Letting in the Light
New Zealander, Huxley Somerville, 52, a managing director at Fitch Ratings in New York, bought a run-down Upper West Side brownstone apartment in 1994 and set about converting the space into “four separate living…
Tag Archives: New York Times (The)
Everyone’ll be Here Next Year
Waiheke Island is included in the prestigious New York Times’ “46 Places to Go in 2013”, featuring at No 35 under the title, “A homegrown arts scene beckons from down under”. “Long home to…
Through A Child’s Eyes
In Sailing the Unknown: Around the World With Captain Cook, American poet Michael J. Rosen imagines the journal of the real-life 11-year-old Nicholas Young, the youngest sailor aboard Captain Cook’s Endeavour. “We know very…
What Could Be Better
The New Zealand specialty bacon and egg pie features in The New York Times’ ‘Diner’s Journal’ weekly column and video. “I got the inspiration to make a bacon and egg pie from an article…
Woman Alone
“A mythic quest involving fellowship and solitude; the startling beauty, by turns lush and austere, of a wild land: if you now have visions of The Hobbit floating in your heads, please banish them,”…
Lord of the Rings was Perfect
“The Lord of the Rings was the work of a filmmaker perfectly in tune with his source material. Its too-muchness — the encyclopedic detail, the pseudoscholarly exposition, the soaring allegory, the punishing length —…
Film Moving Economy
“For better or worse, Key’s government has taken extreme measures that have linked its fortunes to some of Hollywood’s biggest pictures, making this country of 4.4 million people, slightly more than the city…
Filmmakers Galore
When it comes to supporting fledgling filmmakers, part of New Zealand’s challenge is the sheer number of them. Inspired by Peter Jackson’s success, young people are swarming film schools here. Weta Digital itself is…
Landscapes a Drawcard
Foreign buyers are mostly drawn to the Auckland area, or to the lake and mountain views near Queenstown on the South Island, according to The New York Times. Bill Sandston, a real estate lawyer…
Even Harder on Himself
“It would be hard not to describe McCaw as one of rugby’s greats,” Emma Stoney writes for The New York Times. “He is the captain of the most successful team in…
Belief in Emerging Markets
Taranaki-born businessman Stephen Jennings, Renaissance chief executive, is one of the “world’s smartest money” affirming that the next big emerging market may be Africa. “It is the only region in the world where growth…
Stylish Thrift in the Village
New Zealand couple, freelance art director Miranda Dempster, 41, and Gus McKay, 45, a tailor for the fashion label Tocca, spent no more than US$3000 on renovating their 155-year-old West Village apartment. On a…
Hop, Skip and a Jump
“The sea is never more than a few miles away on Waiheke,” Jonathan Hutchison writes for The New York Times. “West is Oneroa, a small township with cafeterias and shops selling clothes, crafts and,…
Up on the Plane
New Zealand-founded company Gibbs Sports Amphibians will introduce a new off-roader on to the market this week, the Quadski, which is equipped with retractable wheels and a BMW motorcycle engine. Gibbs’ chairman Neil Jenkins…
Is This Place for Real?
“The hill is perfect – steep, shaggy and as green as a radioactive shamrock, like the matching hills around it,” The New York Times describes. “The sheep seem pretty idyllic themselves: polite little nibblers who only…
Anti-corruption Pioneer Remembered
Wellington-born activist and writer Jeremy Pope, who has died aged 73, “was one of the pioneers in what is now a global movement to curb corruption and improve integrity in government,” friend and colleague…
Entrepreneurs in the Making
“Many third world countries have incubators, often to try and utilize and preserve local skills” like weaving, dying and sewing, says Tracy Kennedy, (right) manager of the Dunedin Fashion Incubator, started in 2001. Like…
Dubrovnik Standout
War Photo Limited is a gallery in Dubrovnik, Croatia curated by New Zealand-bred photojournalist Wade Goddard, who covered the Yugoslav Wars in the early 1990s. The gallery, which features images of “the city’s fraught…
Benefits of Security
The first Pentagon chief to visit New Zealand in three decades, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, announced that the Obama administration had modified United States policy so that, in the future, the defense secretary can…
Talent Gets On With It
“The golf prodigy Lydia Ko was asked how she would cope with being the youngest competitor this week at the Women’s British Open, which was like asking Sean Lennon how he deals with being…
Solving the Problem of Concussion
Thirty-five-year-old former New Zealand, Blues and Auckland scrum-half Steve Devine, who was forced to retire from rugby in 2007, knows all too well how debilitating the long-term effects of concussions can be. In the…
Being Herself Like Nowhere Else
Ever since a teenage backpacking trip through New Zealand – “one of the best times in my life” – Australian model Miranda Kerr has wanted to return. Beginning last December, Kerr, 29, got her…
Looking at the Cold Hard Facts
In a tour de force of glacial geology, Columbia University’s Dr Aaron Putnam and his collaborators have been reconstructing much of the Holocene history of a group of mountain glaciers in New Zealand. Their…
Pounui Cameron’s New Pandora
“It was ultimately New Zealand’s contemporary film culture that persuaded James Cameron to shift his work life, in stages, toward the Southern Hemisphere,” Pete Nikolaison writes for The New York Times. “New…
Magically Marvellous Mahy
“Margaret Mahy, an award-winning children’s author who tested the limits of her readers’ whimsy and courage with fantastical tales of witches, hauntings, infinite fog, and robbers brought to account by peppery grown-ups wielding chocolate…
Shameless Self-Promoter
New Zealand fashion journalist Isaac Hindin-Miller is currently blogging for The New York Times. Hindin-Miller says trends move much faster in New York than New Zealand. “Fashion stores will bring jumpsuits out…
What This Hotelier Wore
New Zealand-born Sean MacPherson, 47, proprietor of the Bowery, Jane and Maritime hotels and an owner of the Waverly Inn restaurant, is revamping the Crow’s Nest Inn in Montauk, New York. MacPherson…
She’s Got the Look
New Zealand musician Kimbra “has the potential to be like Prince,” according to Warner Brothers Records chairman Rob Cavallo. “That’s how strong her musicality is,” Cavallo says. “Kimbra’s a real artist, and I envision…
Meet Our Distinguished Worm
New Zealand’s velvet worm shares the title of a new book by British palaeontologist and writer Richard Fortey. Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms describes “the distinguished groups of organisms that are still recognizable and…
As Close to Nature as You Can be
“It was my third night in a camper van, a miniaturized recreational vehicle – mine was about the size of a plumber’s van with a raised ceiling – and New Zealand’s mobile lodging of…
Banking on International Fees
International education is now New Zealand’s fifth biggest export, annually worth $2.5 billion. Chief executive of Education New Zealand Grant McPherson said China, Japan and South Korea were New Zealand’s top markets for international…
Fair Shake For All
“There is a place in the world where moderate Republicans still exist – unfortunately, you have to take a 13-hour flight from Los Angeles to get there,” New York Times’ columnist Thomas Friedman writes. “Indeed, to…
On The Cheap In Auckland
Auckland Art Gallery is one of a “trifecta of frugal activities” recommended by The New York Times’ Seth Kugel on “a day and a half” visit to the City of Sails. “After…
Hooking Syllables At SXSW
New Zealand singer Kimbra, 21, is on tour in the United States, where she spent four days at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, “playing the biggest sponsored parties along with…
Memorable Boy Grows On You
“Next year’s Oscars, if they were to include the just-for-fun idea of outstanding performance by a setting, should have a nominee in Boy,” The New York Times movie critic David DeWitt expounds. “This movie from New Zealand,…
Home Match For Crusaders
One major symbol of regeneration in Christchurch is the construction of a temporary stadium in Addington that will be used by the Crusaders Super Rugby team Emma Stoney explains in The New York Times. “The…
Buying Up the Grammar Zone
The campus of Auckland Grammar School, designed in the Spanish style of the California missions, is one of New Zealand’s largest, oldest and most prestigious schools for boys, established in 1868. By…
Taking The Phibian For A Spin
Gibbs Technologies, a company founded in 1996 by New Zealand entrepreneur Alan Gibbs, has demonstrated its newest amphibian vehicle model on land and in the waters of the Potomac River in Arlington,…
It’s Gone To His Head
Bret McKenzie celebrated his Oscar nomination for best song with some Vegemite and toast. McKenzie, who wrote the meta-power ballad ‘Man or Muppet’ for The Muppets, is up against ‘Real in Rio’ from Rio: The Movie,…
With A Cryptic Brusqueness
New Zealand actor Sam Neill, 64, stars in Lost creator J. J. Abrams’ drama series Alcatraz, which premiered on American channel Fox this month. “The premise: The orderly closing of the prison on Alcatraz in 1963 was…
Secret Poi Swinging In NY
New York fire poi dancers are flouting fire restrictions and meeting stealthily on top of city rooftops to attend secret classes, where students are careful to remove any traces of their activity afterward….
Pecking Good At Math
Dr Damian Scarf, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Otago, and two colleagues have discovered that pigeons can learn abstract rules about numbers, an ability that until now had been demonstrated only in…
Heirlooms Of Past For Future
‘Maori — Their Treasures Have a Soul,’ an exhibition of Maori art and artifacts at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris on through 22 January, juxtaposes ancestral heirlooms with contemporary art, architecture, photography, film…
Grass-Roots Campaigning
Bret McKenzie is in Utah, where he’s “picked up some sort of Mormon cold” while filming a scene with a foal for Austenland: he delivers a foal. “We shot it in England this summer, and…
Give Them Authority
Former New Zealand cabinet minister and member of parliament, Maurice McTigue, who is currently vice president of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia, comments on changes at the United States Postal…
Documenting Recovery
While an exchange student in New Zealand, American Peter Hoffman, 27, discovered his passion for photography, and for the country. This year, Hoffman plans to return to Christchurch, where in February this year an…
Muppets Made Malevolent
Peter Jackson’s Meet the Feebles is “a hilariously offensive film,” the Muppet’s exact reverse,” writes New York Times’ blogger Lia Miller. “As I began researching this article,” Miller writes, “I was reminded of the most fantastically warped Muppet-style…
Composing For Kermit
Wellingtonian Bret McKenzie has applied “his rare talents to a sacred” and “daunting” “Muppets-related endeavour” writing three songs for the forthcoming movie The Muppets. The New York Times’ cultural editor Adam Sternbergh writes for the publication’s magazine:…
Marriage Made in LA
New Zealand-born actor Nico Evers-Swindell’s marriage to American actor Megan Ferguson, 28, featured in The New York Times’ ‘Weddings/ Celebrations’ column in October. The pair were married in Los Angeles. Evers-Swindell, 32, played Prince…
All Hands on the Webb Ellis
“Twenty-four years of Rugby World Cup pain and misery melted away for New Zealand” on 23 October with the All Blacks beating the French 8-7 in a nail-biting final at Eden Park. “It was…
Seriously Shaken
“By the standards of global hipness, New Zealand – where local food is a way of life and you’re as likely to see a beard on a farmer as on a barista – has…
Wellington Makes a Point
“Once a flyover city for tourists as they jetted between the thermal regions of the north and the cloud-scraping mountains of the south, or at best a pass-through destination for those taking the ferry…
Rugby Jersey Ruckus
When the All Blacks revealed late July the shirts the team would wear for the Rugby World Cup, which begins in September, it was a proud moment for Adidas, the designer of the uniform…
American Underdogs Join In
“With the zest notable to rugby players on and off the field, the Americans are delighted to be heading to the home of the All Blacks, with their Maori in-your-face war dance, the Haka,”…
Ace Pilot and Farmer
Former Sergeant-Pilot Geoffrey Bryson Fisken, the British Commonwealth’s No. 1 fighter pilot in the Pacific during WW2, has died at age 96 in Rotorua. He had spent much of his postwar years as a…
Petunia Precedent
A few years back, several New Zealand scientists began tinkering with petunia pigment genes developing biotech varieties with lush dark leaves. The scientists wondered if they could sell their flowers. They wrote to regulators…
