News of New Zealanders via Global Media

Gilding the Director

Gilding the Director

Peter Jackson is nominated for the Best Director award as judged by the Directors Guild Association. Jackson, however, doesn’t seem very interested in taking home any coveted gold trophies: “Its the icing on the…

Coach Blackadder

Coach Blackadder

Former All Black captain, Todd Blackadder, takes his first step into international coaching with the announcement that he will be joining the Scotland Under 21 set-up.  

Master Blasters

Master Blasters

Explosive all-rounder Chris Cairns plays “one of the great one-day international innings in the 22-year history of the game When he is on song, no oval in the world is big enough to contain him”….

Values Party – BYO

Values Party – BYO

Don’t miss Marlborough’s “tangy, medium-bodied, cranberry-dried” Saint Clair 2000 Doctor’s Creek Pinot Noir.  “Perfect with poultry or perhaps salmon, it epitomizes the remarkable values coming out of New Zealand”.

A Beautiful Mind

A Beautiful Mind

Wellington-born Russell Crowe, who last year won an Oscar for his lead role in Gladiator, pulls off the second biggest win of his career – a Golden Globe for best actor, in A Beautiful…

“All the world’s a stage”

“All the world’s a stage”

24-year-old Aucklander, Miles Lattimer-Gregory, hits the big time in London’s West End, with the company he founded, the British Touring Shakespeare Company opening its season of Hamlet and the Twelfth Night at the Westminster…

School of Hard Knocks

School of Hard Knocks

Jonah Lomu talks to The Independent about growing up on South Auckland’s mean streets. “I lost an uncle; decapitated in a shopping centre, and a cousin who was stabbed. That’s when my mother said I was…

Heckler Good-humoured

Heckler Good-humoured

500 e-mails, several severed subscriptions, and a visitation by one J.Lomu later, Graham offers an open apology. Planting tongue firmly in cheek, he concedes amongst other things that Split Enz are indeed better than Midnight…

The Peoples’ Choice

The Peoples’ Choice

“New Zealand’s most revered sportsman”, Michael Campbell, finishes a gallant second at the NZ Golf Open, five strokes ahead of world No 1 Tiger Woods. Back in the clubhouse, Campbell announces he will allocate to children’s charities…

Lessons From the Kiwi Experience

Lessons From the Kiwi Experience

The Scotsman praises “small, proud” New Zealand – “the more the government intervenes in industry the less enterprise and boldness there is. By rolling back the frontiers of the state New Zealand has discovered enormous energy and…

Asian Free Trade Zone

Asian Free Trade Zone

Japan is keen to envelop New Zealand and Australia into its vision for an Asian free-trade zone in both trade and investment, and beyond into technology, education and tourism.  

The Crowe Road to Oscar Success?

The Crowe Road to Oscar Success?

Russell Crowe is named Actor of the Year by the Broadcast Film Critics Association for his lead role in A Beautiful Mind. Crowe has won the award for the last three years.

“Fair-dinkum” Kiwi tops the pops

“Fair-dinkum” Kiwi tops the pops

NZ-born musician Daniel Bedingfield, 21, tops the UK pop charts with Gotta Get Thru This – recorded on rudimentary equipment and a computer in his south London bedroom. “The track is absurdly brilliant, as…

Truly, madly, deeply explicit

Truly, madly, deeply explicit

New Zealand actor Kerry Fox visits Sydney to promote her controversial new film, Intimacy and offers this boyfriend-friendly pronouncement on her method: “Its not sex. It’s not lovemaking. It’s pretend”, says Fox of the…

Tiger Tamer

Tiger Tamer

13-year-old New Zealander, Jae An, becomes the youngest ever male to play a professional golf tournament, and then the youngest golfer ever to make the cut, when he lines up alongside Tiger Woods at the New…

“Cook Me Some Eggs James”

“Cook Me Some Eggs James”

NZ-born Lee Tamahori, is charged with the license to uphold pop-cultural iconography, as he undertakes the directorship of the 20th James Bond installment, taking over from another Kiwi Martin Campbell. “To me the Bond film is…

One Love

One Love

Anna Kournikova, “the tennis temptress whose courtships tend to garner more attention than her shot selection”, completes her 99th WTA tour singles event – the Auckland Classic – in the same way she ended the previous…

Commanding Performance

Commanding Performance

Grant Dalton and his crew hold second place in the Volvo Ocean Race, as the event “reaches its spiritual home”, Auckland. “The World’s premier yachting capital”. according to the Volvo Ocean race website.

Global Chief

Global Chief

Heineken names New Zealander Alan Gourdie its global brand chief.

Front line truck stop

Front line truck stop

War correspondent Margaret Moth heads to another of the world’s trouble spots, this time Kabul, Afghanistan. Along the way, while searching for a truck waylaid picking them up at Bagram air base, Moth and CNN…

Fans Flock to Tolkien Trail

Fans Flock to Tolkien Trail

“Thanks to a bunch of elves, orcs and hobbits”, New Zealand is “one of this year’s most fashionable tourist destinations”. Experts believe the trilogy will boost NZ’s tourist industry by a third. On the edge we’ve always…

Great Escape

Great Escape

The Times lists New Zealand a hot destination, due to scenery witnessed in Lord of the Rings. United Kingdom travel companies report 20 per cent increases in travel bookings since the film’s release. .

Counting Down and Counting Up

Counting Down and Counting Up

The 31st America’s Cup is 13 months away, but the Hauraki Gulf is already a hive of activity as 1 syndicates prepare to battle for the Auld Mug. And Government puffs up Team NZ’s sails with…

Madcap Pamela bestselling biographer

Madcap Pamela bestselling biographer

New Zealand-born Pamela Stephenson, practicing psychotherapist and ex-comedian (part of the anarchic foursome who made the seminal and career launching comedy Not the Nine o’clock News – along with Rowan Atkinson, Mel Smith…

Young stars

Young stars

Australian Ex-Monty Python director, Maurice Murphy, stars students from Toi Whakaari New Zealand drama school in his latest feature film, Zenolith.

Cell-phone Sunblock

Cell-phone Sunblock

SMS sun-safety – who says cell-phones are bad for your health? As the Kiwi summer heats up Auckland’s Hyperfactory, in partnership with telco Vodafone and cosmetics company Nivea has developed a short-message service advising cellphone users of…

Irish Rugby Miracle

Irish Rugby Miracle

Alone it Stands, a heart-warming and hilarious re-enactment of Irish club side Munsters’ defeat of the All Blacks in 1978, plays to its 100,000th person. “Beating the All Blacks is the ultimate dream of anyone who…

Clean, Green and Safe

Clean, Green and Safe

Condé Nast Traveller recently rated Aotearoa the world’s safest destination and the Government wants to make sure the haven remains safe, committing increased resources to help fight terrorism.

#1 Trans-Tasman Lampoon

#1 Trans-Tasman Lampoon

Australian correspondent Martin Graham, in the ‘Heckler’ section of Sydney Morning Herald mocks Kiwi hobbit hubris over Lord of the Rings raving. While accusing NZers of fawning over “the fulm” like they’d split…

World First

World First

Associate finance minister Trevor Mallard is the first person to conduct a euro cash transaction, exchanging NZ dollars for new euro notes at Wellington’s airport.  

Awards of Merit

Awards of Merit

Controversial clergyman and academic Lloyd Geering carried off the highest honour in the New Years’ list, Principal Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. Colin “Pinetree” Meads, All Black 1957-71 and all-time greatest…

Top Honours and Front-runner in Oscar-quest

Top Honours and Front-runner in Oscar-quest

The Lord of the Rings wins Best Picture, Best Digital Effects, and Best Production Design at the American Film Institute Awards. Closer to home, Peter Jackson is named Companion of the New Zealand Order…

Moment in time

Moment in time

Photographic heavyweight Regan Cameron engages his lens in some model-watching to “express the emotion” behind the new range from high-end watch-maker Patek Philippe.

Double Happy

Double Happy

“Deputy chief content producer Peter is celebrating twice. He’s not greedy, he just comes from New Zealand. The Kiwi has already raised a glass as the clock struck midnight in his homeland – 14…

Movie of the year

Movie of the year

“The most heartbreaking thing about faithful movie-going is that awe, beauty and excitement, three of the things we go to the movies for, are the very things we’re cheated out of the most. The…

Weldon CBE

Weldon CBE

New Zealand-raised London-based writer Fay Weldon is now Fay Weldon, CBE. “One feels very flattered,” says Weldon, honoured for her charitable work as well as her writing.

Heavenly Creatures

Heavenly Creatures

“Director Peter Jackson knew something Hollywood did not. He knew that his home country was more than a match for the imaginative breadth of Tolkien’s vision. The Lord of the Rings blows the secret – there is…

The Queen and Us

The Queen and Us

Analysis of the Queen’s Message reveals her accent is going downhill. Meanwhile, New Zealanders and Australians speak increasingly different English.

Flooring the Market

Flooring the Market

Forty-one companies, mainly from the US, confirm they will exhibit high-end Wools of New Zealand branded carpets at Surfaces 2002. The giant US flooring trade fair, which last year attracted more than 60,000 trade visitors…

Feel Like Jonah/Never Meaning No Harm?

Feel Like Jonah/Never Meaning No Harm?

Phil Robinson, helicopter pilot and Greenpeace activist, films rare Southern Ocean footage of a Japanese vessel harpooning a whale after a 40 minute chase. “Scientists” responded by targeting Greenpeace inflatables with water cannons.

Fellowship of the Rings?

Fellowship of the Rings?

Our neighbours across the Tasman have always thought of themselves as Big Brother, now they want to share toys: “anything which is good for Australia is good for New Zealand, and vice versa. Anyone…

Lord of the Screen

Lord of the Screen

“The Lord of the Rings is easily the best film of the year” – The Times. “Peter Jackson’s adaptation of the fantasy classic is as near to perfection as makes no difference” -…

Floored by the Rings

Floored by the Rings

“The real star of The Lord of the Rings is New Zealand. The scenery, ranging from snowbound mountain passes to rolling grasslands, has a beauty of jaw-dropping quality and it is all lovingly captured…

Tourism Plumbs New Depths in NZ

Tourism Plumbs New Depths in NZ

Tourists can now make in-depth explorations of New Zealand’s Milford Sound aboard a four-passenger sub, descending 330 feet underwater.

Kiwi Hero Laid to Rest

Kiwi Hero Laid to Rest

A thousand mouners gather at the parish church of St Thomas a Becket in Warblington to pay their respects to the late Sir Peter Blake. “Peter Blake was a living legend. I believe that he was…

Where Can Jackson Go From Here?

Where Can Jackson Go From Here?

If anyone wants Citizen Kane remade, here is the man “Potter was made by a committee masquerading as a director. Rings is made by a genius masquerading as a normal human being….it takes a…

Oscar front-runner

Oscar front-runner

“Oscar is no great fan of fantasy. But the Lord of the Rings, with such Oscar heavyweights as Ian McKellen and Ian Holm, may carry enough high-class baggage to over come that prejudice”.

“Call Me Dr Johnson”

“Call Me Dr Johnson”

Adventure-seeking Kiwi scientist, Mark Johnson, tags 60-foot sperm whales in the Gulf of Mexico. Shrugging off comparisons with Captain Ahab (I’ve already been given three copies of Moby Dick”, complains Johnson. “Never read it”) he modestly…

The Land of the Rings

The Land of the Rings

“The first thing I thought when Peter showed me the pictures of the locations in New Zealand was: this is Middle-earth,” says Elijah Woods. “I mean, it has every sort of geographical, geological formation…

Gladiator to Genius

Gladiator to Genius

Russell Crowe is tipped for repeat Oscar honours following his fantastic performance as mathematical genius John Forbes Nash Jr in Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind.

Olympic Honours

Olympic Honours

The International Olympic Committee will award the Olympic Order to Sir Peter Blake, one of its highest honours. IOC President Jacques Rogge declares Blake “one of the most gifted and successful yachtsmen in the world”.

Trans-urbanism: getting Wigley with it

Trans-urbanism: getting Wigley with it

Colombia University Professor of Architecture, NZer Mark Wigley bemoans the divide between theory and practice at a Rotterdam symposium to debate the future of the city. Sharing the hustings with Rem Koolhaas, Edward Soja…

Left-handed Crows

Left-handed Crows

New Zealand scientist Gavin Hunt describes a new theory of “how human beings came to be right-handed” by investigating the “right beakedness” tendencies of crows when “ripping pieces from leaves.” The discovery makes it more likely that…

Celebrity Race

Celebrity Race

Former Olympic 100m champion Linford Christie narrowly beats rugby star Jonah Lomu in a 50m novelty race set up to promote next year’s Commonwealth Games in Manchester. “When he pushed out of the block I thought, he’s been…

On a Wing and a Prayer

On a Wing and a Prayer

Jonah Lomu, “the world’s greatest living player and rugby’s most global individual commodity”, turns to the Bible for inspiration on the rugby field. Says Lomu, “It says there, ’tis greater to give than receive’, so that’s what…

Designer of the Year

Designer of the Year

New Zealander Frances Howie takes top honours at the Smirnoff International Fashion Awards, the world’s largest showcase of new designer talent. The $115,000 first prize includes automatic acceptance into the renowned Central Saint Martins…