Tag Archives: Guardian (The)

Lorde Delivers Powerful Tribute to David Bowie

Lorde Delivers Powerful Tribute to David Bowie

Lorde’s tribute to her hero David Bowie at this year’s BRIT Awards has been called “dignified”, “powerful” and “heartbreaking”. Singing Life on Mars with Bowie’s own backing band, Lorde’s was an “acid, disaffected take…

Re-Examining The Piano’s Kinky Music Lessons

Re-Examining The Piano’s Kinky Music Lessons

“Films about mute piano players embroiled in erotic love triangles never did become a burgeoning genre. Perhaps that’s because it’s virtually impossible to imagine another equalling writer/director Jane Campion’s 1993 magnum opus: an extraordinarily…

Trans-Tasman New Pathways to Citizenship Deal Made

Trans-Tasman New Pathways to Citizenship Deal Made

New Zealanders who have lived and worked in Australia for more than five years will find it easier to access citizenship under a deal reached by the leaders of the two countries, the Guardian…

Jemaine Clement Recalls David Bowie Snub

Jemaine Clement Recalls David Bowie Snub

“Dave Grohl is only the latest to have revealed his rejection by David Bowie.” The Guardian also includes New Zealand’s very own Flight of the Conchords in its list of “10 of Bowie’s very…

Kieran Read Confirmed As New All Blacks Captain

Kieran Read Confirmed As New All Blacks Captain

Coach Steve Hansen has confirmed that Kieran Read will replace Richie McCaw as captain of the All Blacks. He will also captain the Crusaders in this year’s Super Rugby competition. “We have known for quite…

Richie McCaw and Lydia Ko Win New Zealander of Year Awards

Richie McCaw and Lydia Ko Win New Zealander of Year Awards

Richie McCaw and Lydia Ko have been honoured at the New Zealander of the Year Awards. McCaw was voted ‘New Zealander of the Year’, while golfer Lydia Ko was named ‘Young New Zealander of…

Owls Do Cry Continues to Astonish 60 Years On

Owls Do Cry Continues to Astonish 60 Years On

The “modern masterpiece” Owls Do Cry, written by New Zealand author Janet Frame in 1957, “about siblings struggling with money, health and grief still has the power to unnerve and astonish,” writes Claire Hazelton…

Guardian Rates Uplifting Marlon Williams Debut

Guardian Rates Uplifting Marlon Williams Debut

Marlon Williams’ self-titled debut album is described as “delicious, oddly uplifting misery”, in a review written by Michael Hann for the Guardian. “It’s hard to work out quite how the album from the young New…

New Zealand Movie at 2016 Berlin Film Festival

New Zealand Movie at 2016 Berlin Film Festival

The New Zealand movie Mahana/The Patriarch is one of the ten movies at the 66th Berlin Film Festival The Guardian is most looking forward to. The Patriarch, set in the 1960s, was shot…

Hunt for the Wilderpeople is Perfectly Balanced

Hunt for the Wilderpeople is Perfectly Balanced

Taika Waititi’s film adaptation of Barry Crump’s Wild Pork and Watercress, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which made its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, is a “deliciously good time at the movies,” according to…

All Trygve Wakenshaw Wants Is to Be Mr Bean

All Trygve Wakenshaw Wants Is to Be Mr Bean

Mime superstar, New Zealand-born Trygve Wakenshaw, who has been garnering rave reviews for his recent solo show, Nautilus talks with the Guardian about his theatre background, his future and what he really wants –…

Chef Anna Hansen on Juggling Work and Family

Chef Anna Hansen on Juggling Work and Family

New Zealand-raised chef Anna Hansen, owner of London’s Modern Pantry, talks with the Guardian about juggling the demands of business and family. Time management is one thing Hansen says she is not particularly good at. “I…

Heath Cozens Breaks Stereotypes with Doglegs

Heath Cozens Breaks Stereotypes with Doglegs

Disabled athletes fight the non-disabled in New Zealand director Heath Cozens’ award-winning documentary Doglegs which provides an outlet for five determined wrestlers to escape the prejudice they face in everyday life, the Guardian reports. It…

Pack up Your Troubles and Paddle

Pack up Your Troubles and Paddle

New Zealand’s only packraft operator Expedition X takes Guardian journalist Ellie Ross into a “secret corner” of the Rees Valley, an hour’s drive north of Queenstown, for a trek into the wilderness with a…

Here Comes My Jetpack

Here Comes My Jetpack

“Until now, the idea of flying your own jetpack has been largely fantasy. But 2016 could be the year when it takes off commercially”, writes Stuart Clark for The Guardian. According to the…

Everyone’s Listening to Nadia Reid’s Debut

Everyone’s Listening to Nadia Reid’s Debut

Singer Nadia Reid’s highly rated debut,Listen to Formation, Look for the Signs is included in the Guardian’s annual roundup of “The Albums We Missed” column. Reviewer Michael Hann says: “It took 24-year-old New Zealander Reid seven…

James Bertram’s Mao Zedong Letter Sold at Sotheby’s

James Bertram’s Mao Zedong Letter Sold at Sotheby’s

A letter from Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong sent to British Labour leader Clement Atlee and typed by New Zealand-born journalist James Munro Bertram, has sold at Sotheby’s for £605,000, more than…

Scott Kelly Creates Flags for Star Wars Galaxy

Scott Kelly Creates Flags for Star Wars Galaxy

New Zealand-born Scott Kelly, an advertising art director based in London, has spent “way, way too long” designing flags for 103 planets in the Star Wars universe. Kelly has created flags for planets featured not…

Lyttelton Is Banking on Time

Lyttelton Is Banking on Time

When the port town on Lyttelton was devastated by the 2011 earthquake, a time bank – the first of its kind in New Zealand – helped the community harness the resources to rebuild. Time banking…

Andrew Nicholson Breaks round the World Record

Andrew Nicholson Breaks round the World Record

New Zealander Andrew Nicholson, a former Olympic speed skater, has cycled around the world in 123 days breaking the world record set by Englishman Alan Bate by two days. Nicholson, 45, a part-time gym instructor…

Louis Schulz One of Turner Prize-Winning Assemble

Louis Schulz One of Turner Prize-Winning Assemble

A collective of 18 young architects called Assemble – one of whom is New Zealander Louis Schulz – has become the first group of “non-artists”, and the youngest, to win the annual £25,000 British…

48 Hours in Wellington

48 Hours in Wellington

“Creative, well caffeinated and culinarily blessed, Wellington is surprisingly compact” and “is packed with cool-as cafes, boutique food factories and exceptional restaurants,” writes Nikki Marshall in an article for The Guardian, in…

Compliments on Nadia Reid’s Extraordinary Debut

Compliments on Nadia Reid’s Extraordinary Debut

New Zealand singer-songwriter Nadia Reid’s Look for the Signs is an “extraordinarily assured debut”, Guardian reviewer Kitty Empire writes. The track Call the Days “suggests an Antipodean Laura Marling, a talented 24-year-old with a preternatural…

Why New Zealand Shouldn’t Be a State of Australia

Why New Zealand Shouldn’t Be a State of Australia

The Australia liberal senator Ian Macdonald has caused a media ruckus joking that New Zealand should become Australia’s “seventh and eighth state”. Guardian correspondent Eleanor Roy, who is “half Aussie, half Kiwi”, explains that…

Dan Carter Says Future of NZ Rugby Bright

Dan Carter Says Future of NZ Rugby Bright

All Blacks great Dan Carter, 33, is unsure of his own plans once the time comes to hang up his boots but he is confident the game in New Zealand is in safe hands….

Peter Jackson Ad-Libbed Shooting Hobbit

Peter Jackson Ad-Libbed Shooting Hobbit

Oscar-winning director Peter Jackson, 54, admits he was “winging it” and “was making it up as I went along” for much of the Hobbit trilogy’s chaotic shoot. Jackson has revealed he began filming the blockbuster…

New Zealand Student’s Speech Goes Viral

New Zealand Student’s Speech Goes Viral

A New Zealand student’s emotional valedictory speech has gone viral online with more than 170,000 views. 18-year-old Jake Bailey, who had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer in his final year…

New Zealand Bred Horse Wins Melbourne Cup

New Zealand Bred Horse Wins Melbourne Cup

Michelle Payne, the only female jockey of the race, has won the Melbourne Cup on New Zealand bred horse Prince of Penzance. Payne was the first female jockey that ever won the Melbourne Cup in…

The Chills Return with Melodic Gifts Intact

The Chills Return with Melodic Gifts Intact

“It’s taken 19 years for Martin Phillipps to get round to releasing the fifth Chills album (and the previous four took 16 years to make), but his manifold troubles in the years since Sunburnt haven’t diminished his melodic…

Wrestling with Wellington’s Wild Weather

Wrestling with Wellington’s Wild Weather

The wind speed in this breeziest of cities Wellington once hit 247kmph at Hawkins Hill in 1962, but it’s not as bad as it sounds – 62 turbines generate the city’s electricity, while air…

Helen Clark Comments on 70 Years of the UN

Helen Clark Comments on 70 Years of the UN

As the UN marks the 70th anniversary of its founding this autumn, those imperfections – and how the UN addresses them – have come to the fore as the organisation struggles to define its…

New Zealand Creates 620,000 Km2 Ocean Sanctuary

New Zealand Creates 620,000 Km2 Ocean Sanctuary

“A vast stretch of New Zealand’s exclusive economic zone is being turned into an ocean sanctuary in a landmark deal to preserve one of the most pristine and unique environments on Earth”, according to…

Ma’a Nonu to Win 100th Cap

Ma’a Nonu to Win 100th Cap

All Blacks centre Ma’a Nonu will make his 100th international appearance in New Zealand’s Rugby World Cup match against Tonga in Newcastle on Friday (Saturday morning New Zealand time). “On behalf of the All Blacks, we…

Bret McKenzie Digs Himself Into a Big Hole

Bret McKenzie Digs Himself Into a Big Hole

Starring Bret McKenzie from Flight of the Conchords digging himself a massive, literal hole in the ground, the latest single by the New Zealand powerpop group Phoenix Foundation features on the Guardian’s music site. “If…

Sam Cane to Captain All Blacks

Sam Cane to Captain All Blacks

Flanker Sam Cane, 23, will captain the New Zealand All Blacks for the first time in the upcoming World Cup match against Namibia. “It is a very special moment for Sam,” Hansen told www.allblacks.com. “He…

Nina Hall Swims in Solidarity with Refugees

Nina Hall Swims in Solidarity with Refugees

New Zealander Nina Hall, who is a post-doctoral fellow at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, recently swam from Turkey to Greece in solidarity with the refugees who are making the dangerous journey…

We’re All Thinking Number One

We’re All Thinking Number One

Just about every famous New Zealander, including Lorde, the Flight of the Conchords, Kimbra and Shihad’s Jon Toogood, have packed into Neil Finn’s studio to record Team Ball Player Thing, a fundraising effort for…

How New Zealand Sustains Its Rugby Dynasty

How New Zealand Sustains Its Rugby Dynasty

A country of just under four and half million is home to arguably the most dominant team in sport. The Guardian looks at how the All Blacks remain at the pinnacle more than 100…

Forgotten Crowded House Song Helping Refugees

Forgotten Crowded House Song Helping Refugees

Songs can grow and assume new shapes with time, and pop’s power to engage people has taken Crowded House’s 16-year-old ballad Help is Coming and given it new life as a charitable ode to…

Stephen Taberner’s Choir a Bit on the Spooky Side

Stephen Taberner’s Choir a Bit on the Spooky Side

Georgian polyphonic singing enthusiast, Christchurch-born Stephen Taberner leads the 16-man Australian choir Spooky Men’s Chorale which recently performed in London at the Islington Assembly Hall. The Guardian’s Robin Denselow reviewed the evening. “It takes a…

How I Learned to Win the Rugby World Cup

How I Learned to Win the Rugby World Cup

On 23 October 2011, the New Zealand All Blacks won the Rugby World Cup Final against France 8 to 7. It was “culmination of a 37-year career’” for Graham Henry – one of the…

Christchurch Returning to Cycling Roots

Christchurch Returning to Cycling Roots

After the 2011 earthquake, Christchuch residents were asked what they wanted from the city once known as ‘Cyclopolis’. They demanded a greener, more people-focused city – and investment in new cycleways means it is…

Flight of the Conchords Musical Is Coming

Flight of the Conchords Musical Is Coming

The upcoming Flight of the Conchords movie is shaping up to be a musical like no other, co-creator Jemaine Clement has promised – albeit tentatively. The film is “definitely a couple of years away,…

Janet Frame Travels Home Around the World

Janet Frame Travels Home Around the World

Janet Frame’s 1963 novella Towards Another Summer reimagines the New Zealand author’s “roots crisis” and is a sharp drama of fleeing, and missing, home, Catherine Taylor writes for the Guardian. The novella’s theme – taking…

Comedy Show Nominee Trygve Wakenshaw Shines

Comedy Show Nominee Trygve Wakenshaw Shines

The “angular New Zealander” Trygve Wakenshaw, who was nominated for best show at this year’s Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy awards, “has the audience in raptures with his wonky physical comedy – and a brilliantly inventive…

Locust Jones Permanently Plugged into Chaos

Locust Jones Permanently Plugged into Chaos

It is a rare and rewarding moment to stumble across an exhibition that is as cohesively considered as Christchurch-born artist Locust Jones’ A Week in the Life of the World, not only in its…

All Blacks Squad Announced

All Blacks Squad Announced

There were few surprises in the All Blacks squad announcement “with coach Steve Hansen naming 17 forwards and 14 backs with the emphasis on the backs being their versatility to cover numerous positions.” “Richie McCaw…

New Zealand’s Jonah Lomu Still Talks a Good Game

New Zealand’s Jonah Lomu Still Talks a Good Game

Jonah Lomu changed the sport of rugby forever – his “emergence at the 1995 World Cup was seismic”.  He was a pioneer for rugby union, who “raised interest to levels not witnessed before and…

How Actor Cliff Curtis Avoids Playing ‘Repetitive Stereotypes’

How Actor Cliff Curtis Avoids Playing ‘Repetitive Stereotypes’

New Zealand actor Cliff Curtis has played interesting roles over the years. In 1999 he “hit a kind of American cinematic jackpot” with his work on Michael Mann’s The Insider, David O Russell’s Three…

All Blacks Play Classic Game in Bledisloe Decider

All Blacks Play Classic Game in Bledisloe Decider

“Australia knew the All Blacks would be in a vengeful mood after their defeat in Sydney,” the Observer’s Ian Malin reports. “New Zealand duly handed out a rugby lesson   to…

The Phoenix Foundation Give up Their Dreams

The Phoenix Foundation Give up Their Dreams

The sixth studio album by New Zealand band The Phoenix Foundation has been released and the Guardian offers up readers a track-by-track guide to the record provided by the band. “If the name [of the…

Kim Chambers Makes Swim History in San Francisco

Kim Chambers Makes Swim History in San Francisco

New Zealand’s Kim Chambers has become the first woman to swim the nearly 50km stretch from the Farallon Islands to the Golden Gate Bridge in a feat conquering one of the world’s most dangerous…

Jane Campion’s Daughter Acting up

Jane Campion’s Daughter Acting up

As the child of New Zealand-born director Jane Campion and Australian filmmaker Colin Englert, Alice Englert – who stars in the BBC’s magician drama Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell – grew up immersed in…

New Zealand Stun Hosts Australia to Top Pool

New Zealand Stun Hosts Australia to Top Pool

New Zealand set the Netball World Cup alight when they upset defending champions Australia 52-47 in their pool match in front of a world-record crowd of 16,233. The new-look Silvers Ferns defied pre-tournament sceptics…

Joan Murphy Is Reframing the Fitness Industry

Joan Murphy Is Reframing the Fitness Industry

New Zealander Joan Murphy (pictured left) and Briton Pip Black, founders of Frame gym, explain to the Guardian how they have revolutionised London’s attitude to exercise. It’s 8:30am on a Wednesday morning and Joan Murphy…

New Zealander Wins French Scrabble Championship Despite Not Speaking French

New Zealander Wins French Scrabble Championship Despite Not Speaking French

New Zealander Nigel Richards has won the French Scrabble championships even though “his command of the language (…) stretches to “bonjour” and being able to count”. Richards, who has been called the Tiger Woods of…