And to Finn-ish With
“The most prolific writer of quality songs around at the moment” says Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien. How about Finn as New Zealand’s Paul McCartney? Or Eddie Vedder singing backing at “a small club…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Wine Rewritten
Leading Sancerre vintner Henri Bourgeois decamps to Marlborough to be part of the “the one new world country that has taken a classic French grape variety and rewritten the wine script”.
Working for Justice
Dr Dorothy Millar began to question western values after contact with Maori culture, leading to a life spent working for justice and prosperity for all.
Billion dollar Bevan
Bridget Jones producer Kiwi Tim Bevan nudges the billion dollar mark with Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and now Bridget Jones, due to be Britain’s biggest hit this year.
Creamy romance
“In New Zealand we mostly make quite brutal social-realist films. I think American audience are stunned to see something that romanticizes New Zealand…I want to make films that no one else is making.” Harry…
Public Interest
Once watched as the world’s greatest free-market experiment, New Zealand is leading the way in getting democracy out from under the corporate thumb says prominent intellectual Noreena Hertz.
Doubtful Honour
Big Norm Hewitt’s in-yer-face rendition of the All Black haka and English hooker Richard ‘Cocky’ Cockerill’s gracious eyeball-to-eyeball acceptance makes the Guardian’s list of the “top-ten sporting feuds”.
Thief With an Eye for Quality
Canterbury man Stuart McPherson doesn’t just steal video players – he rings their owners to complain if they’re not top-of-the-line.
Upside-down Edge
A photograph of the New Zealand sky projected onto a mirror on the floor of the Glasgow School of Art “allows people to look down to see the sky, as if the earth were…
Vege Contraceptive
Scientists at Canterbury’s Lincoln University are trialling GE carrots as possum birth control.
Memoirs from the Edge
NZ-edged novelist Fay Weldon sits down to write her memoirs – “All they do is make you self-centered,” she says.
It Won’t Hurt a Bit
New Zealand Cancer Society prostate awareness star, John Hopoate, takes legal action.
Runner’s Trots
An urgent need for the toilet is the most common reason long-distance runners pull out mid-race, according to a New Zealand Medical Journal study.
Inside the Frame
Michael King’s biography of Janet Frame, “laureate of the musing inner-self,” is “elegantly written, densely researched and remorselessly long” – but does it over-expose its subject?
Head for Debate
Commonwealth Sec-Gen and former New Zealand 2IC Don McKinnon indicates the next Leader of the Commonwealth might be up for debate after the Queen moves on.
Climate Change Challenge
“The climate models are only useful if the science is correct, and so far they have simply not been validated. They predict far more temperature increase in the lower atmosphere than satellites are measuring,” says Auckland University…
Big Money Beware
The Government seeks to implement a “code of conduct” for foreign investors, leading to “higher standards of investment”.
Serve Up Sam
Sam Neill, currently showing in The Dish, is major star material: “Like Harrison Ford, he’s an Everyman with gravitas. Like Tom Hanks, he engages our sympathy innately. He’s masculine without being macho, handsome without…
Along came Lee
Along Came a Spider, edge-director Lee Tamahori’s Kiss the Girls follow-up “skillfully builds the action” and “gives sequels a good name”.
Never a Softie
Colin Meads played 55 games for New Zealand, with “not a soft match in his entire 14 years at the pit face. No wonder the legend lives on”.
Knox them out
The Vintner’s Luck takes the Tasmanian Pacific Region Prize, Australasia’s richest literary prize. “There’s all this stuff in Vintner about anxiety and authenticity that’s very New Zealand,” says author Elizabeth Knox, noting that, like…
Tiger’s Edge
“Stevie has been in my ear about it and he has definitely told me about his auto racing … I would maybe like to possibly catch one of his races,” says Tiger Woods, commenting on a…
Baby Steps
“The best place I ever visited was probably Australia and New Zealand in 1983 with Prince Charles and Princess Diana when they took William. In Auckland where the tour ended the pictures of Diana and Charles…
Future Drink
“Fast-forward to the year 21. You shop eBay, toy with the PlayStation 2, drink wines from New Zealand and Texas and watch NYPD Blue on a flat-screen TV.”
Fast and Blur
New Zealand Olympic playmaker Mark Dickel, shooting it up for Australian NBL team the Victoria Titans moves at two speeds – “fast and blur”.
Try the venison, deer
New Zealand venison is among the top choices at Atlanta’s Buckhead Brewery and Grille. Also, New Zealand venison fills the red meat gap in Europe.
Majors Story (Almost)
The amazing story of Travis Wilson: “A New Zealander needing only four years to reach the highest level of America’s national pastime? That would have been a made-for-TV movie.” Also, Wilson has a “huge future,” says
Smokin’ Gun
New Zealand anti-smoking study reveals passive smoking’s deadly aim and gives Massachusetts legislation breath of life.
Kind of Milk
New Zealand Milk (Malaysia) looks to introduce “non-dairy formats” into the local market, following extensive R and D.
Good Background for Conciliation
South African immigrant Gregory Fortuin, New Zealand’s new race relations conciliator, has his experience of “ugly and oppressive racism” under apartheid to motivate him in his new job.
Flamin’ Right?
Fire poi are “trendy, hypnotizing and arty”, if a little confused: “The toys draw their name from the Maori people of New Zealand. Barred from speaking around men, Maori women invented poi dancing as a way…
Thin Red Tape
A significant part of setting up a new business is time and money required to negotiate government red tape. New Zealand has the world’s cheapest procedures, encouraging innovation and entrepreneurs.
Designer Fruit
With the lifting of import restrictions, labelled and polished New Zealand apples have Hyderabad’s prestige fruit market cornered.
No Free Trade Free Lunch
“There is no short cut, and we should not fool ourselves that some deal will come down from above. The only round we can launch is one that WTO members across the spectrum can identify with…
Still The Best
Leilani Joyce remains squash #1, trailed by New Zealand-based world champion Carol Owens.
Angst in Oz
Australian business needs a hurry-up: “…even the New Zealanders are giving us a spanking in certain areas. Even the New Zealanders! Well I never…”
What the Hell is That Smell?
Touring Canadian Chris Atchison notes Rotorua’s characteristic odour, but finds “the sheer wonder of the natural show makes the stench a bit easier to tolerate”.
Kyoto Outcry
Phil Goff, Minister for Foreign Affairs and trade, voiced New Zealand’s condemnation of the Bush back-down on Kyoto after a meeting with US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Kiwi batter?
Will Russell Crowe step up to the crease for Somerset this season, or is it just that funny time of year?
Camera king
‘Khmer Kings’ won New Zealander Matthew Kearns first prize in the Nikon Photographic Competition run by the Dubai International Arts Centre.
The New Millennium
In Auckland, New Zealand, a Maori warrior greets the first sunrise of the year 2000 with a traditional Maori trumpet.
Take a Break
Lunch breaks are best – eating at your desk makes the office “sound like the boiling muds of New Zealand”.
Netjetters in New Zealand
Two of the Guardian’s globe-trotting “Netjetters” are lassoed by Aotearoa’s lures and both have trouble getting back on the plane. Sue jetboats in Queenstown, visits her first rodeo and is “very sorry to leave” and Milly finds…
Phone Re-conversion
New Zealand MP and respected pillar of the Samoan community, Philip Field, retrieved a stolen car – by ringing the car phone and demanding the thieves return the vehicle.
Must do Today: Production, Script, Light
Wellington-born Richard Curtis penned the Bridget screen adaptation: one of Britain’s “cleverest screenwriters” in LA Times and “a virtuoso at devising horrific embarrassments for his protagonists,” in Slate. Rounding out the kiwi trio, Stuart…
First in Sevens
The sevens boys had the Hong Kong final all wrapped up, taking them to the top spot in overall series standings.
Galloping gourmet still in the saddle
Graham Kerr cooks up a storm on his new programme, Swiftly Seasoned.
Eiffel? non. Blobby? oui!
Brendan MacFarlane, Kiwi half of design duo Jakob and MacFarlane continues to dazzle the Parisian architecture scene: “The only work of architecture raising Parisians’ eyebrows was Jakob and MacFarlane’s “blobby” rooftop restaurant, crowning the…
