Actor Kevin Smith dies
One of New Zealand's best loved screen stars, Kevin Smith, dies aged 38, in a Beijing Hospital. Best known for playing Ares in the hit series Xena: Warrior Princess, Smith suffered head injuries in a fall on Feb 6 after filming in the Chinese capital. He was an icon and resident heart-throb in NZ TV, theatre and film with over a decade's worth of roles from Desperate Remedies, Gloss, Shortland Street, Hercules and Channelling Baby. Smith was a charismatic leading man on the brink of wider acclaim who was happy enough to laugh at his beefcake image as "New Zealand's Sexist Man". RIP. 
(18 February 2002)
         

Wading into a globalisation debate
Prospect ("Britain's intelligent conversation") hosts a debate between prominent LSE economist NZer Robert Wade and Martin Wolf over whether global inequality and poverty are actually getting worse. Wade: "At the heart of our disagreement, I think, is the question about how far rich countries in general should go in using the power our superior resources give us."
(30 January 2002)
              

Art for masses
LATimes cover story on art for the people in Chinatown, LA, features NZ artists and curators, including an exhibition at the Lord Mori Gallery, curated by Tessa Laird and Joyce Campbell, "featuring work by seven artists from New Zealand, a good number of which would be easy to love, including primitive paintings by Saskia Leek in which birds have musical notes coming out of their mouths and skinny Santas fly over picket fences". City of dreams? Also amongst the NZ art crew that has gone west to another periphery is Giovanni Intra's influential China Art Objects gallery. Above: Ronnie van Hout, Self Portrait, 2001, at the Lord Mori.
(31 January 2002)  
          

Stand and deliver
NZ Post held up as successful post-liberalisation model which British Post could try to emulate. As a "beacon of public service in a privatised world", NZ Post has remained dominant because, "it has the advantage of a nationwide network which it can exploit effectively".
(1 February 2002)

       

Ocean's 11 = moonshine
Ernest Rutherford's musings on the improbability of the development of nuclear weapons because of the large scale industrial resource needed to do so act as a trope for Phillip Kerr's New Statesman review of the heist film Ocean's Eleven. Kerr finds larger than atomic holes in the Steven Soderburgh remake of a Rat Pack original brought into the C21st as a laptop caper starring Clooney Pitt Roberts. "It's the equivalent for the screenwriter of the "Get out of Jail Free" card in Monopoly. Or, as Ernest Rutherford might have described it, "moonshine". 
(18 February 2002).
             

"Sweet as" #2
Next stop Queenstown - "an adrenalin-fuelled, hyperactive, big scream of a town where tourists go for one of two reasons: either to jump from a plane, mountain or bridge, or to watch others do it". 
(21 February 2002)
    

 
From NZ with love
"Spunky New Zealander" Mary Hobbs, editor of NZ Outside, and her mountain guide husband Charlie, use their own money to put together a book from their fellow countrymen to New Yorkers rocked by the events of Sept 11. Entitled Letters to New York and America from New Zealand with Love, the book "builds on human spirit and tries to bring the world a little closer together". Homage from the fringe.
(13 February 2002)
              

Oscar landmark
Holly Hunter's performance as a mute immigrant in nineteenth-century New Zealand in Jane Campion's The Piano is lauded as one of the best Oscar performances ever and a landmark in Feminist filmmaking: "actresses playing assured women and actors playing demoralised men". 
(18 March 2001)
              

Most valuable Harry
"Chris Harris is the bald bloke who must have been in the New Zealand team since they started playing cricket. He hangs around at backward point taking spectacular catches, bats irritatingly in the lower middle order and needles batsmen with a brand of medium to slow bowling which could be a working model for the one-day art of taking the pace off and on its day takes something else altogether". 
(13 February 2002)
             

Dawson's return
Australian media personality and regular on The Bert Newton Show, NZer Charlotte Dawson packs up her Louis Vuitton trunks to return home to her native country. "There are just so many more opportunities for me over there ...There is an absolutely fantastic lifestyle in New Zealand", says the former model once married to Aussie Olympian Scott Millar. "And am I so ready to live that life". 
(17 February 2002)
           

Wipeout avoidance
Canadian geographer and geologist Edward Bryant writes that indigenous oral history may hold the key to predicting devastating Mega-tsunamis: "We may be ignoring the legends of the Indians of North America, the Aborigines of Australia or the Maoris of New Zealand at our peril."
(27 February 2002)
      

Oxford, Sorbonne, Harvard ... multiversity?
A radical new education model is questioning the relevance of Western/colonial education system and the university model of higher learning. The project is called "Multiversity" and will focus on those supposedly excluded from First World education, Asia, Africa and Latin America; the initial phase of the project set in a Maori community in New Zealand, as well as in Dubai, Penang and various locations in India.
(27 February 2002)
       

A pub crawler's guide to philosophy? Yeah right. 
US tour New Zealand "via its breweries, pubs and hard-case taverns", finding barmaids who "pour the purge with a scowl that could compete with the hog trophies on the walls", and brewers who freely offer insight into their profound philosophies: "There's more to life than drinking garbage [...] People who drink fancy beer don't drink a lot of beer".
(10 February 2002)
             

NZ biologist battles in spice wars
Michael Pearson, a biologist at the University of Auckland, has isolated six different viruses threatening to destroy the world's second most lucrative spice - vanilla planifolia. "We are the world experts on vanilla virus ... that is because we are the only ones doing it." God defend our Tip Top Ice Cream.
(30 January 2002)
       

Filler Up!
NZEdged comedian Deb Filler rises to a theatrical challenge in her one-woman show in Baltimore: "Glistening and piping hot, the bread has a rich, yeasty taste. But in the end, what Filler has to offer is more then challah; it's a life-affirming philosophy that warms the heart as much as the stomach". 
(February 16 2002)
          

Everest celebrations
Sir Edmund Hillary's 54-year old son Peter will attempt to ascend Mount Everest this month, as Nepal approaches 50th anniversary celebrations of Everest's first successful ascent in 1953.
(10 February 2002)
          

Bafta - Remembered Gold
Lord of the Rings is ready to cast its spell on the Oscars after bewitching the Baftas with five awards, including best film and best director, for Peter Jackson: "I wanted to make films ever since I was 10 years old and I used to watch the Baftas on TV, but I never thought I'd get one". Guardian's Peter Bradshaw on LotR: "Peter Jackson's dashing and supremely competent orchestration of the humid fantasy extravaganza was clearly deserving of acclaim." Meanwhile Crowe wins Bafta Best Actor: "I love my job and I don't think I do it that well - but keep on disagreeing with me". 
(24 February 2002)

           

Zen and the art of motorcycle design
The revolutionary John Britten V1000 bike featured in a story in Germany's top news magazine Focus on the 'The Art of the Motorcycle' exhibition at the new Rem Koolhaas designed Guggenheim, Las Vegas. And in CycleWorld the Britten V1000 bike owned by roving motorcyclist Jim Hunter is described as balancing the qualities of ying and yang.
(January 2002)

       

Hem Femme
"She may be the most successful designer New Zealand has ever produced". NYNZer Rebecca Taylor featured in extensive portrait in Vogue (Australia). Click here. And acclaimed in an emerging designers post-Sept 11 fashion parade by US Vogue and Style.com: where her, "girly, kittenish clothes are edgy without being intimidating. The New Zealander's eclectic ethnic mix included floral-print dresses trimmed with coins and feathers, lace fairy slips and crocheted camisoles." Read the NZEdge Hot profile on Taylor.
(February 2002)
        

NYNZ - fringe thrills
Chris Niles's new novel Hell's Kitchen well-received in the Big Bad Apple: "Here's a novel that's crowded, rushed, excited, mixed-up, fun, dangerous and a little dirty. In other words, it perfectly matches its Manhattan setting [...] What's the secret ingredient that gives this novel its deliciously Gotham flavour? An outsider slant: Chris Niles is a recent arrival, a New Zealander who led a peripatetic life before settling down in Brooklyn. Tye Fischer, another recent arrival, knows she has to "get New York in a headlock before it trample[s] all over her". Ms Niles' embrace of the city is just as fervent; she loves it, killers and all.
(26 February 2002)
        

Deep Video tech
New Zealand company Deep Video Imaging throws away the wacky red and blue glasses and goes C21st with their multi-dimensional desktop monitor capable of displaying several layers of information. The first clients will be in the gambling industry, seducing casino customers with the glitziest slot machine displays. But this same technology can layer information on monitors that doctors use during surgery, or that pilots rely on in the cockpit.
(15 February 2002)
      

The tyranny of distance
...didn't stop Russell Crowe...talking at the Berlin Film Festival about his edge: "Growing up in New Zealand or Australia you look outwards, fully aware you're living in the last two major land masses to be discovered". Luckily, he went on,  both countries were economically able to keep up with world technology. "Just because we're from the Antipodes doesn't mean we can't contribute". And the Locarno Film Festival announces that its focus this year will be on New Zealand and Australian film-making.
(14 February 2002)
           

Holy lamb of Godzone
Two of the culinary world’s US icons, Julia Childs & Emeril Lagasse, dined on the finest lamb in the world, courtesy of Newport Beach, California-based Noel "King of New Zealand gourmet food" Turner in a two-day fund raiser to benefit the James Beard Foundation hosted by chef and restaurateur Zov Karamardian.
(December 2001)
         

Oscar double
Russell Crowe earns his third consecutive Best Actor Oscar nomination for his depiction of Nobel Prize winner John Forbes Nash Jr in A Beautiful Mind. If he were to win, Crowe would join the elite company of Spencer Tracy and Tom Hanks as the only men to scoop the best actor Oscar in consecutive years.
(13 February 2002)
         

The Milligan side-step
Revered and irreverent icon of comedy ex-Goon and Bad Jelly author Spike Milligan passed away on 26 Feb. A huge rugby fan with many NZ connections, he never got his biggest rugby wish: to have Willie John McBride lead Ireland to victory over the ABs at Landsdowne Rd. Milligan once wrote in The Telegraph of an attempt to fell All Black captain Ian Kirkpatrick, "I drunkenly charged the great man with my pathetic attempt at a crash tackle. I was concussed for about four months but Kirkpatrick just went on drinking his Guinness before inquiring after my health. What a man! Granite! No wonder they never lose."
(27 February 2002)
             

Dead chuffed
The A-list from the cinematic, corporate and consulate worlds turned out for a deliciously irreverent Sam Neil tribute honouring his 25 years in film and his contribution to New Zealand, Australian, and American culture and commerce at the Qantas Australia Day Ball hosted by the Australian American New Zealand Association (AANZA) at the St. Regis Hotel, LA. Tributes flowed from Mel Gibson, Rob Lowe, Tim Finn, Peter Jackson. Above: Neill and Billy Zane.
(26 January 2002)
           

"Give me red wine, the kind that makes me feel fine" 
Two NZ Pinot Noirs - Gibbston Valley's 1999 Nevis Bluff Pinot Noir and Wither Hills' Pinot Noir (2000) - are included in a Guardian Top 5 "seduction wine" list for Valentine's Day. "Like love itself, the fickleness of Pinot can break your heart, but at its best it's the most sensual, life-enhancing grape variety of them all". New Zealand is dubbed the "best place to grow Pinot Noir in the New World". 
(10 February 2002)

               

The loved one
Yale University based NZ playwright Julie Mckee's one-act play about death and two maidens, Invitation to a Funeral,  well reviewed in NYT: "a wonderfully wry trip to the funeral parlor" about two women who come together over an open-coffin viewing of the man they were both once married to. "Ms. McKee knows that there are better ways to delineate characters than by giving them windy, emotive speeches."
(09 June 2001)
         

The B-list of baaad has an axis to grind
International relations satire: bitter after being snubbed for membership in the "Axis of Evil", peer-conscious nations rush to gain triumvirate status in what becomes a game of geopolitical chairs: "Spain, Scotland and New Zealand established the Axis of Countries That Be Allowed to Ask Sheep to Wear Lipstick". Scottish Executive First Minister Jack McConnell: "That's not a threat, really, just something we like to do". 
(6 February 2002)
    

NZ: Stroppy sheilas & mana wahines
Hauling a caravan behind a vintage Valiant, the Adventure Divas crew do New Zealand. Along the way they shoot pool with young film-maker Sima Urale, chill in Wellington with documentarian Gaylene Preston, are welcomed into the home of pop singer Hinewehi Mohi, into the offices of PM Helen Clark, get down on the marae with powhitu pro Tania Stanley, talk whitebait on the West Coast with reclusive Booker Prize winning winner writer Keri Hulme and no-nukes with Marilyn Waring. Adventure Divas is a Seattle-based new-media enterprise combining adventure travel and modern day heroines - a TV show screens on PBS in the US. 
(26 February 2002)
          

This is not the New Zealand Edge
Guardian Netjetter Ellie finds Godzone = dullzone, writing that you may need a thesaurus to do New Zealand's beauty justice, but unfortunately that doesn't make the country any more interesting: "One of the most frequently heard compliments about the country is that the people are friendly. They are, actually, but alas, friendly doesn't equal interesting [...] Ask a Kiwi to tell you something interesting about their country and after hesitating for several minutes, they'll probably come up with the America's Cup." Bugger. Baa to that: get thee to the Edge.
(28 February 2002) 
     

The response: "Anything but dull"
Ellie's provocations do not go unanswered with fans and citizens coming to the defence of the land and people. NZ enthusiast Marianne Curphey: "What makes this country different is that it doesn't regard wildness as something from which it has to protect its people. Climb a mountain and there are no signs telling you to stay away from the edge of cliffs, keep to the paths or not to drop litter. Kiwis seem to know all this already and don't need nannying. For a city dweller used to being bossed about by signs at almost every beauty spot in England, this comes as a bit of a surprise."
(06 March 2002)
       

Edge power play
"Are [NZer] Tim Bevan (43) and Eric Fellner (41) the most powerful London-based film producers in history? As Working Title (of which they are co-chairmen) is responsible for Bridget Jones's Diary, Billy Elliot, Notting Hill, Elizabeth, Bean and Four Weddings and a Funeral, the answer is almost certainly yes. No one in the British film industry has an international hit-making track record that comes close. And as Working Title is also home to the Coen brothers, they have the arty side covered, too". Visit the NZEdge Hot profile on Bevan.
(17 February 2002).
           

"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 three different movies ... Fate, hard work, good will and yes - madness - saw us through". The singular vision is paying well-deserved dividends.
(16 December 2002)
          

Middle Earth homestay
"I just want to stay in NZ making my stuff." PJ interviewed by PBS's Charlie Rose. Listen to the interview here for a fascinating conversation as Peter Jackson talks candid camera for an in-depth hour about the LotR experience. Extensive BBC Film coverage of the Rings' Circus, including PJ on why he choose to film the trilogy in NZ. And Japan Times asks a question intended for Frodo and Boromir, but one as relevant for New Zealand on the Edge?
"Is it possible to defeat the evil without, while not succumbing to the evil within?"
(February 2002)
      

Six degrees of connection
Mark de Clive-Lowe, NZedged leading exponent of "nu-jazz" guides iJazz listeners through the musical territory and affirms his edge cultural vibe: "I grew up in a totally unique place - New Zealand. A gem in the heart of the South Pacific, ... a cultural melting pot and further away from the world's main centres than most anywhere else. It's a place where urban street culture blends with nature's best and where the diversity of Europeans, Maori, Pacific Islanders and Asians bridges cultural divides and defines the country's personality." Clive-Lowe features on the latest in the Cafe del-Mar series.
(21 July 2001) 
      

Xena tackles Vagina Monlogues
Warrior Princess Lucy Lawless learns "new respect for the vagina, for the power and sacredness of it", as she stars alongside Madeline Sami and Danielle Cormack in Auckland Theatre Company's staging of the feminist play, The Vagina Monologues. "[While] I never felt disadvantaged by having a vagina...I never realised it was a privilege", comments Lawless.
(5 February 2002)
           

Kiwi prof named head of International Federation of Accountants
Professor of Accounting and Public Policy at Victoria University, Wellington, Ian Ball named chief executive of the world's top accountancy body, the New York based International Federation of Accountants. "Ian is ideally suited to lead IFAC during this challenging time for the accountancy profession," comments Aki Fujinuma, IFAC president as Ball arrives in the wake of Enron.
(March 2002)

 
En-Rot
New Yorkers jaded by the Enron scandal voice their concern on the street and yearn for the paradise in the Southern Seas - writer Alex Bauman: "If I had money, I'd be in New Zealand or Australia right now". 
(15 February 2002)
       

 

The most feared woman on the internet?
NZer Rebecca Wilson ("director of leaves and petals" at the experimental Dutch Arts' Foundation Studio for Electro-instrumental Music) postulated as as a real identity behind Net legend Netochka Nezvanova. Nezyanova has a fearsome reputation - gifted computer programmer and polemicist, an artist and a pain-in-the-ass, a critic of capitalism and fascism, as well as a capitalist and a marketer and perhaps a performance herself.
(01 March 2002)
       

Raining at Sundance
Christina Jeff's evocative feature Rain screens at the Sundance Film Festival alongside Mereta Mita's portrait of painter Ralph Hotere, Hotere and Tanui Stephen's Still Life: "The acting in Rain is superb, and the child actors (Alicia Fulford-Wierzbicki as Janey and Aaron Murphy as Jim) are beyond comparison. Not your usual adultery/coming of age film, Rain's  portrayal of the dark and complex interaction between mother and daughter, as well as its virtuoso command of mood, tension, and surprise, and its powerfully artistic sense of visual image, puts it in a class of its own".
(20 February 2002)
         

Speaking in tongues
Applauded young Aotearoa actress Madeleine Sami, dodges questions about her involvement with Rings star Elijah Woods ("we kind of hung out and went to the movies a bit"), a day after Woods confesses he's infatuated with her in Britain's Arena magazine. Sami, however, is sure about her New Zealand edge: "I feel a strong desire to keep representing New Zealand and keep finding those New Zealand voices and put them on stage. In Hollywood all our actors don't do that; they go there and speak American". 
(6 February 2002)
                    

Supermarket nirvana: Gisborne Woolworths
Street-Porter lauds fusion master Peter Gordon, bemoans some antipodean executions of the theory, but finds solace in Woolworths: "I purchased sun-dried tomatoes, olive and rosemary focaccia bread, and locally made Camembert. Have you picked yourselves up off the floor? I'm not even going to bore you with the 25 varieties of Chardonnay, the organic eggs or the 10 kinds of honey. Plus the fact that the check-out lady actually packed my bags". 
(5 February 2002)
          

Skating Away
In the popular cartoon series about Californian skateboarders, the Rocket Power kids skate across New Zealand as the gang enters the NZ Junior Waikikamukau Games, an extreme sports competition that includes wind-surfing, skating, dirt biking and snowboarding.
(19 February 2002)
         

South Sea's Cruising
"... Come aboard ... we're expecting you". NZ makes the Top Ten Winter Cruise destination listing in November's Conde Nast Traveller.
(November 2001)
             

"Names will never hurt me?"
Deputy PM Jim Anderton tells the Australian Government to stop its "insults", after Aussie Defence Minister Robert Hill dubs New Zealand  "Tasmania". "For God's sake", Anderton says, "we're the closest neighbours to each other, so we need to get on by and large".
(5 February 2002)   
           

East to the Edge
A book exploring the distinctly Japanese art of Kabuki has been "beautifully translated into English" by New Zealander Kirsten McIvor. Kabuki Today throws open the door to the mysterious world of the ancient theatrical art form, welcoming the reader into its inner realm and introducing the actors who bring the form to life.
(February 2002). 

     

I can see your heart beat
Auckland University's Bioengineering Institute  leads ground-breaking new research into heart and lung modeling and software development. Led by Dr Peter Hunter, the team of in silico biologists translate human organs "into thousands of mathematical equations and millions of datapoints" which then run as computer simulations. "It is absolutely world-class research, with massive commercial spin-off", comments GlaxoSmithKline director Ian Griffiths.
(1 February 2002) 
      

Cometh the hour
Nathan Astle comes to play with "a superb and dominating" unbeaten 122 for the Black Caps to help them take the series 3-2 over "plucky losers" England and deservedly finish the summer with a trophy. Hitting the winning runs with a six and passing 5000 runs in one-day cricket Astle showed "why he is regarded as one of the world's most complete one-day batsman". Astle has scored 12 one-day centuries placing him 7th on the all-timers list overtaking Viv Richards, Gordon Greenidge and Aravinda de Silva. And SA press makes a case for NZ to leap-frog the Proteas in the test rankings.
(26 February 2002)
         

Bugger. New Zealand creatives doing it better
Australian advertising, left in the mud by a Cannes Gold Lion winning Toyata Hilux ute, barks enviously about creative NZ: "many an advertising executive here would give a black BMW to get approval from Australian corporates for the type of advertising campaign the New Zealanders are producing. It's often quirky, irreverent, funny, and yes, even effective ... "New Zealand definitely punches above its weight."
(07 March 2002) 
       

"Come together"
Wearing a traditional Maori cloak of native bird feathers, the Queen calls on New Zealanders to work together to resolve lingering differences between indigenous Maori and the Government. Elizabeth II was on her 10th tour of New Zealand as monarch. In a case of Queen-to-queen Her Majesty meets MP Georgina Beyer, the world's first trans-sexual Member of Parliament. And Sir Edmund Hillary pumps for the monarchist status quo.
(26 February 2002)
         

Pleasantly rough: 7 worlds collide
Neil Finn's latest album, 7 Worlds Collide brings together Pearl Jams' Eddie Vedder, Tim Finn, Radiohead's Ed O'Brien and ex-Smith's legend Johnny Marr. BBC: "Finn is a consumate master of his craft". Rolling Stone: "Pleasantly rough edges - compared to the pop perfectionism of Finn's previous recordings - are key to making this a gem, all the more valuable for being less precious than the studio efforts." Canoe: "There's so much here to enjoy. And nothing to dislike". And Billboard: "hats off to Finn for coming up with a great idea - and to his friends for coming through". All the royalties from the project will go to charity. Buy/listen to 7 Worlds Collide in the NZEdge shop.
(26 February 2002)
           

More than Mansfield in Bloomsbury Group
Liz Calder, the NZedged head of Bloomsbury publishing (publishers of such literary luminaries as Michael Ondaatje, Will Self and John Irving), talks to The Guardian about the touted blockbuster battle, book and film drawn as weapons, between Bloomsbury's Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings: "There's no link other than the obvious one, that they're both extraordinarily good stories. What they're so successful at is in taking the reader into another world in a complete fashion, in such a way that you don't want to come back: you don't want the books to end". 
(4 November 2001)
         

Greener than you think
University of Canterbury's Professor Denis Dutton (Arts and Letters Daily) reviews Bjorn Lomborg's controversial new book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, in the Washington Post: Dutton concludes that the "richly informative, lucid book" containing "bad news for Green ideologues" is the most significant work on the environment since the appearance of its polar opposite, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, in 1962.
(21 October 2001)
         

Love Trolley champ
Competing on an indoor erg (affectionately known as the 'love trolley) Georgina Evers-Swindell wins the Crash-B World Indoor Rowing Championship with a time 0.6 sec off her world record. The win caps off a huge year - Georgina, along with twin sister Caroline, recently won NZ's top sporting award, the Halberg Award, as well as Sportswoman of the Year and Sports' team of the Year on the back of their double Silver Medal win at last year's world champs. Below: Georgina is in front.
(February 2002)

       

Rugby great
Grant Fox is named by The Guardian's Eddie Butler as one of the ten greatest fly-halves in the history of rugby union.
(3 February 2002)
               

First
Wellington's City Gallery hosts a major retrospective of the work of internationally renowned Australian artist Tracey Moffat. Curated by Lara Strongman and Paula Savage, the important 15 year survey of her film, video and photo based work includes excerpts from the recent photo series "Fourth," featuring TV-swipes of the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
(26 February 2002)
        

Kiwi resourcefulness
The Guardian takes time out from the New Zealand - England cricket series to talk up World Cup preparations: "England are on the way although they have a way to go, but it would be in total keeping with the resourcefulness of the Kiwis for them to come up with something exceptional. Anyone who can produce the All Blacks, Kiri Te Kanawa and Cloudy Bay sauvignon blanc can never be discounted".
(13 February 2002)
         

Man of the series
Kiwi paceman Shane Bond wins Player of the Cricket World Series, taking an astonishing 21 wickets against Australia and South Africa. Sir Richard Hadlee rates him "the quickest bowler New Zealand has ever produced [...] providing the real firepower we have lacked for a number a years [...] He could be our jewel in the crown". 
(9 February 2002)
          

Rule Australasia
Post-colonialism hits film production as the Brits rue the sad state of Brit-flicks: "The Lord of the box office Rings is a New Zealander - just like the chosen one for the new Bond. The maestro of the Moulin Rouge is an Aussie". Genre invigoration from the antipodes.
(3 February 2002)
          

Yuk Yum
NZ artist Denise Kum to take up residency at Adelaide's Experimental Art Foundation, bringing in her plastic shopping carry-bags her unique brand of toxic materialism, mixed media and cultures - popping a pin in the speech bubble of pop-art and making things, stuff and bright utopias out of the sagging rubber.
(February - April 2002)
    

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 Awards in Melbourne. 
(16 November 2002)
             

89 all out!
"England were routed by an undeniably better team", proclaims The Guardian, as New Zealand dismisses the poms for their second lowest one-day score ever (80) in the 2nd ODI in Wellington. Meanwhile Stephen Fleming is hailed "one of the very best international skippers and continues to prove why". "If this was fashion, New Zealand would be designing next year's styles while England would be wearing last year's" - The Independent. 
(17 February 2002)
         

Royal Chill
NZEdge co-founder and director, Kevin Roberts, accompanies Britain's Princess Anne to Antarctica to celebrate the centenary of Scott and Shackleton's discovery expeditions, and to launch the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust's 10 year project to conserve the historic huts on Ross Island and at Cape Adane while raising global awareness of the Antarctic environment. New Zealand has taken a leading role in conservation efforts in the area. 
(6 February 2002)
         

These limbs were made for climbing
Kiwi mountaineer Mark Inglis successfully completes the journey to NZ's highest peak, Mt Cook, without a piece of kit he'd come to take for granted on all previous expeditions - his legs. "With my artificial limbs I've got such a dynamic range of motion that I'm not that different to an able-bodied climber", he expounds. After the stresses of the climb, Inglis tops off his successful morning with a 50km bike ride.
(4 February 2002)
      

Wheel world road trip
SMH's Kendall Hill goes Campervanning in NZ. She jokes that she was looking forward to a "wucked trip" but, "the pursuit of puns and funny thungs gave way to the pure enjoyment of exploring this remarkable region. Perhaps the change of heart came as we drove through the enchanted kauri forests of Waipoua. Or a Ninety Mile Beach when we dined under stars with friends and all gazed at the night sky for the first time in years..." 
(16 February 2002)