Kiwi Thesps Impress
Sam Neill charmed the British film press while promoting his latest UK release, Little Fish. Guardian: “In the Q&A session that followed , his performance as Sam Neill was as compelling as…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Guardian handles the jandal
The Guardian pays tribute to the jandal/thong/flip flop – a welcome arrival in Britain given the recent heatwave. A brief history of the humble rubber shoe attributes its commercial origins to the NZ Jandal,…
Aotearoa meets Sao Paulo
Six NZ musicians spent three weeks in Sao Paulo, Brazil, as part of the Bacardi B-Live OE, organised by Bacardi and Wellington’s Loop Recordings. P Digsss (Shapeshifter), Barnaby Weir (Black Seeds, Fly My…
Once the Muss, always the Muss
Temuera Morrison talks to Japan’s CrissCross News about the NZ film industry, his plans for the future, and his now legendary portrayal of Jake Heke in Once Were Warriors. “I was in Sweden signing…
Chills still thrill
Flying Nun legends the Chills are the unlikely inspiration behind up-and-coming Swedish band Peter, Bjorn and John. The indiepop trio pay tribute to Dunedin’s finest with a song titled The Chills, on their third…
Million dollar baby
An entrepreneurial NZ website is selling words for SUS1 each in a bid to create a one-of-a-kind multi-authored novel. The brains behind anovelmillion.com is Australian born Aditya Kesarcodi-Watson. “Anybody is capable of buying…
Henderson plumbs personal landscape
Peninsula, the latest play from NZ writer Gary Henderson, is applauded in Brisbane’s Courier Mail. Commissioned by the Christchurch Arts Festival, the play was inspired by Henderson’s own experience growing up in Duvauchelle Bay,…
Itinerant observer
Groundbreaking NZ anthropologist, Michael Jackson, currently Visiting Professor in World Religions at Harvard Divinity School, has released his memoirs. Titled The Accidental Anthropologist, the book details his nomadic lifestyle since leaving NZ as…
A floating world
Titirangi’s Brake House features in architecture magazine Monument’s inaugural guide to Australasia’s seminal residential projects. Designed by Auckland architect Ron Sang, the Japanese-inspired house was built for world-famous NZ photojournalist Brian Brake in 1976….
When Denzel met Peter
Oscar winning actor Denzel Washington made a fleeting visit to Wellington in June to discuss a possible film project with Peter Jackson. According to Wellington’s Dominion Post, Washington wants Jackson’s Weta Workshop and Weta…
Epic in More Ways than One
NZ director Vincent Ward relates the harrowing experience of filming River Queen in a candid interview with the Sydney Morning Herald. Weather, illness and car crashes aside, it was lead actress Samantha Morton who…
Indigenous Art in the Spotlight
The Musée du Quai Branly, French President Jacques Chirac’s long-awaited €235.2 million shrine to indigenous art, was officially inaugurated on June 21 in Paris. The Quai Branly boasts a collection of 300,000 works from Africa, Asia, Oceania…
From Screen to Stage, Henderson Impresses
Kiwi actor Martin Henderson is currently walking the boards at London’s Apollo Theatre with a lead role in Sam Shepard’s Fool For Love. Henderson stars alongside American actress Juliet Lewis (Natural Born Killers) in…
Another Webby for Edge
Exponents Tourism NZ’s consumer website newzealand.com, designed by Shift, has won the Webby award for best tourism website in the world for a second time. Known as the Oscars of the internet,…
Card Sharks Revealed
Swimming with the Devil Fish, Des Wilson’s timely history of the British poker scene, gets a great review in the Guardian. “While the US market is saturated with poker manuals and ghosted autobiographies, the…
A Place in the Sun
Granta editor, Ian Jack, writes about Katherine Mansfield’s convalescence in Menton for the Guardian. Menton, a resort town on the French Riviera, was renowned for its curative sea air in the early 20th century….
Big fish, little fish
Bic Runga talks about her new album, Birds, her “secret little country,” and being a big fish in a small pond in The Guardian. The biggest selling solo artist of all time in NZ,…
Alternative History 101
Historian Gavin Menzies recently visited NZ to promote his controversial bestseller 1421. One of the most contentious theories in the book is that NZ was mapped and settled by Chinese 3o0 years before…
Clarke on Clarke
Australian news magazine, The Bulletin, featured a lengthy interview with John Clarke in its May 23 edition. The NZ-born wry humourist, who has lived across the Tasman for the last 30 years, is described…
Baigent Down But Not Out
The Guardian interviews NZ born writer and historian Michael Baigent – “the man who sued Dan Brown and lost.” Baigent co-authored The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail with Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln….
Weldon in Class and on Screen
NZ raised novelist Fay Weldon has signed on to teach creative writing at Brunel University, as part of the UK institution’s new MA course. The prolific writer of bestsellers including Puff Ball, Praxis and…
Coming of age Keisha
Castle-Hughes is to star alongside Toni Collette in the upcoming Australian black comedy Hey, Hey, It’s Esther Blueburger. Castle-Hughes plays a 13-year-old Jewish girl struggling to fit in both at school and at…
Vampires invade Auckland
Vampire film 30 Days of Night is the latest Hollywood blockbuster to be filmed in NZ. Based on a horror comic book series, 30 Days of Night is set in Alaska where locals…
An Outside View
The latest book by acclaimed British author, Jenny Diski – On Trying to Keep Still – opens with her visit to NZ in 2004 for the NZ International Arts Festival’s Writers and Readers Week….
On show in Soho
Out From Down Under and Beyond: an Exhibition of Fine Art from Australia and New Zealand is currently showing at the Agora Gallery in Soho, New York. Helga Windle (pictured) from Buller, West…
Career ready for take off
Departure Lounge, the latest novel by Auckland writer Chad Taylor, has garnered praise abroad for its cool, noir aesthetics. The Sydney Morning Herald calls Taylor “impressive,” while the review by Washington Post senior critic,…
Flux flexes its global muscle
Auckland-based Flux Animation has signed a $US5.7 million contract to work on the eagerly anticipated Singaporean children’s series, Master Raindrop. Flux joins Singapore’s Big Communications and German television company Yoram Gross-EM on…
Starlet with Edge
Kiwi actress Emily Barclay (In My Father’s Den) has the starring role in Suburban Mayhem, an Australian film currently screening at Cannes. A very black comedy, Suburban Mayhem revolves around an amoral young…
Too much too soon?
The release of United 93 – the first Hollywood film about 9/11 – has sparked controversy in the US, as well as further afield in NZ. Directed by Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday,…
Impeccable balancing act
Anna Paquin is back in the news with a spate of new film projects nearing release. A Times profile, reprinted in The Australian, charts her “impeccably navigated career path,” from The Piano to her…
Pride of the Asia-Pacific
Sam Neill is the inaugural subject of Peschardt’s People, a 13-part BBC series hosted by veteran foreign correspondent Michael Peschardt. The series aims to introduce global viewers to “some of the most famous…
Grey Lynn on the silver screen
South Pacific Pictures’ feature Sione’s Wedding has received rave reviews in NZ and Samoa following its February premiere. Written by Oscar Kightley and James Griffin, the comedy revolves around a group of first…
Exhibiting art with Edge
Always at the cutting edge, Wellington’s City Gallery is using an interactive website and podcast in its current exhibition, Patricia Piccinini: In Another Life. An Australian artist, Piccanini is renowned for her sometimes creepy studies of…
Buddha Wild On
The distinctive and original film “Buddha Wild Monk in the Hut” by LA/Christchurch director and actress Anna Wilding (Carpe Diem Films) premiered at the Laemmle Cinema Los Angeles on March 24. Shot in…
No.1 fan turned majority shareholder
Russell Crowe has teamed up with businessman Peter Holmes à Court to buy a 75% share of the South Sydney “Rabbitohs” rugby league club. A lifelong supporter of the Rabbitohs, Crowe has contributed large…
A life in pictures
NZ born artist Derek Ward was the subject of a retrospective exhibition recently staged in Norwich, England. Ward was born in Richmond, NZ, in 1922 and relocated to England with his family aged 7….
Dusty Down Under
Already triple platinum in NZ, Bic Runga’s third album – Birds – is now making waves across the Tasman. The Age: “Dark and majestic… is without a doubt Runga’s best album -…
Out in the Open
An interview with mystery author Anne Perry in the Times inevitably brings up her former life in NZ as Juliet Hulme, one half of the murderous teenage duo portrayed in Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures….
Keoghan Living Large
LA Times interviews Phil Keoghan, the Kiwi host of Emmy Award-winning reality series The Amazing Race. The “savvy NZ native” discusses everything from his lucky break into TV (“there was no degree that you…
Three more for the C.V
Edge artist Julian Dashper continues to make inroads in the US, after his 2001 Fulbright residency at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. His first solo show in New York (at the Esso…
Welcomed to the fold
Wellington band Recloose earned a positive plug in the Hamstead & Highgate after a packed gig at the Jazz CafÈ. Recloose was formed around the Detroit born producer/DJ of the same name,…
Die! Die! Die! in Arizona
Auckland art punk trio Die! Die! Die! forms part of an impressive Australasian contingent heading to this year’s South By Southwest music festival in Arizona. Tipped as one of NZ’s most promising new bands, Die! Die!…
Another lovable monster for Letteri
Weta Digital head Joe Letteri is to be visual effects supervisor on the upcoming children’s feature, The Water Horse. Letteri was part of the Oscar-winning visual effects team for Peter Jackson’s King Kong. Based…
Her mother’s daughter
Linda Carroll, therapist, writer and mother of Courtney Love has written her memoirs, which include an account of the family’s unconventional attempt to live an alternative lifestyle in Nelson and their struggle to deal…
A master of confrontational cinema
The March issue of Inside Film includes a lengthy feature on the latest project by edge writer/director Andrew Niccol – Lord of War. Starring Nicolas Cage and Ethan Hawke, Lords of War is…
Expat angst
Hamilton artist John Hurrell writes about NZ artists living internationally in the February issue of Art Monthly Australia. He discusses last year’s exhibition ‘The expatriates: Frances Hodgkins and Barrie Bates’ in the context…
Keith gets the Grammy
Whangarei-born country music sensation, Keith Urban, has won his first Grammy Award. Urban was named best male country vocal performer ahead of Toby Keith, Willie Nelson, George Jones, Delbert McClinton and Brad Paisley. This…
Hansen Homeward Bound?
MTV Europe’s head, New Zealander Brent Hansen has retired after nearly two decades with the company. Hansen joined MTV in 1987 as a news producer and soared through the ranks to become the President…
Nature’s best
New Zealand enjoyed success at the 2006 Black & White Spider photography awards, with Jason Boa winning third place in the Nature category for “Field Waimate” and Jocelyn Carlin gaining an honourable mention in the same…
No.2 No.1
Toa Fraser’s debut feature No.2 won the World Cinema Audience Award: Dramatic at the 25th Sundance Film Festival in February. ” a humble backyard in Mt. Roskill in the Pacific, on behalf of…
All Features Great and Small
Debate over the effects of big budget US films such as King Kong and the Narnia series being filmed in NZ continues, with most in favour of the Hollywood blockbusters. “The blockbusters have been…
Spotlight on Niki Caro
North Country director Niki Caro was interviewed before a live studio audience by the Guardian’s Sandra Hebron, alongside the star of her film (and new best mate) Charlize Theron. ” was a script…
Whale Rider to North Country
Whale Rider director Niki Caro has officially earned her Hollywood stripes with the release of Warner Brothers’ North Country. Starring Charlize Theron, Sissy Spacek, Frances McDormand and Sean Bean, North Country is a…
Crowe to fly the coop
With Australia Day been and gone the Aussies wonder when NZ born Russell Crowe will officially become one of their own. According to Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, “the country’s most celebrated Kiwi” was confirmed for…
Model of multi-tasking
RH is the host of new US reality TV show Style Me. In an interview with Media Village, she describes the show as “offering real honest and interesting insight into the world of…
NZ has the Edge Online
NewZealand.com, Tourism NZ’s award-winning website, earned further raves in a feature article by Brand Channel. “A ninth annual Webby Award winner, the homepage of NewZealand.com is a vibrant blend of heritage and enterprise, with both tourism and…
