Muss vs. Hollywood
“It is not just Lord of the Rings that is ushering in a golden age of Kiwi cinema. Everywhere you look, NZers are taking over Tinseltown.” From Peter Jackson, Lee Tamahori and Vincent Ward,…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Rings blitzes box-office
The Two Towers has set new box-office records around the globe, breaking those set by its predecessor last year. The film made $5.2 million on its first day of release in Australia, and
Good clean ball
“Small but perfectly formed.” Lloyd Jones’ The Book of Fame included in SMH‘s tribute to the short novel, or novella. Jones joins the likes of Michael Ondaatje and Jeanette Winterson as one who achieves…
Farewell to Leading Lady
The death of NZ’s acting doyenne Davina Whitehouse has been mourned at home and abroad, with obituaries appearing in The Boston Globe and The Independent. Her prolific career spanned stage, film, and television, and…
Giovanni Intra Remembered
We are diminished to report the death of Giovanni Intra in New York City on December 17th 2002. Giovanni, artist, critic, gallerist went east to stir up the LA art scene and established the gallery, China…
“A Little Madness Helps”
In an NYT essay Peter Jackson describes the 14 months it took to film the Rings trilogy as a “protracted bout of willful madness with seven units shooting multiple elements simultaneously for the…
Co-host Clark
Helen Clark appeared on America’s top-rating Today Show to promote an upcoming Discovery Channel program on NZ. New Zealand: The Royal Tour sees the PM take American presenter Peter Greenberg on a guided tour…
Intellectual Grand Slam
John Clarke – the NZ comedian who “rates as a national institution” across the Tasman – delights critics with his latest book, The Tournament. A blistering satire, The Tournament involves a fictitious tennis contest…
Frodo Air
An Air NZ Boeing 747 has become the latest (and largest) Lord of the Rings billboard. The plane sports a 36m image of the hobbit leads down either side of its fuselage. The advertising is part…
Lord of FX
Wired profiles Stephen Regelous, the Wellingtonian behind The Two Towers‘ jaw-dropping battle scenes. Regelous created a program – Massive – which would supply “smart crowds” to supplement the on-screen action. Each agent has an individual brain, with…
“The Prospero of NZ letters”
“Take a Las Vegas gambling magnate who believes in the usefulness of books, add a distinguished poet and a betting pool of natural talent. What do you get? A literary renaissance that has floored…
Big Tex Inspiration
Leading NZ artist Julian Dashper is currently on show at the Campbelltown City Bicentennial Art Gallery. The varied and interactive works (created during his residency at the Chinati Foundation in Texas) include a reproduction…
Arnett phones home
“So Broadcast News meets Armageddon. It’s a rilly big show!” Telefilm Live From Baghdad – based on Robert Wiener’s memoir of CNN’s involvement in the Gulf War – aired on US HBO December 7….
Clean sweep
The release of The Clean’s 46-song Anthology has set Canadian “rock uber-geeks running to record stores.” Chart Attack reviewer sums up the Flying Nun stalwarts’ attraction: “They have created a near-flawless body of work over a long period…
Tall Poppy Keeps His Head
“A genius masquerading as an ordinary person, a creative whirlwind, financial powerhouse and folk hero rolled into one.” LA Times applauds Peter Jackson’s phenomenal success, not only in film circles, but in the eyes…
Middle Earth to the Masses
Te Papa’s Lord of the Rings exhibition (opening 19 December) is set to go global. The interactive collection of costumes, props, sets, and gadgetry mounts a two year international tour from February 2002, which includes stop-offs…
Sunny praise for Chidgey
The Strength of the Sun by Lower Hutt writer Catherine Chidgey makes LA Times Best Books list for 2002. “An exquisitely written, curiously tantalizing book that looks something like a mystery story but is…
Paquin: Make mine a double
Anna Paquin joins an ensemble cast including Edward Norton and Philip Seymour Hoffman in Spike Lee’s latest film, The 25th Hour. Advance screenings of the (typically) dark drama have sparked talk of likely Oscar nominations.
What is this?
“They can be seen as postmodern hymns to invention and appropriation, or they can be read as theoretical texts that map the visual culture of at least two phases of the 20th century.” Dick Frizzell’s latest…
Rebirth of Loop
2002 saw the highly successful reinvention of Wellington’s Loop magazine as an independent recording label. With acts like The Black Seeds, Rhian Sheehan and 50HZ on the books, and albums which look as good…
Sundance Spot For Whale Rider
Fresh from an award-winning stint in Toronto, Niki Caro’s Whale Rider is to feature at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. Other entrants in the World Cinema category include Bend It Like Beckham and the latest Dogme instalment,…
Behind the scenes
Wellington-born Kristian Fredrikson, Australia’s leading set and costume designer, interviewed in Weekend Australian. A designer “whose name is synonymous with opulence,” Fredrikson is currently taking his third crack at creating “the perfect Swan Lake.”…
Dead-eyed beauties
Photographer Yvonne Todd reviewed in Art Forum’s Best of 2002 issue. “Todd applies Revlon-style control to construct the opposite of the bouffant and bouncy … she assembles a group of unreachable females, encased in…
Virtually he tanagata
Wellington interactive media company, Clicksuite, has been nominated for the creative technology industry’s Oscar equivalent: an International EMMA (Electronic Multimedia Technology) award. Clicksuite has been entered in the Public Institutions / Services Information…
Ringing its Praises
“A rare perfect mating of filmmaker and material” (NY Times). The Two Towers has been released with a series of glitzy premieres and press reviews which more than match the hype. Variety: “It’s hard to imagine…
Tyler no diva
Liv Tyler talks to The Scotsman about making movies Middle Earth-style. “It was a labour of love for everyone. There weren’t a lot of perks. We didn’t have these huge trailers and all these excessive…
Frosty the Crowe-man
Indie film website Film Threat has voted Russell Crowe 2002’s Coldest Person in Hollywood. Crowe topped the annual poll, his “bad-boy big mouth” beating out Winona Ryder and Robert De Niro for the dubious honour.
Liquor, Lear and Liz
NZ’s 2002 Actor of the Year, Ray Henwood, has taken his award-winning portrayal of Richard Burton Sydney-side. In Playing Burton the Welsh-born actor brings to life his hell-raising compatriot with uncanny ability. Opening night…
Not All Doom and Gloom
Wellington author Damien Wilkins counters small-town unease and drug-addled characters with a good dose of black comedy in Chemistry. New Statesman: ” a world of jealousies, scandals, and suffocating boredom … Although unrepentantly…
“Amo, ergo compro”
NZ’s leading ad-man, Kevin Roberts, interviewed in Italy’s L’espresso. “He dresses completely in black and looks like a bar room bouncer just back from Armani. But Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, is…
Music of the land
“The Kiwi singer-songwriter lyrics and cheekbones as fine as Delft china.” Bic Runga talks to Time Pacific about books, politics and her new album, Beautiful Collision. “Eclectic but emotionally resonant,” Beautiful Collision has…
Wilkins’ Latest Bonds with Reviewer
Guardian reviewer Phil Whitaker assesses Damien Wilkins’ novel, Chemistry, a chronicle of drug addiction and family trauma set in small-town NZ. “Wilkins is brilliant at character, and his resistance to movement for the family…
Best Actor
New Zealand born actor Gary Day, renown for roles in soap operas Gloss and Shark in the Park, wins Best Guest Actor for his cameo performance in Aussie drama Blue Heelers at the AFI…
Gender Studies 101
Guardian writer Julie Burchill questions Russell Crowe’s status as “sole standard bearer” for old-school Hollywood hell-raising in the wake of his latest public brawl. Back in the bad old days, she notes, stars did without the “semi-official…
Last action hero
“In the age of digitized battle, is there still such thing as a war correspondent?” According to New York Metro, NZ-born Peter Arnett is the last, and greatest, of a dying breed: “He is…
Praise in spades for Runga
Daily Texan writer goes ga-ga for Bic Runga’s “innovative melodies, careful harmonies and baby-doll voice” in a review of her latest album, Beautiful Collision. “A wonderfully evocative and brilliant effort with the combination of Runga’s skilful…
Russell Crowe: “From dud to stud”
Russell Crowe makes the grade in a run-down of Hollywood’s sexiest men by People Magazine. From unlikely beginnings “sporting high heels and lipstick” in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Crowe has come to epitomize…
The quality of Maori Merchant of Venice is not strained
Don C. Selwyn’s The Maori Merchant of Venice won the Audience Award for Best Feature at the 22nd Annual Hawai’i International Film Festival’s Golden Maile Awards. The Maori film adaptation of Shakespeare’s…
Independent Film in the Wars
An independent British film telling the story of a New Zealand WW2 hero has ignited a “trans-Atlantic row over Hollywood movie muscle.” Two Men Went to War is to be screened in a paltry…
Finding beauty in quotodian Wellington architecture
Ex-pat Peter Campbell, LRB art critic, returns home to report on all things architectural: “Painters have not made much of Wellington houses, but in Rita Angus’s picture of Thorndon, the part of the city…
Scene-stealing scenery
“New Zealanders watching the latest batch of car advertisements on Australian television could be excused for thinking they were back at home.” Rugged and diverse, NZ terrain is the showcase of choice for the…
Frodo’s choice
American pop oddballs Elf Power have released a covers album featuring NZ’s Tall Dwarf’s – the now disbanded Chris Knox outfit. Nothing’s Going to Happen also includes renditions of songs by Husker Du,…
The Datsuns, The D4 … The Datson Four?
Kiwi rockers The Datsuns and The D4 are to play at the 2002 K-Fest in London. The event has previously featured line-ups including Black Sabbath, Slipknot and The Hives. Says D4 front-man, Jimmy Christmas:…
UN Children’s Television Workshop
A New Zealand production features in the International Children’s Television Festival in Manhattan this month. The Kiwi entry in the UN sponsored exhibition, The Dress-Up Box Wonder, was written on the morning of the…
Something old something new
Multimedia artist Lisa Reihana commended at the 2002 Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art for her current “work in progress,” Digital Marae. The large-scale photographs dramatise female mythological figures in an exploration of matriarchy in Maori culture….
Giving new meaning to wildlife
NZ production The Most Extreme has proved a hit with international Animal Planet viewers. The series, made by Dunedin-based Natural History New Zealand, involves a countdown of the world’s weirdest animal trivia. Due to…
Dr Grant, I presume?
Sam Neill has hinted he will reprise his role as Dr Grant in Steven Spielberg’s fourth Jurassic Park installment. The Queenstown-based actor is sufficiently impressed by the script that he would consider ” his…
Concord Dawn high-flying in Asia
” bass-heads into a mind-boggling frenzy” were Kiwi act Concord Dawn on their recent tour of Asia. The DJ/producer duo of Matt Harvey and Evan Short have already established themselves back home – they…
South Pacific sounds
NZ group Te Vaka has made the list of nominees for next year’s BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music. The Polynesian ensemble, led by Opetaia Foa’i, describe their sound as “tribal, powerful and…
Booker Prize: end of an era?
Observer critics liken this year’s Man Booker Prize win to that of NZ’s Keri Hulme on “that unforgettable night in the mid-80s.” Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi won thanks to “a virtuoso display…
“Musician Who Revitalized Maori Culture”
Dalvanius Prime, pioneer of Polynesian soul and hip-hop, has died aged 54. Prime developed his own take on American soul by merging its ballad form with traditional Maori vocal harmonies. In the early 70s…
“That’s the way it is:” broadcast legend bows out
Brian “Hendo” Henderson, Channel 9 Australia’s “stalwart newsreader” for the last 46 years, has announced his retirement. Born and bred in Southland, NZ, Henderson started out on Dunedin radio. Moving to Sydney in the…
From Soaps to Splatter-flicks
New York-based Kiwi, Martin Henderson (Shortland Street, Windtalkers), co-stars in October’s US box-office No.1 – The Ring. The thriller is a re-make of the cult Japanese Ringu series, and revolves around a video-tape curse….
Freudian felines
NZ-based author/psychoanalyst Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson attempts to unravel the feline psyche in The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats: A Journey into the Feline Heart. The “witty, elusive and often enchanting” book challenges the place…
The Resurrection
“If the internet could express emotions, a collective groan of despair would have filtered through a quarter of a million modems with the sudden closure of a site called Arts & Letters Daily.”…
Cook Sails into Prime Time
Captain Cook is the inspiration behind America’s latest hit reality TV show. The Ship follows a group of ordinary folks in their bid to sail a replica of the Endeavour from Australia to Indonesia….
