February 2010 Archives

Sculptured Meaning

Sculptured Meaning

At Timaru’s Phar Lap Raceway, a bronze statue of the famed Big Red and his regular jockey, Jim Pike takes pride of place. Today, the South Island city is making full use of the…

Designer royalty

Designer royalty

Prestigious industry magazine Architectural Digest has named New Zealander Sandra Nunnerley in its annual AD 100 directory which represents a “selection of the top architects and interior designers whose work has featured in Architectural…

Albert Lit Up

Albert Lit Up

Auckland’s 11th annual three-day Chinese Lantern Festival was held in February at Albert Park and featured performances by one of Shanghai’s top music ensembles Moon, Beijing-based Mongolian folk rock group Hanggai and rolling lantern…

Kerretta play SXSW

Kerretta play SXSW

Auckland three-piece Kerretta make their US debut in March with a show at this year’s SXSW, the festival also marking the release of their debut album, Vilayer. Drawing from influences that seem to…

Missing the Boat

Missing the Boat

“New Zealand was a 1980s-era beacon of economic reform and rising prosperity,” writes Luke Malpass, an analyst in the New Zealand policy unit of the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney. In an article…

Seriously moving

Seriously moving

Choreographer Neil Ieremia’s contemporary dance group Black Grace’s Gathering Clouds performance in February at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre is reviewed in the New Jersey State Ledger. Reviewer Robert Johnson writes: “Black Grace takes its dancing…

Thinking Outside the Ball

Thinking Outside the Ball

“As I tumbled down the mountainside in a gigantic beach ball filled with water, feeling somewhat like I was in a washing machine, it occurred to me that there had to be…

Referendum in Sight

Referendum in Sight

New Zealand is due to hold an election referendum in 2011 to enable the population to decide between using AV or the current ‘first-past-the-post’ system. Ken Ritchie, the chief executive of Britain’s Electoral Reform…

Get Your Jet Pack Now

Get Your Jet Pack Now

Inventor Glenn Martin’s jet pack will soon be commercially produced at an undisclosed site in New Zealand having finally secured sufficient investment. The 200 horsepower dual-propeller packs are the brainchild of Martin who unveiled his…

Outsider Made Happy

Outsider Made Happy

New Zealand-raised Louise Chunn, Psychologies magazine’s new editor, “is an outsider who made it” according to the Guardian’s Stephen Brook. After stints at, among others, Elle, the Guardian, Vogue, InStyle and Good…

Queenstown’s Quiet Side

Queenstown’s Quiet Side

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Sarah Maguire visits “adrenalin-central”, but goes against-the-grain with a laid-back luxurious holiday. “Being a full-time working mother puts adrenalin into the system daily, so I don’t need that…

Science for a change

Science for a change

Kumeu neuroscientist and author of The Winner’s Bible Dr Kerry Spackman shares his day, and his work, as part of the Guardian’s Nine to Five series, beginning with a run, which for Spackman is…

#125 – Gin, Whisky and Moon(shine)

#125 – Gin, Whisky and Moon(shine)

Edge Message # 125 from Brian Sweeney, producer NZEDGE.COM From left: Russell Coutts, Shayne Gilbert, Nick Willis, Melissa…

Short film revolution

Short film revolution

“Could 2010 be the year that New Zealand short filmmakers take over the world?” asks Indie Wire’s Kim Adelman. “The year began promisingly as Mark Albiston and Louis Sutherland’s The Six Dollar Fifty Man…

Seeking an Identity

Seeking an Identity

New Zealand pinot noir has come a long way over the past 10 years, continuing to improve each year, but because the grape is a newcomer to this country, a group of New York-based…

Lending a Hand

Lending a Hand

Former New Zealand All Black Wellington-born Filo Tiatia, 38, now a back-row forward and coach with the Ospreys rugby region in Wales, is backing a campaign to save Swansea’s Tennis Centre from closure. He…

Debut in Dayton

Debut in Dayton

Pianist Justin Bird, 25, New Zealand’s young musician of the year in 2002, recently played a solo concert at Shiloh Church in Dayton, Ohio as part of the city’s final Soirees Musicales Piano Series….

For the In-crowd in NY

For the In-crowd in NY

“It’s rare to see people walk out of a fashion show, but that is indeed what happened at Rebecca Taylor — but only because the Salon tent in Bryant Park [at New…

Graceful turns with clouds

Graceful turns with clouds

Contemporary dance company Black Grace is touring the US making their debut at Princeton University’s McCarter Theatre in late February, performing their signature work “Minoi” and their latest work “Gathering Clouds”. One…

Delightfully Relaxing

Delightfully Relaxing

On board Russell’s new 46m-long catamaran Ipipiri, which offers overnight cruises around the Bay of Islands, The Sydney Morning Herald’s Rob McFarland learns about the town’s colourful past. “If you’d visited the…

Memories of plasma

Memories of plasma

The Lovely Bones director Peter Jackson “should forswear sugar next time and reintroduce himself to plasma, brain matter, puke, shit and intestines; all the elements that gave his earlier, sicker, funnier films their kick”,…

Way of life applauded

Way of life applauded

Hawkes Bay couple Tom and Barbara Burstyn’s documentary This Way of Life about a Maori family living a subsistence lifestyle has screened at the Berlin Film Festival to full houses and a Jury…

#124: A Kiwi, a Kea and a Weta walk into a bar…

#124: A Kiwi, a Kea and a Weta walk into a bar…

Edge Message #124 from Brian Sweeney, producer NZEDGE.COM Sir Peter Snell (Marty Melville/Getty Images); Andrew McAlpine; Lemi…

Attention to Change

Attention to Change

Former prime minister Helen Clark, now head of the United Nation’s Development Agency, was recently at Sydney’s Lowy Institute calling for climate change to be put at the centre of international development strategies. In…

Cattle by Numbers

Cattle by Numbers

New Zealanders are now outnumbered by 5.8 million dairy cattle according to Statistics New Zealand’s latest agricultural production survey. New Zealand has a human population of 4.3 million. The number of sheep in the…

Walker’s inspiration

Walker’s inspiration

Karen Walker combined The Sound of Music with Bob Dylan and then threw in a snazzy sunglasses to create a collection dubbed “Sun Gods” at this year’s New York Fashion Week. Whether it’s…

Lauded for a lifetime

Lauded for a lifetime

Soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa will be presented with a lifetime achievement award at the 11th annual Classical Brits to be held at the Royal Albert Hall on May 13. Dame Kiri joins a…

Smokin’ in the US

Smokin’ in the US

Singer/songwriter Gin Wigmore makes her US debut in March playing a selection of southern tour dates with US band Citizen Cope. Auckland-born Wigmore, 23, will release her first full-length, Holy Smoke, March 16 via…

Sounds of old and new

Sounds of old and new

The New Zealand String Quartet recently performed a programme entitled “East Meets West” at Ithaca College’s Ford Hall. The programme featured music by Beethoven, Shostakovich and contemporary Chinese, Japanese and Cambodian composers. Quartet member…

Unique Fine Dining

Unique Fine Dining

Pipis, paua, tuatua, feijoas, kumara, cervena, puha and horipito are just some of the unfamiliar items found on the menu in New Zealand restaurants, Winsor Dobbins of The Sydney Morning Herald discovers….

Mile Win for Willis

Mile Win for Willis

Lower Hutt-born middle distance runner Nick Willis, 27, currently based in Michigan, has won the mile run at the 15th Boston Indoor Games. Willis crossed the finish line in a world leading time of…

Trailer: Out of the Blue

Trailer: Out of the Blue

On the anchor stone

On the anchor stone

“There’s a flock of noisy kakas on my front lawn, quarrelling over some croissants left over from breakfast,” describes The Independent’s Kathy Marks, holidaying on Stewart Island, “a place so remote that…

Whiskey Windfall

Whiskey Windfall

From the ice outside Shackleton’s Antarctic hut a team from the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust have found three cases of Chas Mackinlay & Co’s whisky and two containing brandy made by…

To Scrap or not to Scrap

To Scrap or not to Scrap

The New Zealand Herald has called for the country’s 108-year-old-flag to be scrapped. Under the banner headline “It’s time for a change”, The New Zealand Herald, the country’s largest circulating daily newspaper, devoted almost its…

Bouncing Success

Bouncing Success

Christchurch engineer Dr Keith Alexander’s Springfree Trampoline has won the “Children’s Product of the Year” in the largest United States consumer product survey, the Product of the Year Awards. Voted top children’s product by…

Multi-tasking Birds

Multi-tasking Birds

Two female royal albatrosses at Taiaroa Head Royal Albatross Centre on the Otago Peninsula have successfully incubated a chick, after the father — one of scores to recently leave the Centre — disappeared. “It’s…

Seizing the Spirit

Seizing the Spirit

Crowded House are proving popular in the UK as a second concert at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall was added “due to phenomenal demand after tickets for the first night went on sale,” the Express &…

Phoenix Survive Playoff

Phoenix Survive Playoff

With Phoenix goal keeper Liam Reddy fending off an attack by Perth in a penalty shootout in front of a record crowd of 25,000 at the Cake Tin, the Wellington team prevailed 4-2 to…

Towards the Moon

Towards the Moon

Wellington mountain-running and marathon champion Melissa Moon, 40, won the women’s section of New York City’s annual Empire State Building Run-Up, passing 300 runners and ascending 1576 steps to the finish line in 13…

McAlpine Stylish By Design

McAlpine Stylish By Design

The international career of Waiuku-born, Elam-educated film designer Andrew McAlpine continues to unfurl in ever-larger circles. McAlpine’s most recently-designed film, An Education (produced by Wellington-born Finola Dwyer) is nominated for Best Picture at…

Weta woos Hollywood

Weta woos Hollywood

Wellington-based Weta Digital, which was behind the effects work on blockbusters Avatar and District 9, has been nominated for nine Academy Awards; CNET Asia’s Daniel Terdiman says the “accolades may finally make Weta a…

Gusty But Gourmet

Gusty But Gourmet

“With more than 300 bars, restaurants and cafes in the city alone, Wellington is certainly not short of options,” recommends Winsor Dobbin for The Sydney Morning Herald. Dobbin explores the best dining…