May 2010 Archives

Hollywood Bowled

Hollywood Bowled

“In an age of bloated, self-importance and out-of-control celebrity worship, songs of parody and general mirth served as a lively and engaging antidote,” writes Martin Miller for the Los…

Great Win for Whites

Great Win for Whites

The All Whites, the world’s 78th-ranked team, have beaten the world’s 15th-ranked team, Serbia 1— in a World Cup warm-up match in Klagenfurt, Austria. New Zealand football coach Ricki Herbert has said…

Racing Rivals

Racing Rivals

New Zealand-born IndyCar champion Scott Dixon, 29, discusses his respect for former teammate Australian Ryan Briscoe in an article written by Indy Star reporter Phillip B. Wilson. They had been friends since their days…

Shechita forbidden

Shechita forbidden

New Zealand has banned kosher slaughter after a new animal welfare code mandated that all animals for commercial consumption be stunned prior to slaughter to ensure they are treated “humanely and in accordance with…

Loveable Dame

Loveable Dame

Dunedin-born actress Dame Pat Evison, who was best known for her Australian roles as Jessie Windom in Prisoner and Violet Carnegie in The Flying Doctors, has died aged 85. She also played Mrs Telford…

Good investment

Good investment

Crowded House, “the biggest thing from New Zealand until the Lord Of The Rings films shows no sign of flagging”, according to the UK’s News of the World reviewer Dave Freak after the band’s…

Positive pitfalls

Positive pitfalls

According to a New Zealand 3-year study people from positive family backgrounds are more likely to suffer depression, anxiety, alcohol dependence and drug dependence, tending to suffer more seriously and need more treatment. Researchers…

Effortless Shot

Effortless Shot

Teenage sharp shooter New Zealander Tiffany Piper, who is ranked third in the world for all female shooters, recently competed in the American National Rifle Association National Action Pistol Championship in Hallsville, MO. Piper…

To Sign or Not to Sign

To Sign or Not to Sign

Twenty-four-year-old Aucklander Sonny Bill Williams is facing a sporting dilemma: does he play for the All Blacks at next year’s Rugby World Cup or sign a $6 million three-year deal with French side Toulon?…

Edgy stroll

Edgy stroll

The best way to begin your New Zealand adventure is, according to the Telegraph’s Tarquin Cooper, with a walk around the top of Auckland’s 328m Sky Tower. The Sky Tower is the tallest structure…

Super Swift and for Sale

Super Swift and for Sale

Jock Freemantle’s super car company Hulme is now taking orders for 2 of its CanAm cars, which are priced around $64, and can reach speeds of 32kmh. Each car will be numbered and delivered…

Making a stand

Making a stand

The trial of anti-whaler Pete Bethune, 45, of the Sea Shepherd marine conservation group, who was arrested after clambering aboard a Japanese whaling ship in February, has begun in Tokyo. The trial opens as…

On the job hero

On the job hero

Mark “Marko” Cunningham, 39, moved to Thailand 10 years ago to teach English, soon after beginning work as a volunteer paramedic. Cunningham tells CNN’s Julie Clothier about his role as a “body snatcher”. “I…

Illumination in Iowa

Illumination in Iowa

Cantabrian author Eleanor Catton talks to American site Eye Weekly about her celebrated debut novel The Rehearsal and how her novel has so far been received. Canadian-born Catton, 25, says the initial reviews in…

Wacky Winter Stunts

Wacky Winter Stunts

Queenstown’s Winter Festival hits the southern town for the 35th year this June with an estimated 6, revellers expected to attend the week-long festivities. While there are big-ticket items — free concerts (Dragon headline…

Top of the box office

Top of the box office

Director Taika Waititi’s second feature Boy has become the top grossing local film ever at the New Zealand box office, passing the $7.5 million-mark and overtaking 25’s The World’s Fastest Indian, according to distributors…

Keisha stars in Vampire

Keisha stars in Vampire

Keisha Castle-Hughes, 20, is following in the bloody footsteps of fellow New Zealander Anna Paquin, starring in the film Vampire, the first English-language film of Japanese cult director Shunji Iwai. According to Empire, the…

Nothing but exuberant

Nothing but exuberant

Linda and Jules Topp’s award-winning documentary The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls screened as part of the Inside Out LGBT film festival at the Royal Ontario Museum in May. The film is part documentary and…

Football Mayhem

Football Mayhem

“New Zealand is in the grip of World Cup fever and while the likes of Rory Fallon and Chris Killen might barely raise a glance as players in Plymouth or Middlesbrough, they cannot walk…

National carrier wins

National carrier wins

Air New Zealand has won the Australia-Pacific’s best airline and the region’s staff service excellence award and was voted fifth in the world in the annual Skytrax awards. Eighteen million people voted in this…

Soccer Satire

Soccer Satire

In this tongue-in-cheek article for sports site Bleacher Report, Eoin Redahan examines New Zealand’s “dearth of WAGs”, instead listing examples in a slideshow of the country’s “beautiful celebrity countrywomen”, as the All Whites prepare…

Chicago showcase

Chicago showcase

Monteith’s Brewing Company, Aotearoa Seafoods and The Lamb Company are among some of the eight New Zealand companies taking part in the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago on May 22—25. The…

Clement’s new dimension

Clement’s new dimension

Wellington actor Jemaine Clement, 36, is in the final stages of talks to play the part of the villain Boris in Men in Black 3 alongside Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. Clement’s character…

Peacekeepers halved

Peacekeepers halved

The New Zealand Defence Force is reducing the number of its military deployment in East Timor to six-monthly rotations of 74 personnel. Because of the improved security environment in East Timor, defence minister Dr…

Masons Make Waves

Masons Make Waves

New Zealand-born surfing sisters Sarah and Airini Mason have finishing first and second respectively at the Billabong Pro Junior in Raglan in May. The Cabarita-based siblings who have grown up surfing the point breaks…

Intimidation Tactics

Intimidation Tactics

Ahead of the 21 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, the All Whites are included in a Vanity Fair article about the 32 participating teams. The author apologises for “an earlier version of …

Meeting of mooers

Meeting of mooers

Auckland-based Bob Carpenter, 57, creator of Filipino social networking site MooPlace, says the name of the site came about because of the high ratio of cows to people in New Zealand. MooPlace members are…

Recall the puppeteer

Recall the puppeteer

Now retired from Test cricket, The Hindu reflects on Christchurch-born bowler Shane Bond’s career describing him as “a once in a generation” who “not since Richard Hadlee” has a New Zealand bowler “tormented the…

Day tripping

Day tripping

Oft considered more English than England, Christchurch, New Zealand’s oldest city offers a preferable moderate climate, fresh contemporary Antipodean cuisine and a host of outdoor activities in and about the city limits. The Sydney…

Great Barrier secrets

Great Barrier secrets

Escaping the New Zealand mainland, The Sydney Morning Herald’s Rob McFarland takes a four-hour boat trip to Great Barrier Island and “a ruggedly beautiful wilderness”. “The Barrier, as it’s referred to by the locals,…

Shticking it to them

Shticking it to them

“The pretence of amateurism was always underpinned by consummate musicianship, and the range of styles they ape is breathtaking, from rap to my favourite new song, a madrigal called…

Harmony and Fury

Harmony and Fury

The BBC’s Sydney correspondent Nick Bryant “reflects on New Zealand’s mix of controlled fury, subtle charm and social harmony, and asks why the rest of the world can’t be more like it” in an…

Feast Your Eyes on This

Feast Your Eyes on This

“Rest, relaxation and rugby. What more could you want?” asks the Telegraph in an article written in the build up to the Rugby World Cup 211. When it comes to breathtaking beauty it is…

Most beautiful of all

Most beautiful of all

Fiordland’s Routeburn and Greenstone Tracks, combined at 7km and both within the World Heritage-listed area of Te Wahipounamu in south-west New Zealand, make for “what might be the most beautiful walk in the world’s…

The Naked and Famous: Young Blood

The Naked and Famous: Young Blood

The Naked and Famous’ hit single, Young Blood.

Papery puns

Papery puns

Rangitikei artist Andrew Reilly has turned bull dung into paper, “perfect,” reflects Guardian blogger Roy Greenslade “for publishing bullshit”. After harvesting the dung, Reilly soaks it in water for a fortnight, explaining that there…

Millar’s better life

Millar’s better life

New Zealand artist Judy Millar, 53, who lives in Auckland and Berlin, is exhibiting at the Hamish Morrison Galerie in the German capital, her first solo show — entitled ‘A Better Life’ — since…

Future Campaigner

Future Campaigner

Aucklander Adam Minoprio, 25, who together with his ETNZ/BlackMatch crew won the ISAF Match Racing World Championships in Kuala Terengganu last year, is profiled in Malaysia’s Sun Daily. Growing up in a farm in rural…

New Rules for Teen

New Rules for Teen

Fifteen-year-old Waikato-born Kurt Heatherly “has the opportunity to be the first AFL player recruited directly from New Zealand”, writes Jake Niall for The Age. If Heatherly wears the brown and gold at AFL level,…

Celebrating the man

Celebrating the man

“Stay obscure long enough, and people might just cry when they finally hear you play”. This was one lesson learnt from the recent benefit concert at New York’s Le Poisson Rouge, for “the beloved,…

NZ gothic on show

NZ gothic on show

The Queensland Art Gallery’s Gallery of Modern Art is showcasing its substantial collection of contemporary New Zealand art — the largest outside of this country — with an exhibition called the

All in Good Time

All in Good Time

New Zealand switched to proportional representation in 1993 and since then no single political party has been able to command a majority. New Zealanders have come to regard elections as a two-phase affair: first,…

Tree house wins Webby

Tree house wins Webby

Warkworth’s onion-shaped treehouse restaurant, constructed 3ft up in a redwood tree, has won an award in the telecommunications section of the 21 Webby Awards. The Yellow Tree House campaign — a collaboration between advertising…

Flat white factions

Flat white factions

Contentious as the origin of the pavlova, the flat white “is the most recognisable coffee contribution to come from Australia, a country known for its obsessive and highly skilled baristas” according to The New…

NY sell outs

NY sell outs

Flying Nun band Dimmer, fronted by former Straitjacket Fits frontman Shayne Carter, recently played to sold-out shows in New York. “While still including the indie guitar heroics of Straitjacket Fits, Dimmer are a groovier…

Under the Garden

Under the Garden

New Zealand’s $30 million pavilion at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai is expecting 400,000 visitors through its doors over the next six months. New Zealand Commissioner-General Phillip Gibson said that, even before the…

Love is the word for Mumday

Love is the word for Mumday

We are in what looks to be the last few weeks of a protracted ‘Indian Summer’ in the Bay. It’s been very dry. We’ve had a few ‘close to frost’ mornings which killed the…

Gorizia Beckons

Gorizia Beckons

Otago Polytechnic’s School of Design graduates, Sophie Brooke Hardy and Roxanna Zamani, will travel to Gorizia, in northeast Italy, at the end of June to take part in the Mittelmoda Fashion Award. Their selection…