Kiwi batter?
Will Russell Crowe step up to the crease for Somerset this season, or is it just that funny time of year?
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Russell’s leg up
Russell’s main rival for the little naked gold man was “Tom Hanks, who wears very little for much of Castaway. To the Academy this shameless overexposure smacked of desperation, an all-shorts-off attempt to counter…
Finn and Games
Playing with Neil Finn: “It may well be hair-raising, disastrous, funny or sublime, but it will certainly be an adventure…” Finn on the Auckland all-star band: “The idea is that over the course of…
More Knox
“Very different and very daring” – Auckland University Professor Albert Wendt. “For a New Zealander to win an Australian prize seems absolutely incredible,” says Knox. “The only time we can ever get…
Edge in the heart of Tinseltown
Russell Crowe and Crouching Tiger herald a takeover of Hollywood by the rest of the world.
The Future of History
Thematic arrangement, fresh technology and festival atmosphere put Te Papa at the cutting edge of history.
Destiny
“From the beginning he was destined to be a star,” says Martin Bedford, Russell Crowe’s agent of 17 years.
One Nil to Neil
Neil Finn speaks about his new-found love of the internet and his brilliant new album, One Nil.
Graniator
“No, no leave him alone, don’t hurt him,” yelled Joy Wemyss, Crowe family matriarch at a private screening in Auckland. Also, Audrey Crowe touched by mention of her husband.
Masterful pianist
Henry Wong-Doe demonstrates his “stylistic flexibility” at the 10th Arthur Rubenstein International Piano Master Competition in Tel Aviv. Search and pay to view
Russell: Our Man
Winning the world from the edge, Russell Crowe walks away with Hollywood’s biggest award. It was the day the boy from the west Auckland suburbs achieved the dream that once seemed “kind of ludicrous…
Novel tourism
Ngaio Marsh is among the few mystery writers whose houses merit preservation as “literary shrines”.
Fresh milk
“The gorgeous landscapes of New Zealand provide the backdrop for this peculiarity, which is like nothing else that’s played in months”
Savage thoughts
King Kapisi spins the crowd: “Taking the crowd through a full turntable tutorial, including “the crab” and other techniques, Kapisi has them in the palm of his hand”.
Milk free
The Price of Milk is nothing at promotional showings of the New Zealand movie with a “cult-like” following.
Musical score
“Pragmatic and visionary” New Zealander Grant Cooper scores a sugar plumb of a job, conducting New York’s Syracuse Symphony Orchestra.
Crowe 007
Will it be “Crowe, Russell Crowe” next time 007 hits the big screen? “To play Bond, you need a man who has great screen presence and is believable in the part. Looking at him,…
Return to the scene
Despite facing the sixth anniversary of the day Neil Finn saved his life by pulling him from a Piha rip, Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder is preparing to return to New Zealand for the…
Fairy tale ending
Xena meets her doom in the finale of the wrapped series that turned Lucy Lawless stellar.
Best Oscar Hunter
The greatest winners of all time. For best actress: Vivien Leigh, Joan Crawford, Audrey Hepburn, Simone Signoret and Holly Hunter in The Piano.
Kidnappers couldn’t take me
Russell Crowe laughs off kidnap threat: “Quite frankly, if they had to spend that much time in a small room with me… one of them might end up saying, ‘Look, pass the hat around,…
Dishy
Sam Neill transmits tension in The Dish, the story of how Neill Armstrong came to be broadcast from a giant dish in the middle of the Australian desert.
ATC in Manila
German-based lolli-pop group ATC, including Kiwi member Joe, hit Manila with their Europop/R&B blend.
Everywhere you go…
Neil Finn, international star and “nice guy” of New Zealand pop, has invited a few friends to perform his “unmistakable” sound in Auckland.
Musical extravaganza
“The concept for these shows is to invite friends whose music I admire to collaborate with me in presenting a week-long musical extravaganza which I optimistically expect to be a blast.”
Reel Pianos
The Piano, Jane Campion’s “hard to ignore” and “genuinely strange” masterpiece is the star in Jerusalem’s Festival of piano-films – celebrating the filmic attraction of tormented pianists.
Singing High
New Zealand soprano soloist Rebecca Ryan sings world premier of re-discovered Handel work.
Garageland USA
Jeremy Eade, lead singer of New Zealand peppy-punkers Garageland, tours the US doing acoustic from latest release Do What You Want.
Writer’s birthday
The 13 of March is the birthday of novelist, Sir Hugh Walpole, born in Auckland in 1884.
…you take Finn with you
One Nil is the result of a musician “looking for collaborative work, where someone else is bringing something to the table”, but it’s still vintage Finn: still “rooted in the form and structure of…
Double life
UK Poet Charles Boyle’s The Age of Cardboard and String features “a poet who leads a double life in England and New Zealand”.
“I Will Herd Sheep”
“Never doubt you can accomplish the task given to you,” says Canadian film-maker Sean Buckley. “I had barely been on a horse before, but there I was in New Zealand, needing a job. I…
History revised?
Controversy and acclaim for edge-director Roger Donaldson’s nuke-spook Kennedy paean 13 Days.“Yet, despite these difficulties, the film works and ought to be essential viewing for those too young to have been around in October 1962,…
Russ of the jungle
Russell: Charismatic, attractive and talented, but also fearless, said Sharon Stone years back. He proves her right on the screen and in the jungles of Ecuador.
Cyberreads
Denis Dutton’s “admirable venture,” Cybereditions, allows publications to be constantly updated, exploiting the interactivity and flexibility of the net to deliver superior content.
Lord of nations…
“Barton’s encore – her own variations on the New Zealand national anthem, inspired by a tour of that country made at the invitation of James Judd – was full of devilish pyrotechnics, skittery bowings…
Here with Lee Majors
NYNZer Brendan Donovan scores Best Cinematography award for his short film Here at the Angelciti Film Festival LA and his star Lee Majors wins Best Actor at the Santa Monica International Film Festival. Majors…
Victory: The Aftermath
More stories from across the globe: “this moment is directly connected to those childhood imaginings” quotes The Advertiser; Crowe “shocked and emotional” in the LA Times; “I was thinking this is one of those bad…
Crowe’s Upward Flight
Future films Flora Plum and John Nash biopic will “stretch Crowe to show the extent of his capability and range”.
One Neil
Neil Finn tours the UK and Ireland later this year in support of his album One Nil. His current mini-tour is rarking it up in London: “This one-off gig felt like a party where…
Garageland sale
Auckland indie-poppers Garageland team with UK distributors foodchainrecords to release Do What You Want Stateside. PDF Copy
Intimacy and success
New Zealander Kerry Fox wins Silver Bear (best actress) at the Berlin Film Festival for her “searing and explicit” performance in Intimacy, winner of the Golden Bear for best film. Fox was unable to…
Tolkien Talk
‘I’ve never met or worked with a director with a more comprehensive artillery of qualities for a big project like this than Peter Jackson. Someone should give him a medal pretty damn quickly” -…
Altogether a delight
The new Museum of Scotland launches itself with Altogether a Delightful Country, a display focusing on immigrant Scots in Otago.
Hollywood outgrows itself
Gladiator, filmed in Morocco, Malta and the UK, directed by a Brit, scored by a German and “sexed up by the hottest New Zealander on the planet” is a new breed of block-buster, a…
No talk, just sex
Intimacy is a smouldering film about a man who is living in a basement in south London who has a sex affair with a woman at his place every Wednesday afternoon. They don’t talk,…
Milk magic
Director Harry Sinclair explains the magic behind The Price of Milk: “We put a window frame on a dolly and sat Danielle Coramck and the camera on the dolly. And they were moving along Karl…
Star of the year
Russell Crowe named “Male Star of the Year” at ShoWest 2001, the largest motion picture industry convention.
Go Russell, go!
“What we do in life/echoes in eternity.” Russell “Maximus” Crowe gets a second Best Actor nomination (last year was for The Insider), continuing a fine run of Wellington actors and filmmakers who have been…
