, the largest ever donation to an Australasian…
Production lift-off
The New Zealand film industry is booming with “local helmers poised to soar again”. Whale Rider director Niki Caro’s The Vintners Luck, in which she reteams with her young Whale Rider star Keisha Castle-Hughes,…
Sound stunts
Cambridge-formed rockers The Datsuns have released their fourth album ‘Head Stunts’, an anagram of the group’s name, in the United States where they are currently on tour. Writer Hannah John wrote at the online…
No Bones About It
Wellington-born actor Karl Urban, 36, is Dr Leonard “Bones” McCoy in director J.J Abrams’ Star Trek and for Urban, “the elephant in the room was to embody DeForest Kelley’s character without falling victim…
Webby Award Success
Wellington-based online accounting software provider Xero and Auckland-based mobile advertising agency The Hyperfactory won eight awards at the 13th Annual Webby Awards in New York. The Hyperfactory dominated the mobile advertising category with six…
Love bites
“Anna Paquin is about to catapult into a rare form of superstardom, the kind in which a television actress becomes an A-list fixture (á la Sarah Jessica Parker)”, writes Cristina Greevan Cuomo for the…
During on NZ best
New Zealander, private arts advisor and curator, Helen Klisser During, who is based in New York and Connecticut, talks to the NYArtsmagazine.com’s D. Dominick Lombardi about New Zealand art. When asked to put New…
Ladyhawke’s in Vogue
Pip Brown aka Ladyhawke, the former-Wellingtonian and undisputed queen of the synthpop revival, is profiled in the April issue of Teen Vogue, as one of “five musical acts who will be in heavy rotate…
Couplets at the Globe
Hokianga-born actor Rawiri Paratene, well-known for his role as Koro Apirana in Niki Caro’s Whale Rider, is Friar Lawrence in a London Shakespeare’s Globe presentation of Romeo and Juliet, the first New Zealander…
Upritchard’s new work
London-based New Zealand artist, Francis Upritchard, 32, launched her new book Every Colour By Itself last week, at a reception held at New Zealand House in London by High Commissioner Derek Leask, hosted by…
Transformed in Sydney
Auckland-based artist Lisa Reihana will consider “what it means to transform the self into another persona”, at an upcoming exhibition entitled Double Take on at the Art Gallery of New South Wales from May…
Painted loneliness
Christchurch-born painter Euan Macleod has won the 2009 Gallipoli Art Prize, a prize valued at $20,000 for Smoke/Pinklandscape/Shovel which portrays the muddy trenches of World War I. Competition judge John McDonald said: “This year,…
Balance in stone
Waitakere sculptor John Edgar’s ‘Ballast’ exhibition, which uses stone collected from various historic Scottish quarries, will be on show as part of the Edinburgh Arts Festival from August 5 through November 30 at the…
Up in the Trees
New Zealand directory company Yellow has built a Tree House Restaurant using only resources listed in its books. The restaurant, described by Lucy Gauntlett of the Los Angeles Times as “a graceful pod that…
Bony buoyancy
Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of Alice Sebold’s best-selling novel The Lovely Bones though “murderous is also optimistic”, headlines USA Today. For all the violence and grief of The Lovely Bones, Jackson believes the movie…
Changing fiction
18 April 2009 – Auckland-based author Witi Ihimaera, 65, is in the process of reworking earlier fiction saying that “as the author grows, so should their stories.” “Writers should be able to transform their…
Ballroom blitz
Professional ballroom dancers Aucklander Erin Boag, 33, and her partner Briton Anton Du Beke who both starred in the successful UK television talent show Strictly Come Dancing, have just completed a documentary for Sky…
Truly popular
Creator of the 1999 New Zealand reality show Popstars Jonathan Dowling, 46, has changed the face of television sparking spinoff TV formats, such as The X Factor, American Idol and Britain’s Got Talent. Though…
Paquin the heroine
On the back of recent success as Sookie Starkhouse in vampire series True Blood, New Zealand Golden Globe winner Anna Paquin turns her talents to a made for television film taking the lead role…
Professionally talking
The Flight of the Conchords are touring the United States donning “unwieldy” robot costumes and “playfully insulting” theirenthusiastic heckling audiences. At New York City’s Radio City Music Hall by the end of Too Many…
Parisian Hang-Ups
Phillipa ‘Pip’ Brown, 30, that’s Ladyhawke to her fans, is interviewed in Paris, where outside the French capital’s “cavernous Nouveau Casino venue, the line of ticketless opportunists snaking into the fading light speaks for…
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…
Morrison’s future roles
The best example and a “notable exception” of a “Native … living in the future quite comfortably, particularly in sci-fi movies” would be Temuera Morrison, writes Peterborough Examiner columnist and award-winning Ojibwa author Drew…
Return to the Overlooked
Now Sydney-based, New Zealand photographer Rebecca Wiig, 27, has documented the city’s RSL clubs for an exhibition of 26 photographs called ‘If These Walls Could Talk’ held at Darlinghurst’s Tap Gallery. She began shooting…
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…
Fish over sea
Eighty-four goldfish flew over the Tasman Sea on March 21 as part of the New Zealand-wide One Day Sculpture series of temporary public art works, this conceived by Italian artist Paola Pivi entitled…
Sixties renewal
Auckland-based fashion designer Kate Sylvester and her partner Wayne Conway chose New Zealand architect Belinda George to design the renovations to their 1960s Westmere home, remaining true to that decade’s form, combining new with…
Home sweet home
“The time has come to learn from Down Under,” where homes have sustainable features “light years ahead of the curve,” are “modestly scaled and unpretentious, employ an original aesthetic language, and without fail, offer…
Island Choreography
Dance troupe Black Grace are in Guam performing a series of workshops in local schools and at the Sheraton Laguna Guam Resort for an audience at a gala dinner. Black Grace was founded in…
Dark Past Revisited
New Zealand-born Zak Feaunati, a former Samoan international rugby player, has been selected to play All Black legend Jonah Lomu in the upcoming film The Human Factor. The film includes the Springboks’ victory over…
Slave-driven
Former Xena: Warrior Princess star Lucy Lawless has been cast in the new action series Spartacus: Blood and Sand as Lucretia, who with her husband Batiatus own a gladiator camp called the Ludus. The…
Writing from abroad
New Zealand-born, Bryan Gould’s latest column for The Guardian Newspaper identifies governments as the only organisations in a position to take the necessary long-term approach needed to stimulate the global economy and counter the…
Advocating radical change
A “ground-breaking” report has been developed by the United Kingdom’s Sustainable Development Commission (SDC), an expert watchdog group chaired by Jonathan Porritt, the son of New Zealand Olympian and 11th Governor General Arthur…
Musiq Makers Win
R&B group Nesian Mystik have won the “Best Kiwi” category at the Australian MTV Awards on March 27. The four other New Zealand acts nominated were: Ladyhawke, Cut Off Your Hands, P-Money and Goodnight…
Particles in Motion
Fonterra’s latest foray into “smart” water “Whole”, is advertised in a continuous 650-frame shot leaping and transforming from brains to bridges to bananas and was created as a joint project by Auckland-based animation studio…
Love, Hope and Light
Whangarei-born, country music superstar Keith Urban, 41, is interviewed by The New York Times’ Alan Light about his latest album, ‘Defying Gravity’ — his first since his admission to the Betty Ford Center. Urban,…
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…
Cold Comparisons
Ladyhawke, who this month made her New York debut at the Bowery Ballroom and Studio B, said in an interview with The Village Voice, that New Zealand “is like being in Iceland, or something. …
Barrier’s best bachs
The improvisational shacks of the Great Barrier Island have inspired a new breed of bachs, collecting rainfall for water treating waste for irrigation, harnessing the sun with solar panels, and generally creating a space…
Cold omparisons
Ladyhawke, who this month made her New York debut at the Bowery Ballroom and Studio B, said in an interview with The Village Voice, that New Zealand “is like being in Iceland, or something….
