News of New Zealanders via Global Media

Seriously moving

Seriously moving

Choreographer Neil Ieremia’s contemporary dance group Black Grace’s Gathering Clouds performance in February at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre is reviewed in the New Jersey State Ledger. Reviewer Robert Johnson writes: “Black Grace takes its dancing…

Science for a change

Science for a change

Kumeu neuroscientist and author of The Winner’s Bible Dr Kerry Spackman shares his day, and his work, as part of the Guardian’s Nine to Five series, beginning with a run, which for Spackman is…

Short film revolution

Short film revolution

“Could 2010 be the year that New Zealand short filmmakers take over the world?” asks Indie Wire’s Kim Adelman. “The year began promisingly as Mark Albiston and Louis Sutherland’s The Six Dollar Fifty Man…

Debut in Dayton

Debut in Dayton

Pianist Justin Bird, 25, New Zealand’s young musician of the year in 2002, recently played a solo concert at Shiloh Church in Dayton, Ohio as part of the city’s final Soirees Musicales Piano Series….

Graceful turns with clouds

Graceful turns with clouds

Contemporary dance company Black Grace is touring the US making their debut at Princeton University’s McCarter Theatre in late February, performing their signature work “Minoi” and their latest work “Gathering Clouds”. One…

Way of life applauded

Way of life applauded

Hawkes Bay couple Tom and Barbara Burstyn’s documentary This Way of Life about a Maori family living a subsistence lifestyle has screened at the Berlin Film Festival to full houses and a Jury…

Memories of plasma

Memories of plasma

The Lovely Bones director Peter Jackson “should forswear sugar next time and reintroduce himself to plasma, brain matter, puke, shit and intestines; all the elements that gave his earlier, sicker, funnier films their kick”,…

Lauded for a lifetime

Lauded for a lifetime

Soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa will be presented with a lifetime achievement award at the 11th annual Classical Brits to be held at the Royal Albert Hall on May 13. Dame Kiri joins a…

Smokin’ in the US

Smokin’ in the US

Singer/songwriter Gin Wigmore makes her US debut in March playing a selection of southern tour dates with US band Citizen Cope. Auckland-born Wigmore, 23, will release her first full-length, Holy Smoke, March 16 via…

Sounds of old and new

Sounds of old and new

The New Zealand String Quartet recently performed a programme entitled “East Meets West” at Ithaca College’s Ford Hall. The programme featured music by Beethoven, Shostakovich and contemporary Chinese, Japanese and Cambodian composers. Quartet member…

Seizing the Spirit

Seizing the Spirit

Crowded House are proving popular in the UK as a second concert at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall was added “due to phenomenal demand after tickets for the first night went on sale,” the Express &…

McAlpine Stylish By Design

McAlpine Stylish By Design

The international career of Waiuku-born, Elam-educated film designer Andrew McAlpine continues to unfurl in ever-larger circles. McAlpine’s most recently-designed film, An Education (produced by Wellington-born Finola Dwyer) is nominated for Best Picture at…

Weta woos Hollywood

Weta woos Hollywood

Wellington-based Weta Digital, which was behind the effects work on blockbusters Avatar and District 9, has been nominated for nine Academy Awards; CNET Asia’s Daniel Terdiman says the “accolades may finally make Weta a…

Abattoirs maketh the man

Abattoirs maketh the man

Director Martin Campbell is “one of the world’s most revered action directors, twice rescuing the Bond franchise” writes the Guardian’s John Patterson. Now Campbell has returned to Edge of Darkness, the 1980s TV drama…

Barclay a big presence

Barclay a big presence

Auckland actress Emily Barclay, 25, “is in no danger of not being cast” and “right now is one of the hottest new talents in the business — on stage and on screen”, writes The…

Campbell’s Big Gun

Campbell’s Big Gun

Hastings-born director Martin Campbell, 66, best known for the 2006 Bond film Casino Royale, has told the Los Angeles Times that “there was nobody else” but Mel Gibson for the role of Boston cop…

East Coast boy in Utah

East Coast boy in Utah

Director Taika Waititi’s film Boy, which premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, “marks a step up in maturity” and “elaborates on a style that primarily belongs to his own unique universe, according…

Part of the whole

Part of the whole

New Zealand-born choreographer and video artist Olive Bieringa — who with American Otto Ramstad form the San Francisco-based BodyCartography Project — …

Togaless

Togaless

Actress Lucy Lawless “is attracting a lot of attention for her latest character — not that the New Zealand actress isn’t used to recognition,”…

Further Accolades for Brown

Further Accolades for Brown

Ladyhawke is up for another music gong this month having been nominated for a BRIT best International Female Solo Artist award. Masterton-born Pip Brown, 30, will compete with big name stars Lady Gaga, Rihanna,…

Improbable classic

Improbable classic

Director Jane Campion’s 1993 film The Piano is considered a “classic” of the cinema by the Times which examines the merits of the film starring New Zealand actress Anna Paquin, Holly Hunter and Harvey…

Stepping off the deck

Stepping off the deck

For the past 20 years, Sir Peter Blake’s widow Pippa Blake has lived on the Chichester harbour sea front in a 1940s bungalow where just recently “a forward-thinking architect tore down walls, built a…

Fast friends

Fast friends

Rose McIver arrives at New York’s Griffith Observatory “fashionably on time” to meet fellow Lovely Bones actress Saoirse Ronan for a tour …

Shadows and light

Shadows and light

New Zealand choreographer Lemi Ponifasio’s “disturbing, visually beautiful” Tempest: without a body, recently performed as part of the Sydney Festival, is reviewed by The Australian’s Deborah Jones who describes Tempest as a production with…

McIver learns from best

McIver learns from best

New Zealand actress Rose McIver, 22, plays the younger sister to Saoirse Ronan in Peter Jackson’s thriller The Lovely Bones. Teen Hollywood talks to McIver about working with stars Ronan, 15, and Susan Sarandon….

Ruthless makes US list

Ruthless makes US list

New Zealand romance writer Natalie Anderson’s novel Ruthless Boss, Royal Mistress recently featured in USA Today’s top 150 books sold over the New Year. Her book about a “billionaire businessman who teaches a spoiled…

Spartacus Debuts in US

Spartacus Debuts in US

Former warrior princess Lucy Lawless stars as Lucretia in Spartacus: Blood and Sand, “a sword-and-sandals epic that Starz, the US premium cable network, rolls out January 22”. Spartacus is a flashy, big-budget attempt to…

Likened to Lennon

Likened to Lennon

Christchurch singer-songwriter James Milne, or as he is otherwise known, Lawrence Arabia, “can sound uncannily like John Lennon” writes Times Online reviewer Mark Edwards. “Exactly why Milne chose his pseudonym isn’t clear; this isn’t…

Ideal weather for tea

Ideal weather for tea

Katherine Mansfield’s 1922 short story The Garden Party provides summery inspiration for Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel writer Kristyna Wentz-Graff who includes recipes for making club sandwiches, date scones and pavlova as part of a monthly…

Attention seeker

Attention seeker

“A little bit of Clement can go a long way,” writes Katey Rich for US entertainment site Cinema Blend.com. Quiet Earth is reporting that Clement, “who was so woefully underused in Gentlemen Broncos”,…

Knighthood for Jackson

Knighthood for Jackson

Director Peter Jackson was among five New Zealanders to become knights or dames after a return to New Year’s honours. Former Prime Minister Helen Clark — who axed British honours while in office —…

Tough cherub

Tough cherub

Auckland singer Gin Wigmore, 23, is included alongside Little Boots, Peaches and Megan Washington in Australian magazine Yen, in an article called ‘All the Single Ladies’ , which says: “They may not have rated…

Manhire made happy

Manhire made happy

Director of Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters and New Zealand’s inaugural poet laureate Bill Manhire has had a poem — My Childhood In Ireland — published in The New Yorker. It is…

Two Globe Nominations

Two Globe Nominations

New Zealand-raised actress Anna Paquin has been nominated for two best actress Golden Globes in her roles as Sookie Stackhouse in True Blood and playing the lead in made-for-TV movie The Courageous Heart of…

House of Pallets

House of Pallets

Auckland sculptor Aaron McConchie’s Chep pallet installation “c” is on display at Manukau City’s Highbrook Business Park through January 9. The exhibit consists of nine pyramid-like structures that resembles a house of cards. Each…

Return to self

Return to self

Flight of the Conchords duo Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement have ended their HBO series after two seasons. On their website, the pair said: “We’re very proud of the two seasons we made, and…

Boondigga takes on US

Boondigga takes on US

Wellington band Fat Freddy’s Drop recently played three sell-out shows on the West Coast of the United States. The seven-piece dub outfit has been together for nearly a decade, yet only recently released its…

Meeting of minds

Meeting of minds

New Zealanders director Jane Campion, 55, and actress Kerry Fox, 43, tell The Independent on Sunday how they both came to meet. Fox recalls: “I walked into the audition for An Angel at My…

Aotearoa soul infectious

Aotearoa soul infectious

“There’s a place far from Jamaica where old-school reggae still rules: New Zealand,” writes Cary Darling for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “Such traditionalists as Katchafire and the Black Seeds, as well as more electro…

Angelic sequel

Angelic sequel

Wellington author Elizabeth Knox’s latest – a sequel to her 1998 prize-winner The Vintner’s Luck entitled The Angel’s Cut – has been “published to strong praise” writes the Courier Mail’s Kathleen Noonan. The Vintner’s…

Bevan Honoured in NY

Bevan Honoured in NY

Queenstown-born, London-based Academy Award-nominated film producer Tim Bevan will be presented with a career tribute at the 19th annual Gotham Independent Film Awards in New York on November 30. Bevan has worked as producer…

Top 50 title for Wright

Top 50 title for Wright

Ghost Dance, the 2004 memoir by dancer and choreographer Douglas Wright, has been selected in Richard Canning’s Fifty Gay & Lesbian Books Everybody Must Read (Alyson Books, New York, 2009). ‘This untypical…

Together in recovery

Together in recovery

Stroke: Songs for Chris Knox, a benefit compilation for the Auckland musician who suffered a debilitating stroke in June, has been released in New Zealand on Knox’s own A Major Label, proceeds of which…

Catton shortlisted

Catton shortlisted

Wellington author Eleanor Catton, shortlisted for the 2009 Guardian first book award for her debut novel The Rehearsal, talks to the newspaper about the book’s beginnings, its inspiration and the “hardest bits”. “In…

Blissful ending

Blissful ending

The Phoenix Foundation’s latest album Happy Ending has been given five stars by The Independent’s Andy Gill who says the Wellington sextet “are surely the most potent band to come out of New Zealand…

Arias for Chanteuse

Arias for Chanteuse

Ladyhawke picked up two awards in the breakthrough single and album categories at the recent 2009 Australian Music Awards (Arias). The 30-year-old singer, originally from Masterton, performed her single ‘My Delirium’ live at the…

Armed with laughter

Armed with laughter

“Going to a Topp Twins gig in New Zealand is a bit like going to a thousand-strong family reunion,” writes Stephanie Bunbury for The Age. “Up front are Jools and Lynda Topp, 51-year-old identical…

Books come to life

Books come to life

Colenso BBDO are behind a stop-motion animated film developed for the New Zealand Book Council called Going West, which was created by UK design team Andersen M Studio and launched on YouTube in…

Televised Aliens

Televised Aliens

Wellington-based Weta Workshop is working with Disney XD on a television movie called Skyrunners creating, what the star of the show American Kelly Blatz describes as, a “unique and frightening … transparent” alien “with…

Parliamentary eyesore

Parliamentary eyesore

The Beehive has been rated among the world’s ten ugliest buildings, coming in at number three on a list decided by editors and members of the popular online Virtual Tourist travel network. Virtual Tourist’s…

Walker the Idol

Walker the Idol

New Zealand-raised eighteen-year-old Stan Walker has been crowned Australian Idol winning a AU$200,000 artist’s development fund and a recording contract with Sony. Described as a soul singer, Walker, who is a shop assistant in…

Win on the wind

Win on the wind

Nelson-born sculptor Phil Price, 44, has won the Allens Arthur Robinson People’s Choice Prize of AU$5000 for his sculpture “Morpheus”, which was part of the 18-day exhibition “Sculpture by the Sea” in Bondi. Price…

Saving grace

Saving grace

New Zealand-raised cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh is praised for his work on the Mira Nair-directed film Amelia, about pioneering American aviatrix Amelia Earhart. The Observer’s Philip French writes that the film is “beautifully photographed” by…

Auckland’s Happy Herd

Auckland’s Happy Herd

In January 2010, the California Department of Food and Agriculture will film a new series of 10 California “Happy Cows” commercials in Auckland, taking advantage of New Zealand’s low production costs, but much to…

Teaching top form

Teaching top form

Kiri Te Kanawa, who recently gave a recital at Washington, DC’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, also has a speaking role as the Duchess of Krakenthorp in Donizetti’s comedy The Daughter…

Future Bright in Print

Future Bright in Print

The future of New Zealand’s 23 daily newspapers is bright and not likely to follow international trends of downsizing. Wairarapa-based publisher and writer Ian Grant said the country’s small regionally-based newspaper market continued to…