Black sheep and proud of it
Jane Campion discusses love, Hollywood, and women directors with Harpers & Queen. “Jane Campion seems to have the wrong name. ‘Jane’ is one of those names that belongs to girls who play skipping-rope, while…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
The Price is Right
New York Times feature addresses Peter Jackson’s record-breaking US$20 million salary for Universal’s King Kong remake, deciding he is more than worth the dollars. Jackson, with his collaborative team of Fran Walsh and Phillippa…
Gracious in their Success
As their compatriots continue to climb the ranks in Hollywood think Nicole Kidman, Geoffrey Rush, Naomi Watts, and Hugh Jackman the Australian public has decided to toss a few honorary countrymen back…
Salty tales for stay-at-homes
Voyaging the Pacific, Miles Horden’s account of sailing between his native NZ and Patagonia, reviewed in Japan’s Daily Yomiuri. “Miles Horden’s book … is a cracking good yarn, mainly because he is such a…
“Dark fairytale” played out on the edge
Gaylene Preston and Rachael Blake NZ director and Australian star of Perfect Strangers speak to the Age about filming on the South Island’s rugged West Coast. Preston used the sense of…
Salt of the edge
In wake of the latest Booker Prize controversy – in which winner, DBC Pierre, announced his prize money would be used to pay off $200,000 in drug debts – the New York Times looks…
AllOver UpOverDownUnder
Waikato University film graduate, Hadyn Butler, won both the best film and audience award at the annual UpOverDownUnder Antipodean Festival in London this year. His entry – Fresh – looks at the quintessential OE…
Perfect Strangers
Sam Neill, Rachel Blake (Lantana) and Joel Toebeck star in Gaylene Preston’s genre-bending twisted-tale of a pick up gone wrong on the South Island’s rugged West Coast or, “chick flick – deconstructed … subversion…
Let’s Talk About Sex
“Jane Campion has made an incredibly sexy movie, and she knows it.” Further cinematic exploration along the edge of the erotic, In the Cut debuted at September’s Toronto Film Festival, stirring up as much…
Littler fish to fry
Fresh from US horror flick The Ring and Bollywood musical Bride and Prejudice, Kiwi actor Martin Henderson is to star alongside Cate Blanchett in the Australian film, Little Fish. Set in Sydney’s ‘Little Saigon’…
A star is Bourne
NZ actor Karl Urban, currently galloping across screens as Eomer in the LotR trilogy, will next appear in two major Hollywood sequels for cult sci-fi / horror flick, Pitch Black, and as Matt Damon’s…
Not-so-cheap seats
LotR fans from Japan to Canada have been lining up to sponsor seats at Wellington’s Embassy Theatre, currently being refurbished in preparation for the world premiere of The Return of the King. 613 of…
Tamahori’s triple-X factor
Lee Tamahori is going from Bond to Bond-inspired as the new director of xXx. The second instalment in the lucrative franchise in which Ice Cube replaces Vin Diesel as the titular extreme athlete-turned-secret…
Watching Wildlife World-Leaders
Kiwi production company NHNZ scooped three awards at the 2003 NaturVision wildlife film festival held in Munich, Germany. The Case of the Baby-Faced Assassin (above) a documentary on Australia’s nocturnal carnivorous marsupial,…
Finely sculpted prose
Michael Dunn’s New Zealand Sculpture: A History praised as “a fine production … readable and informative” in Art Monthly Australia‘s book review issue. Dunn’s comprehensive historical overview is the first of its kind published…
Making the cut, taking a break
Jane Campion has been welcomed back by cinema critics and audiences after a 4 year break between films, with her harrowing thriller/love story, In the Cut. USA Today describes the film as…
Nu-Zealand metal hits the spott
Kiwi nu-metallers, Blindspott, reviewed in NSTP after performing before 45,000 fans in Indonesia. “In a frenzy of tattoos, studs and machismo, six huge, six-foot blokes from NZ exploded onto the … stage like a…
In the frame … again
Janet Frame was again shortlisted for the Nobel Prize for Literature for a second time, despite making the Swedish Academy’s top five finalists and being picked to win by one of the country’s…
Making Hollywood inroads
NZ actor Martin Csokas (Rain, Shortland Street, XXX) is in the running for the lead role in Ridley’s Scott’s next film, Kingdom of Heaven. The epic period drama centres on a young peasant-turned-knight who…
No worries for Wunderkid
Dunedin-born baritone, Jonathan Lemalu, is soon to make his Royal Opera House debut as Zoroastro in Handel’s Orlando. Described by the Guardian as “ the next Bryn Terfel,” his career has skyrocketed since graduating…
Sweet as
NZ soprano Hayley Westenra is the voice behind the fastest selling debut classical record of all time in UK history. Pure has outstripped albums by Pavarotti, Charlotte Church and Andrea Bocelli, with nearly 20,000…
Amazing win
New Zealand Edged Phil Keoghan (with wife Louise, above) as host was among the Emmy winners for his role in The Amazing Race, the Jerry Bruckheimer produced reality show that picked up…
Watt’s Up Jackson?
Peter Jackson has reportedly asked Australian actress Naomi Watts (Mulholland Drive, The Ring) to play the female lead in King Kong, which begins shooting in Wellington this November.
Rings Exhibition Lord of Museum Toll-Gates
The Lord of the Rings exhibition opened at London’s Science Museum in September, and has already proven to be the most successful show in the institution’s history. Developed and presented by Te Papa, over 14,000…
Glass master #2
NZ glass artist, Luke Jacomb, is turning heads in Seattle with his pioneering use of photosensitive glass. While the product itself was invented during WW2, Jacomb is believed to be the first artist to…
![You Make Me Feel I’m [Not] Really There](/wp-content/themes/boilerplate/post-images/jacqueline_fraser_biennale.jpg)
You Make Me Feel I’m [Not] Really There
NZ’s Jacqueline Fraser has made the shortlist for the inaugural Artes Mundi (the Wales International Visual Art Prize), which at £40,000, is the largest award made to an individual artist in the…
He is: Looking Edge-ward for Inspiration
This year’s recipient of Australia’s $20,000 Dobell Prize for drawing, Aida Tomescu cites a work by Colin McCahon as the inspiration behind her winning piece, Negru III and Negru IV. “It triggered a series…
Multi-layered myth-making
Japan Times review places Niki Caro’s Whale Rider alongside Once Were Warriors and The Piano as one of the pivotal moments in NZ cinema. “…Caro presents myth both as a connection with a…
Twisted sister
NZ artist, Anne Shelton, featured in Vancouver’s annual gallery-crawl, Swarm described as “for many … the only gallery-going to be accomplished all year.” Shelton’s eerie photographic diptychs portray the scenes of actual murders:…
A New Kind of Filmmaking: Blockbuster with Brains
Anticipating the release of Return of the King, NYT film critic Elvis Mitchell singles out the breezy braininess of Peter Jackson’s craft for exemplary praise: “Mr. Jackson has been carefully applying layers of emotional…
Illness in body, not in mind
In reviewing The Selected Letters of D.H Lawrence, Straits Times writer Richard Lim refers to Katherine Mansfield who, like Lawrence, suffered and eventually died from tuberculosis. Said Mansfield of her illness, “…even my present…
Crimewatch goes global
NZ tourists Olive and Graeme Reed have provided Scottish police with crucial evidence in one of the world’s biggest ever art thefts. The couple used their digital camera to snap shots of the robbers…
Brian Bows Out
BBC stalwart, Brian Perkins, has resigned from his post at Radio 4, ending a news-reading career spanning 4 decades. The Guardian describes the resignation of NZ-born broadcaster as a loss: “Perkins’ voice has come…
International Man of History
C.K Stead is one of the “international sensations” lined up for the Banff-Calgary International Writers Festival in Canada. The Secret History of Modernism author will join E. Annie Proulx, Jasper Fforde, Joan London, and…
Move over Norah
Guardian critic has an “utterly magical” experience watching Bic Runga perform live in London. ” she is desperately beautiful and has a…
“Kiwi Babe-magnet” Gets Top Billing
New Zealander Zane Lowe is to host one of Britain’s highest rating shows – the evening slot on BBC‘s Radio One. Radio One controller Andy Parfitt: “Zane is one of the most exciting presenters…
Big McCahon: harbinger of art globalisation
In a substantial feature, ‘Spreading the word’, in international art world standard, ArtForum, Thomas Crow talks to Stedelijk Museum curator Marja Bloem about the growing international reputation of Colin McCahon. Crow urges globalisation in…
Art-attack
September’s Art Monthly Australia includes celebratory reviews of Michael Stevenson’s This is the Trekka exhibit at the Venice Biennale, and the Stedelijk Museum’s Colin McCahon retrospective, currently showing in Melbourne. Louise Tegart on Stevenson:…
Glass Master #1
Wanganui artist David Murray has won Australia’s prestigious Runamok Prize for Contemporary Glass Art for 2003 for his work entitled ‘Gatherer’.
Being Beryl Fletcher: the life of a “feminist firebrand.”
NZ author, Beryl Fletcher, was a guest speaker at the Melboune Writers Festival in August. Fletcher’s latest work – The House at Karamu – is a personal memoir, which “attempts to map the identity…
Kiwi Car Culture Laps Venice
NZ’s representative at the Venice Biennale – Michael Stevenson – praised in Time Pacific for his “finely calibrated sense of irony.” Stevenson’s main installation – ‘This is the Trekka’ – places NZ’s Cold War…
World-first opera band
NZEdged tenor Geoff Sewell (2nd from L, above) and his London-based opera band Amici Forever have signed a record-breaking six million pound recording deal. Their first album is to be released in the UK…
Scoop: the hard news
Wellington independent new-media news agency Scoop again makes international headlines for its principled media coverage. The Guardian applauds the “fiercely independent news agency’s” boldness during the recent Iraq war: “For several months, Scoop…
Clarke serves up a winner
Kiwi comedian and trans-Tasman icon, John Clarke, talks about his latest book, The Tournament. Clarke admits that his satirical account of a tennis tournament played by artistic and academic legends of the 20th century…
Brake Continues to be Benchmark
Australian photojournalist Paul Blackmore is compared to late great NZ photographer, Brian Brake, in a review by the Herald. Blackmore’s Waters images are reminiscent of Brake’s Monsoon series – “one of the most successful…
Behind Every Great Woman…
NZ-born producer, Linda McDougall, interviewed in the Sunday Times about her Channel 4 documentary, Married to Maggie: Denis Thatcher’s Story. McDougall collated interviews with the former British PM and her late husband – many…
Here’s to you Ms Hunter
Rachel Hunter subject of a Sky One documentary and two-part interview with The Sun in early August. She describes the documentary as an attempt to “draw a line under the whole Rod thing” and…
Wellington wordsmiths mash it up
Wellington authors Damien Wilkins and Elizabeth Knox have been nominated for the 2004 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Their novels, Chemistry and Billie’s Kiss, are both in the running for a NZ$196,000 prize,…
The D4: luring the young and hip
The sounds of Kiwi band The D4 are being used in an attempt to modernise the game of baseball in the US. Videos of The D4 and fellow rockers The Donnas and The Ataris…
Down Under Cowboy
NZ-born Keith Urban has been dubbed the new face of country music in the US. With his chiselled good looks, tattoos, and relatively loose jeans, Urban is doing for c&w blokes what Shania Twain…
Paramount Acquires Antipodean Direction
Andrew Dominick – the NZ-born director behind hit Aussie film Chopper – is soon to make his mark on the US movie scene. Dominick has been signed to develop and direct The Demolished Man…
Edge Meets Fringe
Kiwi comedy act, Flight of the Conchords, was dubbed the “unlikely hit” of this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival by the Guardian, and narrowly missed out on the event’s prestigious top award. The satirical folk…
Ka-Pai
Keisha Castle-Hughes continues to win over critics with her star-turn as Pai in Whale Rider. USA Today calls her “the discovery of the summer,” and the Miami Herald hails her performance as “the…
The Name Game
NZ pop-art exponent, Billy Apple (nee Barry George Bates,) listed alongside Odd Nerdrum, Hercules Fisherman, and Seymour Likely as one of the “unbeatable names in the art world.” Buy Billy Apple in the…
Goodshirt. Good music.
“Since blowing in from their native New Zealand last year with three hits (“Sophie”, “Blowing Dirt” and “Place to Be”), Goodshirt has emerged as one of our Antipodean cousins to watch. Unlike their countrymen…
Pure class
Promoting her international debut release on Decca, (the world’s largest classical label) prodigious Christchurch singing talent 16-yr old Hayley Westenra continues to charm. The album mixes Westenra’s sonorous voice with classical crossover pieces, choral,…
