Blog Archives

Bluegrass Singer Marlon Williams Touring Australia

Bluegrass Singer Marlon Williams Touring Australia

Christchurch-born bluegrass singer-songwriter Marlon Williams, 24, made a good impression when he played Mullum Music Festival in New South Wales last year, claiming the title as one of the most talked about acts on…

Tuvalu Climate Change Refugees Granted World-First Residency

Tuvalu Climate Change Refugees Granted World-First Residency

A Tuvalu family has been granted residency in New Zealand after claiming to be climate change refugees, saying they would be affected by climate change if they were forced to return home. The family, believed…

Tiffany Singh Dedicates Kathmandu Installation to Mother Earth

Tiffany Singh Dedicates Kathmandu Installation to Mother Earth

New Zealand installation artist Tiffany Singh exhibited at the Siddhartha Art Gallery in Kathmandu this month, where she explored the role of seemingly insignificant things that are a part of Nepal’s rich tradition, which…

Kate De Goldi Wastes Not a Marvellous Word

Kate De Goldi Wastes Not a Marvellous Word

Acclaimed Christchurch-born author Kate De Goldi’s children’s book, The ACB with Honora Lee is a “marvellous, whimsical tale”. “ surprisingly, takes place mostly in a nursing home. Perry is the daughter…

Kimbra’s Princely Potential Lands Her Major Label Resources

Kimbra’s Princely Potential Lands Her Major Label Resources

Kimbra only intended to stay in Los Angeles for a month, but after she saw an online listing for an urban farm in Silverlake – “20 chickens, eight sheep, three sheepdogs, an outdoor kitchen…

Black Grace Makes Edinburgh Fringe Debut

Black Grace Makes Edinburgh Fringe Debut

Black Grace dance company makes its Edinburgh Fringe Festival debut with a series of performances spanning nearly 20 years. Founder and choreographer Neil Ieremia will steer the troupe through a mixed bill of short…

James McDonald Earns Sydney Jockeys’ Premiership Title

James McDonald Earns Sydney Jockeys’ Premiership Title

Twenty-two year old James McDonald has secured the Sydney jockeys’ premiership title at Warwick Farm Racecourse, with his 71st win on outsider New Zealand-bred Bascule. McDonald started even prior to the race with Nash Rawiller…

Designer Annah Stretton to Show at London Fashion Week Event

Designer Annah Stretton to Show at London Fashion Week Event

New Zealander Annah Stretton is one of five international designers selected to showcase their collections at this year’s London Fashion Week opening event – Splendours of the Commonwealth 2014. At the September event,…

Lords of Lightning Electrify Newcastle Skies

Lords of Lightning Electrify Newcastle Skies

New Zealand electrician Carlos Van Camp will brighten the skies over the River Tyne in Newcastle with man-made lightning strikes as part of the Great North Run event. The Great North Run Million Opening Ceremony…

Growing up in NZ Public, Broods Now Hitting the Big Time

Growing up in NZ Public, Broods Now Hitting the Big Time

Broods only started writing music together last year, but the Nelson brother-sister duo, Caleb and Georgia Nott, aged 21 and 19, are being tipped as New Zealand’s next big musical exports. They speak to…

Lorde Adds to Already High-Profile Catalogue with Hunger Games Deal

Lorde Adds to Already High-Profile Catalogue with Hunger Games Deal

Lorde will pen a new lead single for the latest installment of the popular film franchise, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, also overseeing the selections for the soundtrack album, where her single…

Ben Lewis a Finalist in Prestigious UK Interior Design Awards

Ben Lewis a Finalist in Prestigious UK Interior Design Awards

Ben Lewis, of family-owned furniture and design company Trenzseater (pictured right with father, Mark), was a finalist in the prestigious London-based Andrew Martin Interior Designer of the Year Award. Previous winners include British…

Retirement Village Residents Film Perfect Pharrell Williams Parody

Retirement Village Residents Film Perfect Pharrell Williams Parody

The residents of Diana Isaac Retirement Village in Christchurch have proven that despite any aching joints and stiff hips their dancing shoes are as good as new by creating their own version of Pharrell…

Challenge Yourself to a Wellness Adventure at Queenstown’s Aro Ha

Challenge Yourself to a Wellness Adventure at Queenstown’s Aro Ha

At Queenstown’s new wellness retreat Aro Ha, five and seven-day retreat programs offer guests “an unexpectedly rewarding journey of denial and depravation.” “I am on an amazing journey that goes beyond the picture-postcard…

Broods Setting Hearts Alight – Make Hype Machine’s One to Watch List

Broods Setting Hearts Alight – Make Hype Machine’s One to Watch List

Broods make Hype Machine’s Ones To Watch feature for the second half of 2014, selected under the qualifiers, that it’s their first time on the most-blogged list, and they’ve yet to release a full-length…

Lucy Lawless to Star in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D

Lucy Lawless to Star in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D

Former Xena: Warrior Princess Lucy Lawless, 46, will join the cast of American television series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D in an unspecified role later this year. According to TV Line, the show is looking to fill…

Designer Virginia Star Busmann Inspired by Dutch Aesthetics

Designer Virginia Star Busmann Inspired by Dutch Aesthetics

Formerly of Auckland, designer Virginia Star Busmann is the owner of Forestry at Home, a Netherlands-based woollen blanket producer, which sells plaid throws woven at a mill in Lithuania but made from…

Bullrush Hits Blue Water in Whitsundays Airlie Beach Race Week

Bullrush Hits Blue Water in Whitsundays Airlie Beach Race Week

Janine and Anthony Robinson will be racing their Elliott 12 Bullrush in the Performance Division at this year’s Vision Surveys 25th Airlie Beach Race Week on in the Whitsundays, Queensland from 8-15…

Roy Stuart Shapes the World’s Most Expensive Surfboard

Roy Stuart Shapes the World’s Most Expensive Surfboard

New Zealand surfboard designer Roy Stuart has created the world’s most expensive surfboard. Priced at a cool $1.3 million, ‘The Rampant’ is painted with 23-karat gold and made from glossy timber said to…

Helen Clark Joins Fight to Ban Ivory Trading

Helen Clark Joins Fight to Ban Ivory Trading

Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Helen Clark has joined prominent New Zealand business leaders, respected conservationist Jane Goodall, WildAid and the Environmental Investigation Agency – to formally urge the New Zealand…

Revisiting Jane Campion’s Haunting Classic The Piano

Revisiting Jane Campion’s Haunting Classic The Piano

The New Zealand-born director Jane Campion won the 1986 short film Palme d’Or at Cannes with her nine-minute Peel, shared the Palme d’Or for The Piano (with Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine) in 1993,…

How World War Changed Women’s Fashion

How World War Changed Women’s Fashion

An exhibition called The Way We Wore – In Service and On The Street, which has begun online at the New Zealand Fashion Museum, is one of many such exhibits on now throughout…

Tongariro National Park Running to Its Own Geological Beat

Tongariro National Park Running to Its Own Geological Beat

“The Tongariro Crossing is regularly called the best day walk in New Zealand, but with big claims come big crowds. At the height of summer, up to 1000 people file across the 19km-long trail…

Britain’s Well-Loved Celebrity Chef Ross Burden

Britain’s Well-Loved Celebrity Chef Ross Burden

New Zealand chef Ross Burden, who became a celebrity in the UK after reaching the final of BBC MasterChef in 1993, has died in Auckland, aged 45 of an infection relating to treatment for…

Keisha Castle-Hughes Picked for Game of Thrones

Keisha Castle-Hughes Picked for Game of Thrones

Oscar nominee Keisha Castle-Hughes will join the cast of hit HBO fantasy drama Game of Thrones, starring as Obara Sand, Oberyn’s eldest daughter and a fearsome warrior in her own right. In a video of…

Velodrome Medal Haul at Glasgow Commonwealth Games

Velodrome Medal Haul at Glasgow Commonwealth Games

New Zealand has started its 2014 Commonwealth Games campaign with a bang winning three gold medals at the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome in Glasgow. Aucklander Sam Webster (pictured, centre), 23, sprinted his way to New…

Melanie Lynskey Revising Cinematic Female Archetypes

Melanie Lynskey Revising Cinematic Female Archetypes

Melanie Lynskey has built a career on genuine, naturalistic portrayals of women in films like Up in the Air, Win Win, Hello, I Must Be Going, and, at age 16, in the Peter Jackson-directed…

Photographer David Melcalf Travelling Home with Borneo Tribe

Photographer David Melcalf Travelling Home with Borneo Tribe

In the face of threats to Borneo’s cultural history, New Zealand-born photographer David Metcalf is seeking to help reunite the North Kalimantan Kenya Dayak tribe with their ancestral homelands. Environmentalists estimate that over 52 per…

Weird Al Yankovic Rethinks Lorde’s Royals

Weird Al Yankovic Rethinks Lorde’s Royals

Lorde should feel honoured, according to Billboard magazine, because on Weird Al Yankovic’s new album Mandatory Fun, Royals is the only song the professional parodist reimagines as a song about food, called Foil. “Fortunately, he…

Planet of the Apes Sequel Motion Rapture by Cinematographer Michael Seresin

Planet of the Apes Sequel Motion Rapture by Cinematographer Michael Seresin

Cinematographer Michael Seresin’s recent work on Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes is “stunning, especially when we are following the apes swinging through the trees and across girders,” the Birmingham Mail declares in…

Kimbra Challenging Musical Genres

Kimbra Challenging Musical Genres

Over the course of The Vine’s 20 minute telephone interview with Grammy winner New Zealand singer Kimbra, 24, her “voice changes shape, tone, and accent, like an opalescent sheen shifting in the light.” “Like her…

James McCullough Remembered as One of the “Truly Great” Financial Correspondents

James McCullough Remembered as One of the “Truly Great” Financial Correspondents

New Zealand-born James McCullough, one of Australia’s best-known financial journalists and columnists, and a former London correspondent for the Australian, has died at 56 in Brisbane. McCullough was the long-time writer of the influential City…

Ciaran Forsyth, Rose Escort to Ireland for Some Charming

Ciaran Forsyth, Rose Escort to Ireland for Some Charming

Taranaki man Ciaran Forsyth, 26, has been chosen to escort the New Zealand Rose of Tralee to Ireland in August, the first New Zealander to be selected for the male side of…

Air NZ liberating customers, becomes top profit performer

Air NZ liberating customers, becomes top profit performer

Within the airline industry, Air New Zealand has plenty of admirers, and is now the most profitable in Australasia with expectations of a full-year pre-tax profit of at least $300 million in August, which…

Rhys Darby Antipodean Answer to Eddie Izzard – “Consistently Funny”

Rhys Darby Antipodean Answer to Eddie Izzard – “Consistently Funny”

Rhys Darby in character as park ranger Bill Napier and Mr Adventure live in Bristol, proves “oddly, surprisingly coherent and consistently funny,” according to Telegraph reviewer Dominic Cavendish, who awards the comedian four out…

Meringue Girl Pipes Bite-Size Treats for London’s Feast

Meringue Girl Pipes Bite-Size Treats for London’s Feast

Growing up in Auckland, co-founder of London’s Meringue Girls Stacey O’Gorman, says from a young age she has always had a passion for food. O’Gorman met Meringue Girls co-founder Alex Hoffler while…

Caribbean Island Getaway Opens Doors

Caribbean Island Getaway Opens Doors

Former music industry executive New Zealand-born Simon Baeyertz is co-owner of El Blok, a 22-room inn which has just opened on a small island off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico, and…

Pilot’s Exploits Inspire Music for US Dance Company

Pilot’s Exploits Inspire Music for US Dance Company

Auckland-raised award-winning composer Rosie Langabeer, 34, has been working on the music for Philadelphia dance company BalletX’s production, Sunset, o639 Hours, which was inspired by the true story of Pan Am’s Captain Edwin Musick,…

Aucklander Wins Washington Amateur Golf Tournament

Aucklander Wins Washington Amateur Golf Tournament

Aucklander James Beale has won the 113th Pacific Northwest Men’s Amateur Championship in Washington on the 38th hole, defeating American Cole Madey. Beale, who last week finished fourth in the Sahalee Players Championship, capped off…

Askew One Helping Transform Limerick’s Lost Walls

Askew One Helping Transform Limerick’s Lost Walls

Auckland street artist Elliot O’Donnell, better known as Askew One, the tag he adopted at age 14, is participating in an innovative urban art project, which is using the city of Limerick’s…

Antipodean Superheroes Cross the Bridge onto US Screens

Antipodean Superheroes Cross the Bridge onto US Screens

New Zealand-made television series The Almighty Johnsons, which made its American network premiere this month, is reviewed in the Los Angeles Times and stands out according to Robert Lloyd, for its scenery, its 100…

Luther Creator up for an Emmy

Luther Creator up for an Emmy

Neil Cross, the Wellington-based English screenwriter and novelist figures among the Emmy nominations announced in the United States, up for Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special for the third season of…

General Motors President Puts Pedal to the Metal

General Motors President Puts Pedal to the Metal

New Zealander Dan Ammann, 42, president of General Motors is one of the fastest drivers in the company, as reported in The Telegraph, and holds a coveted level-six…

Kenyan Startup Backup the Internet with a BRCK

Kenyan Startup Backup the Internet with a BRCK

New Zealander Reg Orton, one of Nairobi-based BRCK Inc.’s co-founders, is helping to come up with new commercial products specifically designed to address African problems, namely a “backup generator for the Internet.” About a year…

Opera Stars Command Sydney Opera House Stage

Opera Stars Command Sydney Opera House Stage

As Otello, in Opera Australia’s “appealing revival of Verdi’s masterwork”, New Zealander Simon O’Neill cements his reputation as “one of the world’s top heldentenors, a term usually used to describe the largest…

Lagerfeld’s Bride Steps out in Maternity Chanel

Lagerfeld’s Bride Steps out in Maternity Chanel

Maternity wear just got a whole lot chicer – and more expensive – thanks to Auckland-raised model Ashleigh Good who closed the Chanel Haute Couture show in Paris during what appears to be her…

Former Hacker Keeping Secrets Safe at First Look

Former Hacker Keeping Secrets Safe at First Look

For the last month, 34-year-old former Aucklander Morgan Marquis-Boire has been the director of security for startup First Look Media, a website that has become the most prolific publisher of NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s…

Educating Brazilians about the Art of Coffee

Educating Brazilians about the Art of Coffee

Former Aucklander Marco Kerkmeester, owner of Sao Pãulo-based coffee chain Santo Grão, currently employs more than 200 people across seven stores, and he has grand plans for up to 40 more cafés…

DJ Gets Unrivalled Access to Stars on New MTV Show

DJ Gets Unrivalled Access to Stars on New MTV Show

Broadcaster Zane Lowe, the voice of the BBC’s popular Radio 1 show, is trying his hand at television with a new show coming to MTV Music, which – despite its mouthful of a title,…

Project Runway Spot for Taranaki Designer

Project Runway Spot for Taranaki Designer

Fashion designer Sean Kelly, 25, from Hawera, is the first ever New Zealander chosen to compete on hit American television show Project Runway, hosted by German supermodel Heidi Klum. Kelly’s mother Margaret said he was…

From Scotland with Love Narrates a Country’s Heritage

From Scotland with Love Narrates a Country’s Heritage

Compiled from hundreds of hours of archive material, director Virginia Heath’s From Scotland With Love narrates Scottish history and heritage through the lives of everyday people, to a soundtrack by native Kenny Anderson…

Hot Pools Home to Useful Bacteria

Hot Pools Home to Useful Bacteria

Researchers from the University of Waikato and GNS Science will search the country’s picturesque hot springs for the next big breakthroughs in science over two-years in what is called the 1000 Springs…

Couple’s Literary Steampunk Adventure Continues

Couple’s Literary Steampunk Adventure Continues

New Zealand’s first podcast novelist Pip Ballantine, co-author of the steampunk Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series, talks to the USA Today about her and husband Tee Morris’ most recent addition to the anthology, Dawn’s…

Glass Sculptures Capture Raw Power of the Sea

Glass Sculptures Capture Raw Power of the Sea

Self-taught artist New Zealander Ben Young, 31, a boatbuilder by trade and avid surfer, has made a name for himself creating intricate glass sculptures that uncannily resemble moving water. Young crafts his sculptures – all…

Effortless New Zealand Electro Making Waves

Effortless New Zealand Electro Making Waves

Electro-pop duo Broods, comprised of brother and sister Georgia and Caleb Nott, have helped draw the eyes of the music industry to a country that had only rarely troubled the international charts, Laura Barnett…

Auckland’s Greatest Ruin Comes to Life

Auckland’s Greatest Ruin Comes to Life

“Creative enterprises and unique collaborations are flourishing in Auckland thanks to the dramatic renovation of a collection of 1960s city council workshops,” Monocle reports. “Until two years ago, the City Works Depot was a near-derelict…