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…
Blog Archives
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 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
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
“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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
“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
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
“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
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…
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
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
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
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,…
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,…
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
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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
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
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…
Fame becomes them
Tickets for The Flight of the Conchords’ two May shows at Dublin’s Olympia Theatre sold out in a record 12 seconds. “It’s all just weird,” Bret McKenzie says. But then he finds a lot…
Island Paradise
Waiheke Island’s Mudbrick Vineyard & Restaurant is recommended by the Wall Street Journal in an article about worldwide wine tours. Waiheke Island features alongside the Barossa Valley, Australia; Western Cape, South Africa and Grover…
Collaborative honour
Director, Peter Jackson, has been knighted by Governor-General, Sir Anand Satyanand, at an investiture ceremony in Wellington. Jackson’s knighthood was for services to the arts in New Zealand. “The truth is, making movies is…
Controversial Precision
“New Zealand is joining the global race to meet a surging demand for energy and minerals, with a plan to open up highly protected conservation areas to mining,” writes Paul Cleary for The Australian. The…
Smart Move
Auckland-based technology firm, NextWindow, has been bought out by privately-owned Calgary company, Smart Technologies. NextWindow, which employs 125 staff in offices in New Zealand, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea and the United States, makes touch…
Police Found Culpable
The death of New Zealand anti-fascist protestor, Blair Peach, in a London demonstration against the National Front in April 1979, “marked one of the most controversial events in modern policing history”, writes the Guardian’s…
Call Him Breathless
New Zealand freediver William Trubridge, 29, has set the world record for the longest dive without using fins by plunging 116m into world’s deepest underwater sinkhole, in the Bahamas. Trubridge battled nitrogen narcosis as…
Ironman Gusto
Days after coming second in New Orleans, Aucklander Terenzo Bozzone this time crossed the finish line first winning the Memorial Hermann Ironman 70.3 Texas in Galveston. Bozzone, 25, stopped just before the finish line…
Passage to the edge
From the Other End of the World: Memories of post war immigrants to New Zealand from Great Britain is an “enlightening read” bringing “to life an often forgotten period of history”, says the Telegraph’s…
Walters finalists named
The finalists for this year’s $50,000 Walters Prize are: Dan Arps, Fiona Connor, Saskia Leek and Alex Monteith. Named in honour of the late New Zealand artist, Gordon Walters, the prize was established in…
Tentative ten
Wellington’s Weta Digital effects house has begun pre-production on the sequel to Peter Jackson-produced District 9, the “tentatively titled” District 10. Filming is scheduled to begin in South Africa and New Zealand in October….
Philanthropist Awarded
Owner of Kauri Cliffs and Cape Kidnapper’s golf courses Julian Robertson Jnr., 77, named New Zealand first honorary knight in January this year, has been awarded the recipient of the Hedge Fund Industry’s Lifetime…
Happening anew
Former supermodel Rachel Hunter, the voice of shampoo manufacturer Pantene’s famous early ’90s catchphrase, “It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen”, will promote the product again, this time with her daughter, 17-year-old Renee…
Dairy giant expands
New Zealand’s Fonterra Cooperative Group, the world’s biggest dairy exporter, expects a double digit jump in Middle East and Africa sales over the next year as the region’s thirst for milk products grows and…
Davenport’s coup
New Zealand-born chef Phillip Davenport, group executive chef at Bali’s popular Ku De Ta restaurant and bar, discusses his “must-buy ingredient of the moment”, his “best recent dining experience” and his “most embarrassing pantry…
Killer Pinot
“A decade ago, New Zealand growers targeted the bottom 50 per cent of the global pinot noir market, stating it simply wasn’t worth drinking (we agree),” writes The Vancouver Sun’s Anthony Gismondi. “Upon that tenet, they…
Widow’s Wish
Jan Arnold, the widow of legendary mountain guide Rob Hall, who was one of eight people to lose their lives on Mt Everest during a severe storm in 1996, has asked that his body…
Happy Birthday
“New Zealand has marked the Queen’s 84th birthday by rejecting an attempt to abolish the monarchy,” writes Paul Chapman for The Telegraph. A bill that would have set up a referendum on the country becoming…
Crowded House: Don’t Dream It’s Over
The video for the classic Crowded House track, Don’t Dream It’s Over.
Latvian leanings
Nelson-based landscape photographer Craig Potton is holding an exhibition of his works at the Foreign Art Museum in Riga Castle, Latvia. The Riga exhibition takes a journey through New Zealand, beginning on the windswept…
Especially select
New Zealanders have a love of coffee, wine, water and an extraordinary, “relentless” particularity for those beverages, for dogs, sport, even driveways and beech trees, writes Peter Miller for Seattle news site Crosscut. “Water…
