On The Cheap In Auckland
Auckland Art Gallery is one of a “trifecta of frugal activities” recommended by The New York Times’ Seth Kugel on “a day and a half” visit to the City of Sails. “After…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Up and Coming in Los Angeles
Auckland-born Celine Wallace is rapidly gaining notoriety as an up and coming actress in Los Angeles, where she performs regularly at The Ruskin Group Theatre in Santa Monica as part of the LA Café…
Hohepa’s Fearsome High Notes
“Based on a true story spanning nearly 150 years, Hohepa lays bare some of New Zealand’s most painful wounds — and seeks to heal them through music,” Mike Silverman of the Associated Press writes. “The opera,…
Hooking Syllables At SXSW
New Zealand singer Kimbra, 21, is on tour in the United States, where she spent four days at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, “playing the biggest sponsored parties along with…
What They’re Reading
Katherine Mansfield’s 1918 story Je Ne Parles Pas Français is included in the New Yorker’s ‘What We’re Reading’ column, a selection of notes from the staff on their literary engagements of the week. Andrew Mantz writes:…
Big British Hopes
I Am Giant, a four-piece band formerly of Auckland and now based in London, explain their reasons for relocation in an interview with The New Paper ahead of the group’s Singapore gig at Hard…
Phantom Restored In NZ
New Zealand has done wonders for the health of former Phantom of the Opera and Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em star Michael Crawford. Seventy-year-old Crawford said moving to New Zealand had cured him of the chronic…
Benefits Of Filming On The Cheap
Director of Western Good for Nothing, New Zealander Mike Wallis, discusses the benefits of making a film with little money in The Huffington Post’s column ‘The Blog’. “With a limited amount of funds to…
Juke Joint Revelations
In the wake of her successful debut album Holy Smoke, Auckland-born songstress Gin Wigmore talks about the process which led to her second, the blues-inspired Gravel and Wine, a sophomore album high on sass with numbers…
Worth The Wait
Ladyhawke, a.k.a. Pip Brown, 32, features in the Guardian’s ‘The Week in Music — in pictures’ gallery performing a free in-store gig at Rough Trade, east London. The release of Brown’s highly-anticipated second album Anxiety has been postponed…
Attention-Seeking TV Role
Fourteen-year-old Porirua actress Stefania Owen will play Dorrit, Carrie Bradshaw’s younger rebellious sister in The Carrie Diaries, the prequel of the iconic television series Sex and the City. Set in the 1980s, the show will follow…
Coney Lights Up The Stage
Ex-New Zealand cricket captain and stage lighting designer Wellington-born Jeremy Coney, 59, lights up a London production of The Leisure Society, starring former British model Agyness Dean. “An air of glamour surrounds this French-Canadian import…
Memorable Boy Grows On You
“Next year’s Oscars, if they were to include the just-for-fun idea of outstanding performance by a setting, should have a nominee in Boy,” The New York Times movie critic David DeWitt expounds. “This movie from New Zealand,…
Dave Takes Avalanche On Tour
Auckland folk band Avalanche City has signed to Roadrunner Records for distribution in North America, releasing the four-track Love Love Love EP on 3 April. Avalanche City is the brainchild of Dave Baxter, a singer songwriter…
Shooting Vampires In NZ
New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi — whose 2010 film Boy was recently released in the United States — talks to Rotten Tomatoes about his five favourite films and his upcoming vampire movie plans with Flight of…
Distinctively World Famous
“Today, of 164 buildings constructed between 1920 and 1940, 140 remain, forming a time capsule of design elements — zigzags, sunbursts, Egyptian motifs and geometric patterns — that characterize the style and garner…
NZ Film for Manila Filmgoers
“While New Zealand may primarily be known as the setting of the Lord of the Rings franchise and having tons of sheep, one look at the lineup of the first-ever New Zealand Film Festival is enough…
Unfinished Business
Ahead of the “highly anticipated” sequel to Sione’s Wedding, actor Robbie Magasiva, 40, is in Sydney for a Q & A at the Liverpool Event Cinemas to promote Sione’s 2: Unfinished Business. The latest instalment is…
Experimental Eugenia In NY
New Zealand playwright Lorae Parry’s Eugenia will be performed at the State University of New York (SUNY) from 1-11 March. The play is a debut for the region, having been performed only once in the United…
Affecting Festival Lineup
One of this year’s New Zealand International Festival of the Arts features will be the New Zealand Opera production, Hohepa, which premieres on 15 March. It tells the tragic tale of Maori chief Hohepa Te…
Up to No Good in the Caitlins
Flight of the Conchord Bret McKenzie and Australian comedian Hamish Blake star in a screwball manslaughter comedy who end up on the road trip of their lives in the feature film Two Little Boys,…
Downtime In The Trailer
Actor Sam Neill, who is starring in the US television series Alcatraz, has convinced his famous friends to compile Top 10 lists of their favourite songs, publishing them on the website for his boutique winery,
More Tintin Adventures
Peter Jackson will direct the second film in the planned Tintin trilogy, following the success of the first film in the series, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. Director Steven Spielberg said…
Talented Teen Enchants
Director Pietra Brettkelly’s documentary Maori Boy Genius, which premiered at this month’s Berlinale, tracks 16-year-old Tuhoe prodigy Ngaa Rauuira Pumanawawhiti as he attends summer school at Yale and applies to study there full-time. “Ngaa carries…
Glue And Poetry In NY
For two years, owner of Christchurch-based Phantom Billstickers, Jim Wilson travelled throughout the United States putting poem posters by New Zealand poets on bollards, walls and in cafes and stores. As a result of…
Anxiety Android App Out
Ahead of the March release of her second album Anxiety, Masterton-born musician Ladyhawke has an app out in advance to promote it available on Android and iPhones. Guardian weekly apps review column writes: “Besides news, tweets and…
Gibbs Farm Unprecedented
“On a recent trip to New Zealand I was forced to meditate on the term ‘A Big Fish in a Small Sea,’” award-winning Sydney-based architect and designer Jon King writes. “For one I caught…
Thinking About The Moment
New Zealand sound recordist Rob Mayes who divides his time between Christchurch and Tokyo, recently worked on the Ridley Scott-produced Don’t Think, a Chemical Brothers feature film shot at the Fuji Rock Festival,…
Innovative From Back To Back
New Zealand band The Renderers’ new record A Rocket into Nothing is reviewed on music site Pop Matters. “Even among the angular, bizarre likes of the Clean and the 3Ds, the Renderers have always been outliers….
Fortunately For Paul
In his spare time, when not drumming for Canadian singer Feist, New Zealand-born musician Lucky Paul “makes densely hypnotic, drum-heavy dream-pop for label somethinksounds.” “Elephant Island, the follow-up to last year’s well-received The Slow…
Miramar’s Awakening
“Until Sir Peter Jackson and his producer Jamie Selkirk made films in Miramar in the 1990s, the Wellington suburb was sleepy,” David Burton writes for Monocle. “‘There was tumbleweed, rolling down the street,’ jokes…
Uncompromised Magic
The Royal New Zealand Ballet performed Angelina Ballerina’s Big Audition, which featured ballet, hip hop, contemporary dance, tap dancing and “a little bit of magic”, at Sydney’s State Theatre in January. “Children know…
Beats Picking Tomatoes
Wellington-based filmmaker Tusi Tumasese, 35, director of Oscar-nominated feature The Orator, explains to The West Australian why he left Samoa at the age of 18. “My mum sent me over to New Zealand because I was getting…
It’s Gone To His Head
Bret McKenzie celebrated his Oscar nomination for best song with some Vegemite and toast. McKenzie, who wrote the meta-power ballad ‘Man or Muppet’ for The Muppets, is up against ‘Real in Rio’ from Rio: The Movie,…
Lucretia Is Back For More
Auckland-born actress Lucy Lawless, 43, returns to the American small screen as Lucretia in Spartacus: Vengeance, and the writers were “really rude” to her this season she says. “They were really rude. Usually, they are…
Sami And Fraser Play Canada
Auckland-born actress Madeline Sami stars in Toa Fraser’s award-winning No. 2, a play the pair first collaborated on in 1999 and which is currently touring Canada. When No. 2 opened in Calgary’s Epcor Centre’s Engineered Theatre in…
Documenting Innocence
Director Peter Jackson believes former Death Row inmate Damien Echols would be dead now if not for 1996 documentary, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, that cast doubt on the man’s guilt…
Good For American Cinemas
Dunedin director Mike Wallis’ budget western Good for Nothing will become the first self-funded New Zealand film to be released in United States cinemas from next month. Wallis used the landscapes of Central Otago…
National Treasure On Tour
“Beloved at home but never exactly part of the mainstream, McGlashan has maintained a level of consistency over both group and solo releases, which has earned him great respect within his peer group…
These Cats Kick A**
New Zealand heavy metal band Legacy of Disorder are an “exception” to the “formulaic” and “pointless growls” of the last decade or so according to the Examiner’s David Garlow. “This band has parts Pantera,…
With A Cryptic Brusqueness
New Zealand actor Sam Neill, 64, stars in Lost creator J. J. Abrams’ drama series Alcatraz, which premiered on American channel Fox this month. “The premise: The orderly closing of the prison on Alcatraz in 1963 was…
Lads On Film Make Festival
Duncan Sarkies’ film Two Little Boys, featuring Bret McKenzie and Australian actor Hamish Blake, will premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, screening in the Generation section, in February. The film is described as an irreverent…
Critic’s Choose McKenzie
Wellington-born comedian Bret McKenzie, 35, has trumped Elton John and Mary J. Blige to win the Critics’ Choice best song award for ‘Life’s a Happy Song’, which he penned for the recently-released The Muppets movie as…
Blogging About Bollywood
New Zealand-based Vanessa Barnes, who comes from an un-named “small provincial town”, loves Indian film, so she writes about it on her blog ‘Shahrukh is Love’, which includes reviews of over 130 Bollywood…
Secret Poi Swinging In NY
New York fire poi dancers are flouting fire restrictions and meeting stealthily on top of city rooftops to attend secret classes, where students are careful to remove any traces of their activity afterward….
Electrifying In The Tropics
The Naked and Famous play Bangkok’s Moonstar Studio on 17 January and are “set to electrify Thai audiences with alternative pop and rock songs, including Young Blood and Punching in a Dream.” “The quintet…
Real Life Evil On Wheels
The other half of comedy duo Flight of the Conchords Jemaine Clement’s “delightfully bizarre taste in costumes carries on,” Huffington Post correspondent Jordan Zakarin writes, describing Clement’s latest get-up for his role as the evil Boris…
Auckland’s Movie Coup
Filming begins in Auckland on Hollywood blockbuster, WWII political-thriller Emperor this month at Henderson’s Auckland Film Studios. Lost heartthrob Matthew Fox, 45, stars. Inspired by true events, Emperor is an epic story of love and understanding set amidst the uncertainties…
Thank You New Zealand
“Once again I am pleased to thank New Zealand. No country, outside of my native United States, has treated me better than New Zealand. New Zealand has added me to a list of many…
Excellent Website Banner
American Tom Peters, writer on business management practices and best-known for In Search of Excellence, is so enamoured with New Zealand, his website features a New Zealand-themed banner. The site announced: “Tom and his wife,…
Tracing A Seabird Legacy
Dunedin-born author and photographer Neville Peat’s latest book Seabird Genius: The Story of L.E. Richdale, the Royal Albatross, and the Yellow-eyed Penguin, is included in the Guardian’s Christmas ‘Birdbooker Report’. “ the first biography…
Time Is Really Money
Kapiti-born screenwriter, producer, and director Andrew Niccol’s latest blockbuster In Time, “a fiendishly clever sci-fi concept,” starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried, is reviewed in the Cyprus Mail. “The setting’s the thing, a world where time…
Memorable In Margaret
New Zealand-raised True Blood star Anna Paquin, 29, graced the cover of LA Weekly’s Winter Film Issue, which named Margaret — Paquin plays the lead as teenager Lisa — as the best film of the year. The film was shot…
Oddball Wins Over Director
The Peter Jackson-produced and Steven Spielberg-directed 3-D performance-capture film The Adventures of Tintin opens in the United States this week just ahead of the film’s New Zealand release. The Adventures of Tintin arrives in the US as…
Ridiculously Handsome Nomads
The biggest thing to happen to New Zealand since Peter Jackson’s makeover is Auckland band The Naked and Famous according to Aidin Vaziri writing for the San Francisco Chronicle. “ a…
Heirlooms Of Past For Future
‘Maori — Their Treasures Have a Soul,’ an exhibition of Maori art and artifacts at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris on through 22 January, juxtaposes ancestral heirlooms with contemporary art, architecture, photography, film…
