Word: zealander
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...York Film Critics Circle named Steven Spielberg's Holocaust epic Schindler's List Best Picture but somewhat perversely gave New Zealand-born Jane Campion the award for Best Director for The Piano. The Los Angeles Film Critics Association likewise divided its Best Picture and Best Director awards between the two. For its part, the National Board of Review named Schindler Best Picture but cited Martin Scorsese as Best Director for The Age of Innocence...
Apiano stands alone on an empty swath of New Zealand beach while behind it a towering wall of seawaves threatens to obliterate it. That singularly haunting image is at the core of Jane Campion's new film "The Piano." The hoary proverb which states that a picture is worth a thousand words could not be more appropriate. The value of silence, of nonverbal communication, is essential to the theme of Campion's film, which depicts a world in which images and music count as much as words...
...Piano" begins, Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter) has become the mail-order bride of Alistair Stewart (Sam Neill), a farmer in the remote bush of nineteenth century New Zealand whom she has never met. Together with her nine-year-old daughter Flora (Anna Paquin) and her piano, Ada makes the long voyage by sea from Scotland to New Zealand. When Stewart arrives to meet her, he refuses to transport her piano to their house, leaving it on the beach...
Though his New Zealand accent wobbles a bit at times, Harvey Keitel is, as usual, excellent. He makes a potentially unlikable and thorny man human and sympathetic. Sam Neill, who originally wanted to play the part of Baines, is particularly fine in the role of Stewart, a good man who loses his head because of jealousy and passion. Here Neill has a role that is considerably meatier than the paleontologist he played in "Jurassic Park," and he lives up to the possibilities of the role...
...Zealand Prime Minister Jim Bolger eked out a one-vote parliamentary majority from absentee ballots cast in elections earlier this month. Bolger insisted that his conservative National Party could govern with 50 out of 99 parliamentary seats, vs. 45 for Labour and four for minor parties. But a National M.P. is expected to be named as Speaker, who cannot routinely support the government. Bolger thus faces the possibility of a hung parliament on key ballots...