Franko – We Are One
“We Are One” is a “Unity” Anthem that Franko Heke wrote to bring New Zealand together to win at all things that we put our mind to and create…
January 2014 Archives
TV Actor Antony Starr Proving a Fighting Force in Banshee’s Second Season
New Zealand actor Antony Starr is carving a name for himself in the American TV industry, with the second season of his show ‘Banshee’ premiering this month. In an interview with The Star Online, Starr,…
Large Numbers of Australians Flocking to NZ to Wed
31 January 2014 – More than a quarter of all same-sex marriages in New Zealand are couples from Australia, according to the Registrar of Births Deaths and Marriages’ first release of statistics since same-sex marriage…
Land of the Long White Cloud Google’s Top Honeymoon Destination
It may be a tiny country at the bottom of the world, but its beautifully diverse landscape and stunning natural scenery has made New Zealand the number one trending honeymoon destination, according to Google’s…
Finn to Release Third Studio Album The Nihilist
Liam Finn has announced the release of his first full-length studio album in three years, titled The Nihilist. The Melbourne-based singer-songwriter has also unveiled the album’s first single, Snug As F-ck. The track…
Dr Grordbort Presents: The Deadliest Game
Take a look at this short film from Media Design School based on the steampunk sci-fi world of Dr Grordbort created by writer and artist Greg Broadmore from Weta…
Much Good to Be Had from a Gift like Lydia’s
As Lydia Ko, 16, began her rookie year playing as a professional in the Pure Silk Bahamas LPGA Classic last week, ESPN’s Mechelle Voepel profiled the world’s No 4-ranked player. Winner of two…
Road Trip Photographs Possess a Thoughtful Melancholy
“After spending several years abroad, photographer Harry Culy returned to his homeland of New Zealand and took a series of road trips exploring the world he had known while discovering it anew through the…
Top Innovation Prize Goes to Kiwi
Auckland-based designer Nelson Rayner has won an international prize for innovation run by Google and the Advertising Club of New York. Rayner, Australian-born but raised in New Zealand, won the Young Innovators Award for…
1939 Film: New Zealand Shortwave Communications – Morse code
New Zealand Post and the Telegraph Department presents: From Black-Blocks to High Seas, A Romance of the Radio Telegraph Service. This is a 1939 Government film about communication to…
Kiwi Doctor Has the Best Fisherman’s Tale
A medical degree and a typical ‘South Island’ kiwi attitude has come in handy for one New Zealand doctor who fought off an attacking shark with a knife and stitched his own wounds before…
Clark Tipped for Top UN Job
Introducing UN Secretary General … Helen Clark? The Guardian is tipping the former prime minister is the prime candidate to replace incumbent Ban Ki-Moon when he steps down in two years. Clark was New…
Season’s Greetings from the Sundance Film Festival
New Zealand actress Melanie Lynskey and Up in the Air award-winner Anna Kendrick star in Joe Swanberg’s latest low-budget feature, Happy Christmas, which made its premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival on in…
Icebreaker Launches Product Modelled on Snowshoe Tracks
New Zealand-based clothing designer Icebreaker is collaborating with British artist Simon Beck to launch the brand’s new “The Art of Nature” product series, an ongoing, annual collaboration with artists who use objects found in…
Te Anau Glowworm Caves – Real Journeys, New Zealand
Real Journeys presents one of New Zealand’s hidden treasures of sculptured rock and rushing water, before drifting in silent darkness beneath the luminous shimmer of thousands of glowworms. Visit…
You Don’t Say No to a Director like Campion
The fact that Jane Campion’s drama Top of the Lake has been so well received only makes sense to American actress Holly Hunter, who played feminist seer GJ in the award-winning series. “It’s been energising…
Lorde Wins Two Grammys
Lorde looked stunned upon hearing her name being called as she won her first Grammy of the night for Best Pop Solo Performance at last night’s Grammy Awards, the first of two awards for…
NZ and UK Leading the Public Sector Digital Revolution
At the Open Government Partnership (OGP) summit in London in November 2013, New Zealand became the 61st member of a rapidly expanding global movement. The OGP is all about making governments more transparent, accountable…
Lord of the Rings Medley – Lindsey Stirling
Are you a fan of the Lord of the Rings Music? Then you’ll love this music video of Lindsey Stirling playing her violin to the Lord of the Rings…
Keep an Eye on Catwalk Star Holly Rose Emery
Aucklander Holly Rose Emery, 17, is one of “Three Models to Keep An Eye On” this year, according to New York’s Metro US newspaper. “For spring/summer 2014, Emery took on almost 30 shows, pretty good…
Ancient Seabird Fossil Found Dating Back 58 Million Years
A fossil of one of the world’s oldest flying seabirds, named Australornis lovei, has been found in in greensand deposits in North Canterbury, linking New Zealand to Antarctica when it was still being formed,…
Shrewdly Cast Star of Free Ride Conveys Breezy Believability
New Zealand actress Anna Paquin is “shrewdly cast” in Shana Betz’s feature debut, Free Ride. Set in 1977, Paquin plays Christina, a single mother escaping an abusive relationship and starting a new life in…
Nautical Hot Rod Breaches like a Whale
It looks like an Orca breaching the water in pursuit of its favourite stingray prey. But it is in fact the high performance “hot rod for the water” that is the brainchild of California-based…
New Zealand soldiers perform Haka for fallen comrades in Afghanistan
Watch this heart-wrenching and powerful video of The New Zealand Defence Force performing a traditional Maori funeral Haka as a farewell to three of their colleagues who were killed…
Zombie Game Downloaded a Million times One Year Before Launch
New Zealand-born game designer Dean Hall’s online zombie thriller DayZ has been downloaded one million times, barely a month after its “alpha” launch on PC gaming service Steam, Guardian games blogger Keith…
Dotcom Has His Own Party, and Dance Moves
New Zealand-based Megaupload.com entrepreneur Kim Dotcom, 40, is launching two ventures this month: a new political party to contest in the country’s next general election and a debut dance album, Good Times, to be…
NZ Ad 42 Below
Want to know what the rest of the world thinks of New Zealand? 42 Below creates a very interesting and not-so historically correct New Zealand commercial about how their…
Forensic Software Invention Transforming DNA Gathering
A New Zealand forensic software invention is changing crime scene investigation across the world, meaning that for the first time police can take samples containing DNA profiles of up to four individuals without reference…
Mansfield Had Something to Say and Said It Uncommonly Well
A 1922 review of Katherine Mansfield’s The Garden Party and Other Stories is pulled “from the stacks” of a New Republic back issue. “It is necessary to read no more than two or three…
Waititi’s Vampire: Mind the Furnishings!
Acclaimed New Zealand auteurs Taika Waititi and Jermaine Clement are garnering rave reviews for their vampire mockumentary, What We Do In The Shadows, which has premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, America’s finest showcase…
Kiwi Heroine Among the Greats
22 January 2004 – New Zealand World War II heroine Nancy Wake has been named by Global Post as amongst the greatest female warriors off all time. In Jessica Phelan’s article – Seven of…
NY Google Internship Awarded to Hamilton Man
Hamilton man Boris Pfahringer has secured an internship with Google and will spend 14 weeks at the search giant’s New York office in Manhattan. Pfahringer – who has just graduated with a bachelor of computing…
Our Weather – Timelapse
Watch this beautiful timelapse by Bevan Percival. Percival explains where and how he shot this video: “I shot this timelapse sequence mostly over the last few months in the…
New Zealand Outpaces Crawling World Economy
In a world still limping its way out of the global financial crisis, The Wall Street Journal has written that New Zealand’s economy is looking remarkably zippy – and even outdoing our much larger…
Nebraskan Children Get Tortoise Buffett Savings Tips
Children’s author New Zealander Lucas Remmerswaal took his Warren Buffett-inspired financial literacy campaign to Nebraska recently as part of an international promotion which has taken the Whangarei man to the Frankfurt Book Fair, Turkey,…
What’s Not to like about Grown Men Dancing?
English socialite and sister of the Duchess of Cambridge, Pippa Middleton, who prefers “rugger” to soccer, explains the game to Vanity Fair readers in the latest issue of the magazine, mentioning the “battle cry”…
Top Match and Black Caps Pip India
Parochialism in news always meets its apogee in sports reporting. So, in the wake of the Black Caps’ victory in the opening one-dayer at McLean Park in Napier, New Zealand media crowed (Black Caps…
Suddenly New Zealand
Have a little laugh with Fascinating Aïda, a British comedy-singing group and satirical cabaret act, singing about moving to New Zealand and the abundance of sheep and lambs.
Celebrating Food and Eating Together Is the Aim of Cooking
New Zealand-born Margot Henderson, joint head chef of East London’s Rochelle Canteen and author of You’re All Invited, tells quarterly food journal Lucky Peach about what she loves, and what she doesn’t, working in…
From Amidst Highland Heather to Paparata Farmland
This week, as part of the Highland News’ “Friends Around the World” series, the newspaper meets Min Walker, who emigrated to New Zealand in the 1960s to work as a nurse and gain experience…
Cult One-Squid Comedy Show Goes to Perth
New Zealand-born clown Trygve Wakenshaw, who trained at prestigious French clown school École Philippe Gaulier, is performing his one-man show Squidboy at Perth’s Fringe World festival’s Summer Nights season from 10 through 22…
Zoe Bell Recognised for Changing Places in Film
Waiheke born Zoe Bell is being recognised for her crossover into the mainstream acting industry, in two recent articles on rogerebert.com and the Wall Street Journal. In the articles Bell talks about…
Auckland Zoo Achieves Circle of Life with Flamingo Chicks
Auckland Zoo is claiming a world first after the hatching of two flamingo chicks, the first flamingos ever bred in Australasia and the first successfully bred from an entirely hand-reared flock anywhere in the…
Pokarekare Ana in the style of The Modern Maori Quartet
Take four good looking, hip swaying, suave Maori guys crooning a mix of modern day & classic songs in Te Reo and English and you get: The Modern Maori…
Caravan’s Miles Kirby Recalls the Taste of Childhood Flounder
Chef and co-founder of London’s Caravan restaurant Miles Kirby grew up in New Zealand, where he loved to catch fish from the beach. Kirby tells the Telegraph about his “soul food”. “In New…
Lorde Makes the Cover of Rolling Stone
“The thrill that’ll getcha when you get your picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone,” sang Dr Hook in 1972, a blatant but ultimately successful act of musical sycophancy that earned the band…
19th Century Plate Depicts Extraordinary Set of Birds
“No country on the globe can offer such an extraordinary set of birds as are here depicted,” wrote British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace of “the peculiar Ornithology of New Zealand” in The Geographical Distribution…
AJ Hackett Heads to Russia for Ever Bigger Thrills
New Zealand bungy kingpin AJ Hackett will set multiple records in Russia this year, when the world’s highest swing, the world’s longest pedestrian suspension bridge (550m) and a double-ended flying fox open as part…
Campion to Preside over Cannes Jury
New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion will preside over the jury of the 67th Cannes Film Festival, succeeding last year’s president Steven Spielberg. This year’s festival takes place 14-25 May. Campion is the only female director…
Leaving on Length Critical for India’s NZ tour
Indian cricket sides have historically struggled on tours to New Zealand and one of the reasons is to do with the bounce of the ball and movement off the wicket. In India, where the…
Stunt Icon Raises Issues of Violence and Victimisation
New Zealand Stuntwoman and actress Zoë Bell’s film Raze is one of three out this January, which “tackle semi-weighty issues of violence, victimization, sexuality and gender.” The online arts and culture magazine Salon describes Raze…
New Zealand’s Warm Weather Patterns to Continue
The year 2013 was New Zealand’s second hottest year on record according to Auckland University climate scientist Dr Jim Salinger, with the winter season found to be the warmest and temperatures hitting 1.3 degrees…
Auckland Amped with New Trains
Monocle radars Auckland as a “City to Watch” on the international stage in 2014, primarily stimulated by the forthcoming launch of a fleet of 57 electric trains as part of a billion dollar rail…
Outdoor Leadership Adventure a Great Accomplishment for US Student
Tramping with a heavy pack for the better part of a day is physically demanding, but doing so up the side of a mountain is exhausting. Bel Air university student Wendy Cirko found that…
New Zealand a Multicultural Model for the EU
January 13, 2014 – Multicultural policies, like those adopted by the immigrant countries of New Zealand and Canada, may be exactly what European Union countries need, according to journalist Kait Bolongaro, writing for Al…
Mockasin’s UK Tour Begins in Glasgow at King Tut’s
New Zealand musician Connan Mockasin is kicking off his UK tour in Glasgow on 22 January at King Tut’s promoting Caramel, ahead of the February release of his second single from the album, Do…
