Mount Taranakiyama
Taranaki’s eponymous mountain is a suitable double for Mount Fuji, or so thinks Edward Zwick (Glory, Legends of the Fall) who will direct Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai later this year. New Zealand’s…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Photographer and philanthropist
Internationally renowned baby photographer, nz-edged Anne Geddes, was honoured at the 38th Annual Childhelp USA Humanitarian Awards in May. As well as marketing a highly successful line of calendars, gift-cards, books and baby-wear,…
On the Edge of Your … Chair
Following in the Popstars tradition of grand contributions to global pop culture NZ’s gift to the gameshow format has former tennis star John McEnroe signed on with the BBC to front a ten-series run…
Bug Movie 2002:
“What do you get when you cross toxic waste with a bunch of exotic spiders? Eaten.” The Washington Post gives the skinny on Eight Legged Freaks – the feature debut for Kiwi director…
Life and Loves …
NZEdged author Fay Weldon traverses a contradictory, but never dull life, in her autobiography Auto de Fay and finds her muse in the edge: “Always! Yes, always! I wanted to see more, it was…
David Low – Century’s Best Cartoonist – On Show
David Low, the New Zealand master satirist “with an outsider’s perspective” and acclaimed as the Twentieth Century’s greatest cartoonist has his work revisited (including his most famous caricature Colonel Blimp) in a major exhibition…
The Piano Makes All Time A-List
Jane Campion’s The Piano seated in esteemed company in The A List: The National Society of Film Critics’ 100 Essential Films, edited by Jay Carr.
The Piano
Jane Campion’s The Piano seated in esteemed company in The A List: The National Society of Film Critics’ 1 Essential Films, edited by Jay Carr.
Kiwi Sites in Webby Race
Two Christchurch based websites are in the running for Webbies – the internet version of the Oscars. They are University of Canterbury Philosophy of Art Professor Denis Dutton’s brain-tickling Arts and Letters Daily…
One Giant Leap
“New Zealand newcomer Whiri Mako Black’s haunting and silken soulfulness” joins Robbie Williams, Horace Andy, Michael Stipe, Michael Franti, Nenah Cherry and Grant Lee Buffalo in a celebration of world music on the collection…
Rain: “under the surreal glare of a sunburnt hangover”
“A detached study of sleepy domestic torpor seizing up into tragic desperation, Christine Jeffs’s debut feature, Rain, bears resemblance to The Virgin Suicides and Ratcatcher Jeffs’s compositions are clean and evocative; and aided…
The Datsuns: the future of rock’n’roll?
dotmusic revs up Kiwi rockers The Datsuns. “four stick-thin, long-haired, fresh-faced, sinful-souled boys from Cambridge, New Zealand, and the latest genius rock’n’roll band to swarm on London”. Accompanied by the same feeding frenzy that…
Kiri to sing at Palace & Castle
Opera diva Kiri Te Kanawa will sing at Buckingham Palace June 1 as Queen Elizabeth celebrates her Golden Jubilee party. Taking the stage alongside Kiri will be Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and opera’s latest…
Ta Moko on Show
Time reviews Skin Deep, a history of Western tattooing currently on show at London’s National Maritime Museum. The exhibit traces the practice back to its Polynesian roots, beginning its official documentation with Cook’s 1768 voyage to NZ….
Karl Popper’s NZEdged Legacy
Roger James in the The Guardian ponders the centenary of the birth of one of the C20th most original (and controversial) thinkers, philosopher Karl Popper. In an affirmation of edge theory Popper’s most influential…
Acid Rain
“This New Zealand coming-of-age movie isn’t really about anything. When it’s this rich and luscious, who cares?” Direction and acting applauded in Christine Jeff’s debut feature adaptation of Kirsty Gunn’s novella Rain. “A richly detailed movie.” Salon’s…
Soft edge scenery?
BBC adaptation of Arthur Conan-Doyle’s dinosaur romp The Lost World: shot “against the glorious backdrop of New Zealand’s South Island … New Zealand offered diverse landscapes in relatively easy conditions. “New Zealand has a…
Finn Family Fun
A laid back Tim Finn ponders his career, fatherhood, his NZ-homecoming, getting picked up by Iggy Pop, and more on the eve of an Aussie tour and muses on the power of song:…
Legacy of Letters
LA Times special focuses on Katherine Mansfield’s Wellington. “Considered one of the 20th century’s finest short story writers” – and the only one to make Virginia Woolf jealous – Mansfield has remained…
Writer’s block
“The literary traffic across the Tasman isn’t as brisk as it should be. Much good writing has to come from Auckland or Wellington to Australia by way of publication in London; and New Zealand…
The Empire Strikes Back
The SMH finds Tem Morrison carrying the antipodean banner in the new Star Wars blockbuster, Episode II: Attack of the Clones – the latest installment of George Lucas’s epic fantasy: “The best…
Bryan Drake Remembered
New Zealand-born baritone Bryan Drake has died in London aged 76. A “fine musician with an equable temperament and warm personality”, Drake will be particularly remembered for his long association with Benjamin Britten and his…
Westenra captivates Wembley
NZ singing prodigy Hayley Westenra accompanies Russell “The Voice” Watson to a sold-out Wembley Stadium and provides some sonar respite in a Telegraph review of Russell’s talents. “At Wembley, he was joined by…
Improv Bandits steal America’s Cup
NZ’s Improv Bandits are NZ’s latest world champions having won the Super Cage Match Championship at the Chicago Improv Festival in the USA. Beating off “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” wannabes from across…
Edge Triple play
Three New Zealanders – Russell Crowe (no. 28), Peter Jackson (no. 41), and Tim Bevan (no. 51=) feature in Premeire Magazine’s 2002 Power List of the most influential people in Hollywood.
Laid back Luna lover’s rock
Indie rock icon Dean Wareham (son of NYNZer businessman and author John Wareham) and lead singer of Luna (“they of the lovely and atmospheric guitar ballads and frontman Dean Wareham’s priceless, Ivy-grade lovelorn quibblings”)…
Vanity Fair enough
Ex-Shorties original Martin Henderson, after a stint across the ditch, goes west to LA and hits the big-time featuring in Vanity Fair’s annual hyping Hollywood photo essay for his part in the upcoming Windtalkers….
“A work of almost perfect pitch”
CK Stead’s new novel The Secret History of Modernism reviewed inThe Age: “Stead is very clever and he’s comfortable on this ground, patrolling that sometimes misty territory between truth and invention, between history and…
Tower de force
Pictures from Two Towers, the second instalment of Lord of the Rings, can be viewed in this Sun Online special.
Nabokov’s Butterflies
The Brian Boyd (University of Auckland Professor and the world’s leading Nabokov scholar) edited Nabokov’s Butterflies – a collection of Vladimir Nabokov’s writings about butterflies, reviewed by Mark Ridley in The Times Literary Supplement.
Thinking iInside the Box
NZer Chris Moller is one wall of expat architecture firm, Amsterdam’s S333 Studio for Architecture and Urbanism. The firm has won several international competitions. A winning entry currently being completed is a housing…
Best Supporting Landmass
Tourists lured by LotR: “Too bad they don’t give Oscars for ‘best supporting landmass’. If they did New Zealand’s role in Lord of the Rings would have swept that award”, reports travel editor Anne…
Wellywood Story
LA film producers look to the edge for inspiration in an attempt to reverse the trend of productions increasingly being shot in foreign locations to cut costs: “Los Angeles is not like Wellington”, says…
Flight of the Crowe
“To some, Russell Crowe is still a bit of a Hando – there’s that smouldering, explosive edginess”. For Beautiful Mind director Ron Howard it was Crowe’s “physicality and charisma…his intellect, his mental…
Skin Deep
Ta moko retrospectively finds its way into an icon of colonialism: the museum. The Skin Deep exhibition at Britain’s National Maritime Museum, traces the development and diversity of tattoo over the last two…
Oscar Post
They’ll need a nui kete: The technical and creative talent of the NZ film industry acknowledged with Oscars. The Andrew Adamson directed Shrek takes best animated feature. Peter Jackson’s first installment in the Lord…
Sir Ian swoons for our free land
Sir Ian McKellen: “I fell for New Zealand rather heavily. It’s not just the environment, though that does do something to your head…it’s discovering the culture, one which is extremely relaxed and liberal”. And…
Oscar post-script
Solace for those lamenting that the southern cross didn’t shine brighter on Hollywood’s star spangled banner: “A Beautiful Mind was a Good Film. Not a brilliant film. If Peter Jackson had directed it, it might have…
Don’t Dream it’s Over
7 Worlds Collide, Neil Finn’s acclaimed live album and testament to his “prodigious talent.” is also Finn’s statement of “relevance and intent. It’s one to believe in” with “7 Worlds” worth of guests: including…
This is Our Youth
“Highly talented” 19-year-old Anna Paquin combines “prim formality of speech with an argumentative sexual ardour” as she stars alongside Hayden Christensen and Jake Gyllenhaal in the London staging of This is Our…
“Swift and edgy”…
Denver Post review of Margaret Mahy’s new book 24 Hours. “Her writing is clean and spare, as lucid in describing the ponderous weight of a backpack as in narrating an unnerving car…
Jihad … whoops, I mean Shihad
NZ rockers Shihad undergo cosmetic change post-Sept 11 after concerns were raised about the band name’s similarity to the word jihad, (meaning holy war). The name Shihad was taken from a mis-spelling…
A Russian soul
Joanna Wood’s “beautifully written” biography of “short story master” Katherine Mansfield, Katerina: The Russian World of Katherine Mansfield, details the New Zealand-born writer’s lifelong passion for everything Russian: “She liked to wear Russian clothes,…
Shadow play
The allure of the artistic life, “the journey towards the light” is the central concern of Maurice Gee’s “thoughtful” new novel Ellie and the Shadow Man, reviewed by Nicola Walker.
Black Crowe
“I was a kid faced with adult fury. This is tattooed on my brain”, recalls Russell Crowe in this Irish Independent interview about growing up in New Zealand as a 14 year-old part-time schoolboy,…
Bugger. New Zealand creatives doing it better
Australian advertising, left in the mud by a Cannes Gold Lion winning Toyata Hilux ute, barks enviously about creative NZ: “many an advertising executive here would give a black BMW to get approval from…
Stephenson wins UK Book of the Year Award
Not the Nine O Clock News comedian turned psychotherapist turned biographer, NZ-Edged Pamela Stephenson wins the book of the year prize at the British Book Awards for her “frank and often harrowing” account of…
The most feared woman on the internet?
NZer Rebecca Wilson (“director of leaves and petals” at the experimental Dutch Arts’ Foundation Studio for Electro-instrumental Music) postulated as as a real identity behind Net legend Netochka Nezvanova. Nezyanova has a…
Don’t bank on it
“Maverick film producer” Kiwi John Maynard, (All Men Are Liars, An Angel At My Table co-produced with Jane Campion) is nominated for Best Film by the Film Critics Circle of Australia for The Bank…
NYNZ – fringe thrills
Chris Niles‘s new novel Hell’s Kitchen well-received in the Big Bad Apple: “Here’s a novel that’s crowded, rushed, excited, mixed-up, fun, dangerous and a little dirty. In other words, it perfectly…
First
Wellington’s City Gallery hosts a major retrospective of the work of internationally renowned Australian artist Tracey Moffat. Curated by Lara Strongman and Paula Savage, the important 15 year survey of her film, video and…
Pleasantly Rough: 7 Worlds Collide
Neil Finn’s latest album, 7 Worlds Collide brings together Pearl Jams’ Eddie Vedder, Tim Finn, Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien and ex-Smith’s legend Johnny Marr. BBC: “Finn is a consumate master of his craft”.
King of the Rings
“New Zealand has always reserved its greatest adulation for sporting giants like Richard Hadlee and Jonah Lomu, but a place must now be found on the victory dais for director Peter Jackson What…
Bafta – Remembered Gold
Lord of the Rings is ready to cast its spell on the Oscars after bewitching the Baftas with five awards, including best film and best director, for Peter Jackson: “I wanted to make films…
Raining at Sundance
Christina Jeff’s evocative feature Rain screens at the Sundance Film Festival with Merata Mita’s portrait of painter Ralph Hotere, Hotere, and short bursts of edge cinema in Adam Steven’s Beautiful, Tainui Stephen’s…
Kevin Smith Farewelled
One of New Zealand’s best loved screen stars, Kevin Smith, dies aged 38, in a Beijing Hospital. Best known for playing Ares in the hit series Xena:Warrior Princess, Smith suffered head injuries in a…
