Faceless Fame

As the voice of Star Wars: Episode II character Tuan We, NZ actress Rena Owen has added a strange new dimension to her working life. Now based in LA,…

New Romantics

Young urban women in NZ and Australia are the target market for a recently re-vamped Mills & Boon series. Publisher Harlequin hopes to snare Sex & The City…

Bone people a modern classic

Keri Hulme’s the bone people featured in a Guardian poll of the Top 50 novels by women writers. The NZ Booker Prize winner sits alongside Alice Walker’s The Color…

Kiwi gives life to Coppelia

NZer Malcolm Burn was the guest choreographer for Ballet Tech Ohio’s production of Frederic Franklin’s Coppelia. Currently associate artistic director of the Richmond Ballet, Burns’ 25-year career includes stints…

People together: NZ re-imagined

CBC critic, Eleanor Watchel, travelled through NZ to interview some of NZ’s literary animals in their natural habitats. The Writers & Company radio special celebrated a literary landscape that…

Ballet Bebe

NZ ballet export Bebe Eversfield profiled in the Victoria Times. Now 78, Eversfield won a government scholarship to study at London’s prestigious Sadler’s Wells Company (now the Royal Ballet)…

Tom cruises off

Actor Tom Cruise has bid farewell to Taranaki, the place he called home for the past 4 months. The Hollywood A-lister was on location filming The Last Samurai; an…

Capturing the uncanny

Works by Wellington based artist Pippa Sanderson are currently on show at Edmonton’s Harcourt House Gallery. Her exhibition, The (Un)heimlich Manoeuvre, references Victorian Spiritualism, haunted houses, and Gothic cinematic…

The art of myth-making

Whale Rider director Niki Caro speaks to The Age about the intricate cultural process involved in a “white woman” making a Maori film. Despite early resistance to her involvement,…

Whale Raves: Part 2

Whale Rider‘s Australian release has unleashed a second wave of glowing tributes. The Age: ” sharply observed, warm portrayal of a community … of an indigenous people moving between…

“Sex is cheap, but domination isn’t”

Former NZ university lecturer and academic, Jody Hanson, interviewed in The Age on her newfound role as a dominatrix and writer in Melbourne. Known on the dungeon circuit as…

Whale riding on east (and west) coast

NYTimes’ critic Elvis Mitchell praises Niki Caro’s Whale Rider as having the “inspired resonance of found art wickedly absorbing”, and the quiet charisma of actress Keisha Castle-Hughes.The…

Celebrating Kiwi-ness

Countless international critics have praised the universal themes explored in Niki Caro’s Whale Rider; what a reviewer for the Age finds most impressive is its quintessential Kiwi-ness. “Whale Rider…

D’Acclaimed funny-man

Kiwi comedian Tarun Mohanbhai has taken his acclaimed one-man show – D’Arranged Marriage – across the Tasman, with high-profile stints at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and Sydney Opera…

Peter Robinson: “Migrateur”

Artist Peter Robinson, exhibiting in Berlin, described in ArtForum as ” the profile of the artist as a global player … a migrateur in the emphatic sense.” Aware of…

Variation the key to “Briwi’s” success

NZ born popster Daniel Bedingfield profiled in the Philippine Star. “You know how an artist will go to great lengths to maintain his style and keep some elements of…

Singing London

Victoria University graduate Wendy Dawn Thompson has won the prestigious Kathleen Ferrier Competition for singing, earning nearly $30,000, a website and a recital at London’s Wigmore Hall. She is…

Boyd baffles in London

The Guardian art critic admits defeat in his attempts to explain Boyd Webb’s short film – Horse and Dog – currently on show at London’s Estorick Collection. Adrian Searle:…

FAQ: “Why (oh God, why)?”

NZer Simon Jansen profiled as online icon of the week in The Scotsman‘s “lazy guide to net culture.” Jansen is a master of asciimation; making moving pictures out of…

Rock’n’roll Road Trip

The Datsuns continue their successful courtship of the US music scene, earning rave reviews across the country. Boston Globe: “It’s a high-energy assault with mammoth guitar riffs, strutting bass…

X-factor

Anna Paquin featured in New York Daily News, one of numerous high-profile interviews given during her hectic promotional tour for X-Men 2. Currently finishing an English major at Columbia…

In His Father’s Image, The Shadow of a Mountain

Peter Hillary interviewed about his own Everest experience and his part in the filming of National Geographic‘s documentary, Surviving Everest. “Our challenge was not just to climb, but to…

Ed MTV: Frontrunning Len Lye Revisited

Aussie indie music treasure, ex-punk and co-founder of the Saints, Ed Kuepper, has written music for six short films made by legendary NZ conceptual artist Len Lye over 50…

The D4: Up Close and Personal

They say the essence of rock and roll is live performance. It’s a mantra for kiwi rockers D4, who are currently touring the US. Boston Daily Globe: “A knockout…

Conchords Take Flight in Melbourne

Kiwi act Flight of the Conchords was voted Best Newcomer at the 17th Annual Melbourne International Comedy Festival, following on from similar accolades at Edinburgh last year. The two-man…

“The Nick Cave of New Zealand literature”

Chad Taylor’s growing international reputation continues to buzz, this time in The Australian. In Electric drug-addled number crunchers negotiate the power cuts of Auckland’s sweltering summer of 1998,…

A New Zealand first

NZ Drama School student James Ashcroft has secured an internship at New York’s prestigious theatre and film company, The Wooster Group. The Wooster Group was founded by actor…

Teen angst pays off

Wellington actress Michelle Ang has been nominated for Australia’s premiere television award (a Logie) for her role in Neighbours. Ang, who has previously appeared in The Tribe and McDonalds…

“The Greatest Rock’n’roll Band in the World at That Moment”

SMH bows down before “snake-hipped Kiwi axe gods,” The Datsuns. The concert review: “When the lights came up it had been barely 70 minutes since the first note and…

Hillary on show

The National Geographic Society’s Explorers Hall in Washington has opened an exhibition to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary’s Everest climb. Curiosities include the ice-axe Hillary used…

Making music behind the scenes

19-year-old New Zealander Martine Hardaker is one of three students featured in an article on the prestigious Violin Making School of America. The four-year program involves more than just…

Hey big spender

Australia’s John Fairfax Holdings Ltd has bought NZ’s top media group – Independent News Limited (INL) – for NZ$1.19 billion. The package includes more than 80 major newspapers and…

Lately I’ve Been Lost it Seems … Jane Austen Spiced-up

Gurinda Chadha – director of international hit Bend it Like Beckham – has cast Kiwi actor Martin Henderson as Mr Darcy in her musical version of Pride and Prejudice….

Acting up

NZ actor Daniel Gillies (Street Legal) is on the brink of international stardom, with forthcoming roles in Hollywood blockbusters SpiderMan 2 and Head in the Clouds, opposite Charlize…

Scream queen

“Eye-catching” sculptures and drawings by ex-pat Kiwi Francis Upritchard are currently on show at London’s form-setting Institute of Contemporary Art, as part of the annual Beck’s Futures award exhibition….

Wellywood Weighs In

An Anna Fifield Financial Times feature reviews the remarkable growth of the NZ film industry in the wake of its latest coup: Peter Jackson’s King Kong. “For the country’s…

Shooting from the lip

Legendary NZ-born war correspondent, Peter Arnett, has again found himself in the midst of political controversy. NBC and National Geographic fired Arnett after he stated on Iraqi state television…

Jackson (and NZ) goes ape

Watch out Sky Tower: Peter Jackson is to direct a remake of King Kong for Universal Pictures. The epic production will be filmed on location in NZ and released…

The Book of Fame (and fortune) for Lloyd Jones

Lloyd Jones’ The Book of Fame has won the $40,000 biennial Tasmania Pacific Fiction Prize, Australia’s most lucrative literary award. The Book of Fame is a poetic national myth-making…

Local Film; Universal Message

Niki Caro’s Whale Rider was the star attraction at the annual Boston International Festival of Women’s Cinema. According to organisers, the “breathtakingly luminous” film perfectly captured the festival’s central…

Boyens on Rings writing

Writer Philippa Boyens speaks out on her own epic quest; adapting the Lord of the Rings trilogy for the screen. With her collaborators Walsh, Jackson and Sinclair, Boyens battled…

One GPS to find them all

Detroit Free Press feature on Rings tourism recommends Ian Brodie’s Lord of the Rings Location Book. One for the truly dedicated, the guide offers the exact coordinates of incidental…

Edge intelligence: Donaldson delivers

Observer reviews The Recruit, the latest Hollywood offering from one of NZ cinema’s pioners, LA-based Roger Donaldson. “Slick and highly enjoyable … scenes of induction and seduction have an…

Jackson fan club continued…

Michael Scragow, former staff writer for The New Yorker and Rolling Stone, airs his opinions on this year’s Oscars. “I am just floored that Peter Jackson was not nominated…

For Those About the Rock the Globe

The Datsuns have mounted a full-scale global aural assault: Boston Daily Globe: “It’s a high-energy assault with mammoth guitar riffs, strutting bass, and raw vocals that cartwheel into…

Voters Under Ring’s Influence

The Lord of the Rings trilogy was voted second most influential movie/s of the last 75 years in a poll for BBC News Online, ahead of Citizen Kane, the…

Auckland Loves Lucy

American broadcaster CBS is the latest offshore company to take advantage of New Zealand as a production location. Currently shooting in Auckland is Redhead: The Lucille Ball Story, a…

A Fond Farewell

Washington Post pays tribute to Donald McCarten, the NZ-born former art director of US News & World Report magazine. McCarten studied art in NZ and London before moving into…

Everest: The Next Generation

Peter Hillary and Jamling Norgay have collaborated on a National Geographic documentary about Mount Everest to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their fathers’ pioneering climb. Both have reached the…

Winning-over Delhi bellies

The Taj Palace Hotel in Delhi held a NZ food festival in honour of The Two Towers‘ Indian release. The event, organised by the NZ Trade Commission, aimed…

The singing accountant

Front page Weekend Australian feature on “Kiwi heart-throb” Teddy Tahu Rhodes hails the former accountant from Christchurch as “Australian opera’s new lead.” “While his body, all 192cm of it,…

What becomes of the faint-hearted?

Monica McWilliams of Northern Ireland’s Women’s Coalition names Once Were Warriors as her all-time favourite flick in a survey by Belfast Film Festival organisers. She describes it as…

Octopus’s Garden

Work by NZ artist Ani O’Neill is currently on show at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art as part of an exhibition exploring artistic interaction with the ocean, Liquid…

Hollywood hits the west coast

A charity screening of Andrew Niccol’s Simone was held in his hometown of Paraparaumu, March 24. According to father Don Niccol, Simone “cocks a snook” at Hollywood by attacking…

Dirty Deeds Earn Place on Hall of Fame

Oz-rockers AC/DC have been inducted to the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as one of the top five best-selling bands in U.S history. NZ drummer Phil Rudd…

A view from the edge: Topp Twins bring the noise

NZ musicians The Topp Twins and Jenny Morris played at Melbourne’s 27th Port Fairy Folk Festival. While Morris’ act was comparatively apolitical, the Twins pointed the finger at “stupid…