Ancient forest
Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lost World filmed in New Zealand “where there are still forests that resemble those of the Cretaceous Period when the great dinosaurs walked the land”.
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Rock art
New Zealander Chris Grosz designed tour posters for promoters Michael Coppel and Zev Isaac, producing pop art-influenced images. “I wanted the posters to stand up and be proud – bright and strong, in full…
Cutting Edge Commercials
Saatchi & Saatchi’s “Bugger” ad shows the creativity that will save TV advertising says Jim Aitchinson’s Cutting Edge Commercials.
Docu Prize
New Zealand co-production Wild Asia: Creatures of the Thaw wins Canada’s Banff Television Festival President’s Prize, worth C$25 000 .
The loved one
Yale University based NZ playwright Julie Mckee’s one-act play about death and two maidens, Invitation to a Funeral, well reviewed in NYT: “a wonderfully wry trip to the funeral parlor” about two women…
Thought for Today
“I do believe one ought to face facts. If you don’t they get behind you and may become terrors, nightmares, giants, horrors. As long as one faces them one is top dog.” –
Pregnant pause
Hold the show, my wife’s having a baby cried Jeff Knight of Christchurch’s Court Theatre.
All that is golden…
The Lord of the Rings (the book) – boyish fantasy or “true myth” that is a modern masterpiece?
Intimacy and anguish
New Zealand actress Kerry Fox’s award-winning work in Intimacy continues to generate curiosity, awe and pursed lips: Getting Intimate in the Sunday Times; Truely, madly, explicitly in The Observer and Hanif…
Foxing the censors
“Marvel at the ever-brilliant Kerry Fox” in style bible i-D mag’s guide to the ‘future of cinema’. Fox’s raw performance in Intimacy won her best actress at the Berlin Film; i-D suggests that the…
A Piece of Martin
Ex-Shortland Streeter Martin Henderson toplines indie A Piece of My Heart and plays opposite Nicolas Cage in Windtalkers, currently in production. Register and search under Archives
Life full of words
Alison Waley, Hokitika-born poet, artist and writer died aged 100. Most famous for her marriage to Arthur Waley, Waley also had “strength of purpose and character, and a way with words, written and spoken,…
At home on the edge
Sam Neill talks acting, wine and why New Zealand is home: “I just love going back – I feel comfortable there, I am entirely relaxed there and I feel I do much my best…
A day in the life
Margaret Mahy’s 24 Hours confirms her place among the “world’s best”. Her books for young adults “are not easy reads, but they are hugely rewarding, emotionally and intellectually”. Also, Mahy at The Hub…
Get it right
In the unsettled paradise that is the Pacific, accuracy and local knowledge are a reporter’s only hope says seasoned island-hand, New Zealand journalist David Robie.
Wellywood
Dead oliphants at Plimmerton, hobbit cities and epic battles: just the beginning for “Wellywood”.
Rings Actors Awestruck
“It seems that those involved are only starting to realise just how big a movie project with which they have been involved. The actors were awe-struck by look of the movie and the spectacular…
In Over His Depth
Sam Neill stars as the ingenious and courageous Lt. Commander Charles “Swede” Momsen in New England submarine drama Submerged.
Drawing Blood
David Low: outsider, radical, New Zealander. Last century’s greatest political cartoonist.
Goodbye Xena
Xena, shown in 120 countries, focus of fan-mania and Star Trek-like devotion, comes to an end. “We tried to take people on journeys that you won’t go through in your real life,” says Lucy…
Godzone country
US-based Kiwi hunk Keith Urban keeps pulling the accolades, most recently, Best New Male Performer at the American Country Music Awards in Nashville.
Toasted!
Wellington artist Maurice Bennett toasts fine art – his latest piece, the Mona Lisa, took 2124 slices.
Campion cuts Kidman
New Zealand director Jane Campion nabs red-hot Nicole Kidman for upcoming In the Cut.
Lording it at Cannes
Which was hotter – the Rings preview or the bash after? Twenty minutes of Rings footage had seasoned critics standing to applaud; the party, complete with sets shipped from New Zealand, was the one ticket…
Buzz From Cannes
“This will be the biggest movie of all time” – John Rhys-Davis in National Post preview and cast interviews; Rings “hottest show at Cannes” in The Age; BBC reports “gargantuan bash”;…
Shrek at Cannes
Kiwi Andrew Adamson is co-director of Dreamworks’ hit Shrek, the first animated movie to make competition at Cannes since Dumbo 50 years ago. Guardian picks it as a Cannes top ten. Shrek “deliciously…
Phil’s Crazy Club on Oprah
Kiwi Phil Keoghan chats with the first lady of US TV about how “passion became his purpose” after a near-death experience as a 20-yr old. Talking Oprah through a group bungee, dinner atop a…
Donovan puts a hit on Roger
Inflation may have lowered the stocks of ex-Six Million Dollar Man Lee Majors, but his new lease on life as an aging hit-man in NYC Kiwi director Brendan Donovan’s “Here” has helped the film…
Crowe’s Anzac
Stan Wemyss, Russell Crowe’s Grandfather, was a soldier and cinematographer – a key influence on the star.
Seven Worlds will Collide
“It’s like stumbling into your own birthday party – you don’t know where to look first. Centre stage is Neil Finn, hair greying but still a hint of that haphazard Crowded House quiff, a…
Curtain falls for Nyree Dawn Porter
“Forsyte sex symbol who conquered the world”, Kiwi-born and raised star of the 60’s TV show The Forsyte Saga (watched by 100 milllion people in 26 countries) remembered in The Telegraph, The Guardian and…
Knickers name
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa sang with the late Harry Secombe, who found her name tricky, so re-christened her “Tin Knickers”.
Actress Remembered
International tributes continue for “cucumber-cool” New Zealand-born Forsyte star Nyree Dawn Porter.
Fashioning humour
Kiwi comedy queen Cal Wilson on frocks and laughter in the Melbourne Comedy Festival.
Hello Kitty
Kiwi comic Cal Wilson brings home the laughs: “God’s Little Poppet verges on brilliance, as does Krystalle the exotic dancer. Krystalle is close to a work of art; a lap dancer who forces her…
Edgey writing gets richer
Las Vegas casino-king and edge-devotee Glenn Schaeffer has established what will be New Zealand’s richest literary prize, a biennial award of $60,000 to a new writer of literary merit. Schaeffer wants to bring writing from…
Kan 007
Secret Asian Raybon Kan infiltrates the Melbourne comedy scene with a “sharp, contemporary and observant” show.
Bare tour
New Zealand playwright Toa Fraser’s Bare tours Sourthern England. Madeleine Sami reprises her award winning role.
Billion dollar Bevan
Bridget Jones producer Kiwi Tim Bevan nudges the billion dollar mark with Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and now Bridget Jones, due to be Britain’s biggest hit this year.
Creamy romance
“In New Zealand we mostly make quite brutal social-realist films. I think American audience are stunned to see something that romanticizes New Zealand…I want to make films that no one else is making.” Harry…
Just the ticket
mticket – (London-based kiwi entrepreneurs Tony Coyle, Nick Howard and Jason Cooper) is a revolutionary service taking advantage of the popularity of text messaging to help punters beat the rope into the club…
And to Finn-ish With
“The most prolific writer of quality songs around at the moment” says Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien. How about Finn as New Zealand’s Paul McCartney? Or Eddie Vedder singing backing at “a small club…
Inside the Frame
Michael King’s biography of Janet Frame, “laureate of the musing inner-self,” is “elegantly written, densely researched and remorselessly long” – but does it over-expose its subject?
Upside-down Edge
A photograph of the New Zealand sky projected onto a mirror on the floor of the Glasgow School of Art “allows people to look down to see the sky, as if the earth were…
Memoirs from the Edge
NZ-edged novelist Fay Weldon sits down to write her memoirs – “All they do is make you self-centered,” she says.
Serve Up Sam
Sam Neill, currently showing in The Dish, is major star material: “Like Harrison Ford, he’s an Everyman with gravitas. Like Tom Hanks, he engages our sympathy innately. He’s masculine without being macho, handsome without…
Along came Lee
Along Came a Spider, edge-director Lee Tamahori’s Kiss the Girls follow-up “skillfully builds the action” and “gives sequels a good name”.
Knox them out
The Vintner’s Luck takes the Tasmanian Pacific Region Prize, Australasia’s richest literary prize. “There’s all this stuff in Vintner about anxiety and authenticity that’s very New Zealand,” says author Elizabeth Knox, noting that, like…
Camera king
‘Khmer Kings’ won New Zealander Matthew Kearns first prize in the Nikon Photographic Competition run by the Dubai International Arts Centre.
Eiffel? non. Blobby? oui!
Brendan MacFarlane, Kiwi half of design duo Jakob and MacFarlane continues to dazzle the Parisian architecture scene: “The only work of architecture raising Parisians’ eyebrows was Jakob and MacFarlane’s “blobby” rooftop restaurant, crowning the…
Must do Today: Production, Script, Light
Wellington-born Richard Curtis penned the Bridget screen adaptation: one of Britain’s “cleverest screenwriters” in LA Times and “a virtuoso at devising horrific embarrassments for his protagonists,” in Slate. Rounding out the kiwi trio, Stuart…
