New Zealand Art Blog

Last week we took our 2 and 4-year-old girls to see the Tamaki Māori Village Experience in Rotorua.

The experience from our perspective was a good one. Once home, like a good little tourist, I logged onto Trip Advisor to air my thoughts and contribute to the so called "reviews you can trust" I came across a review that at first glance looked deliberately malicious (a false review) but on further inspection it became apparent that the reviewer had little or no understanding of contemporary Maori or held a totally unrealistic expectation to what he was letting himself in for.

Bret McKenzie, half of New Zealand’s fourth-most-popular folk duo Flight of the Conchords, has won an Oscar for the song Man or Muppet. Bret McKenzie has carved his name alongside Sir Peter Jackson and Sir Richard Taylor as a Kiwi Oscar-winner. The Flight Of The Conchords star won best original song for Man or Muppet, from The Muppets film, at the star-studded ceremony this afternoon. He beat out the only other nominated tune, Real in Rio, from animated film Rio.

McKenzie started his acceptance speech by recalling his New Zealand upbringing.

"We wants it, we neeeds it. Must have the precious. They stole it from us. Sneaky little hobbitses. Wicked, tricksy, false!"

In a hole in the ground there lived the hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort. Welcome to 100% Middle Earth!