Get it right mate – Theroux undone by Stead detective work
“This week the London Review of Books prints a long investigation by the poet CK Stead into a lunch party at Naipaul’s house attended by Theroux and a New Zealand couple Stead happens to…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Kiwi Editor of Chicago-Sun Times Leaves to Pursue ‘Private Goals’
New Zealand born Nigel Wade, 54, former foreign correspondent with the Daily Telegraph in London, said that he was taking a “new direction” in his life after 37 years in journalism. He has been…
Long Hot Summer puts the heat on readers
Kiwi Barbara Anderson’s latest novel gets praise in Times review, “a fine and sharp intelligence infuses Anderson’s characters and dialogue … Long Hot Summer demands attention from the reader, but it is worth it”.
The truth about bed: Fleur Adcock: Poems 1960-2000
“This very welcome collection of her verse confirms her status as arguably the most distinctive writer to have come out of New Zealand since Katherine Mansfield.”
Film Fatale: Chris Kraus
“Yet by affirming the “weakness” of her under- appreciated spiritual heroes, Kraus may have found an idiot-proof formula for this book to work whether it works or not.” Village Voice book review of Kraus’s…
“Hi-ho hi-ho, it’s Off to Work We Go …” Fay Weldon and the New Ergonarchy
New Zealand raised Fay Weldon takes time-out to ponder the future, “We could have the leisure society if we wanted it. But Samuel Smiles won; our lives are ruled by a work ethic and…
Call me Mr Comedy
New Zealand-born Four Weddings and a Funeral/Blackadder creator, Comic Relief co-founder and top scriptwriter Richard Curtis discusses his career on BBC Radio4. Register and search to view Archives
Russell Crowe gets inside his character’s head
Jeffrey Wigland, real-life whistleblower says Crowe, 22 years junior and a native of New Zealand “did a remarkable job .. he did things that made it feel very surreal for me, emotionally retching and…
A sting in the tale
“When the New York Times says of your second novel that it “constructs a sturdy web of silken prose”, you might reasonably conclude that, as a novelist, you have arrived. When into the bargain,…
Forget About the Brass Ring
Some 1.7 million fans hit the movie’s new website in its first 21 hours up, compared with only 1 million downloads the first day the Star Wars: The Phantom Menace site was open for…
Legend Kiri Te Kanawa Opens on Stage in Montreal
Kiri Te Kanawa enjoys almost unique prestige in the public eye. She attracted a VIP crowd (including Prime Minister Jean Cretien) to the Centre Pierre Peladeau.
Kiwi blows her bassoon as single-sex barriers make the news
New Zealand woman Rosamund Allison became the first woman to be recruited to the previously all-male Scots Guards Band.
New Zealand Wilderness a Hit with Big-budget Filmmakers
Ever since Jane Campion brought the surging savage West Coast of Auckland’s Karekare beach and the rain-soaked bush to the world in her award winning film The Piano nearly a decade ago, more and…
Tolkien Teaser Runs
“Attention fantasy fans: New Line Cinema is about to lift the veil of secrecy — just a little bit — that has shrouded Peter Jackson’s massive adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the…
Theo Ray – Kiwi Indie singer hits LA
From Indie chart success in New Zealand and Australia, to a #2 single ‘Smell’ in Europe, to the darker side of Asia and beyond, Theo Ray is now based in Los Angeles, playing with…
Countless billboards proclaim there’s a new hero: Russell Crowe, bigger than Ben Hur.
From Auckland Grammar to singing on 80’s pop show Shazam. From Oscar nominations to the violent centre of a decadent ancient Rome. He’s one-sixteenth Maori and registered on the Maori voting poll, but he lives…
Kiwi editor of Oscar winning documentary paints LA pink
Director of the acclaimed “One Day in September” Kevin McDonald recounts his poolside adventures at the Oscars: “At 2pm, Justine Wright, the brilliant editor who cut our film arrives to get changed with us….
Pompidou lyes down to get kinetic
Renowned New Zealand film-maker, kinetic sculptor and animator Len Lye is honoured with a show at the Pompidou Centre, Paris, France.
“Fresh Talent” Chad Taylor sends sophisticated shivers in Shirker
“With a tight and observant style, Taylor has weaved an engaging tale reminiscent of Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy and with peripheral detail as obsessive as Easton Ellis’s American Psycho. He may touch upon…
Now, if we could just send some of those country singers to New Zealand
Tim Finn, Say It Is So (review). (1–16 March 2)
Spider pic hatched – New Zealander to direct
Hollywood: the duo behind Independence Day and Godzilla are producing “Arch Attack”, an f/x driven comedic thriller about a toxic waste spill that causes giant spiders to go on a rampage. Will shoot in…
Russell Crowe: Heroic gladiator rises from the burger-pits of
“The people who brought you World War II now think that you are ready for really ancient history: the Roman Empire. And, even though they’re leaving out the orgies, they may be onto something”.
One for the connoisseurs: Kiwi crime writer weaves a seductive web of existential anomie
New Zealand crime-fiction writer Chad Taylor makes a big impact on Guardian reviewer Maxim Jakubowski, “Shirker: a fascinating and obsessive novel from New Zealand with shades of Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy…” …
Xena: motherhood becomes her
Lucy Lawless’ pregnancy not only changed scripts on Xena: Warrior Princess, but the costume department had to ‘expand’ with the times too. New to the show: Spandex.
Looks Wonderful
“It’s not always easy to flow the tortuous intrigues, passions and deceits, but it looks wonderful, with photography by the gifted New Zealand cinematographer and director Chris Doyle”. BBC2 film preview of Temptress Moon…
Nabokov’s Pale Fire Still Smoulders
38 years later, the mystery continues to intrigue… Auckland University’s Professor Brian Boyd attempts to solve the enigma.
Bugger
A Cultural phenomenon has reached Asia, and it has bugger-all to do with Bulgarians or heretics, but something to do with a car advertisement, a racehorse and climbing Mt. Everest.
Justine Wright Nominated For Oscar
New Zealander Justine Wright has been nominated for this year’s Oscar Awards for her editing of a dramatic documentary One Day in September, an account of the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972…
Piping up a storm down under
Cultural history was made as the massed bands of the Edinburgh Military Tattoo played in front of a sell-out crowd in New Zealand, the first time in its 50-year history that the event has…
Jane Campion is a model profile of a working artist
Anthropologist, artist, and award winner, internationally acclaimed New Zealand director exercises an organic approach to her craft …
Child Superstar Anna Paquin’s Vampish Turn
Anna Paquin has got something tucked away in her closet: an Oscar … becoming the second-youngest Academy Award winner is a tough act to follow.
“I Love Dick”
Interview with Kiwi writer and avant-garde filmmaker Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick (the spare-no-prisoners tell-all that scandalised the Soho Intelligentsia) talks about anorexia, romance, and faking it.
Russell Crowe: Inside Story
Playing a 52-year-old tobacco company executive in The Insider is all in a day’s work for 35-year-old Russell Crowe; giving up the smokes is not.
When Substance Puts Style in its Place
There’s more to the web than pornography, semi-literate navel-gazing and slick shopping sites, but finding quality information can be difficult … a site that makes it easy.
New Zealand writer nominated for Commonwealth Writer’s Prize
Kapka Kassabova, regional winner for best first book in Commonwealth Writer’s Prize to be decided in April.
Russell: The Prequel
Oz comment: “Crowe is a national hero” (despite “inconveniently managing to get himself born in New Zealand”); jokes from the Katzy kitchen; Crowe, Hillary and Rutherford make Australia green; Crowe “a…
The Rumours began about a year ago…
Comix 2000 New Zealanders Dylan Horrocks (whose extraordinarily moving comic novel Hicksville was 1998’s breakout alternative hit) and Chris Knox each contribute wonderful strips.
Artist and Architect with a Childlike Love of Embellishment
The straight lines of modern architecture particularly incensed him.
Youth TV Prepares for the Digital Challenge
Interview: Brent Hansen: MTV Europe’s president has seen the network flourish in his 13 years there.
Who are you? What the Audi ad says about you
The wakeboarder depicted is a chap called Gavin Broadbent, who is New Zealand’s wakeboarding champion. The ad was filmed in the Tasman Sea off the west coast of NZ.
Notes from Ian McKellen
“What a congenial country New Zealand is for visitors from what used to be called “the home country … It all seems half-familiar with a style of friendliness that is a change from English…
Not Crowing About Stardom
Russell Crowe was the darling of the early awards season, picking up a slew of accolades for his role as a tobacco industry whistle-blower in The Insider.
Small town toilet with big flushing power
Kawakawa, New Zealand: flushing the toilet has forever changed in this tiny township as hundreds of tourists flood in – to go to perhaps the most triumphant public loo in all the world. A…
New Zealand architect designs gastronomic gateway to newly re-opened Centre Pomidou
When the Pompidou Centre in Paris was closed for two years for a refit, a competition was held to design the Centre’s restaurant. Beating entries from the elite of European architecture, the prize went…
