Bring on the sheep jokes... Following a rousing reception at this year's Toronto Film Festival, NZ film Black Sheep has sparked a "bidding frenzy" amongst distributors in Asia, Latin America and Europe. The film was recently acquired by IFC Entertainment and The Weinstein Company for theatrical release in North America, after equally intense negotiations. A horror-comedy in the vein of Peter Jackson's Bad Taste and Braindead, Black Sheep is about a murderous pack of genetically mutated sheep. It is written and directed by Jonathan King and features special effects by Wellington's Weta Workshop. 
(11 November 2006)

Conchords take flight in US
America's HBO network has commissioned a 12-part series based on Kiwi folk music parody duo Flight of the Conchords. Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement are to star in the series, which will feature original songs from their award-winning comedy act. A pilot episode has already been shot, with the help of Ali G director James Bobin and Everybody Loves Raymond executive producer Stu Smiley. The Conchords have previously appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien (NBC), The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson (CBS) and One Night Stand (HBO), and starred in their own BBC2 radio series. HBO is renowned for producing high-risk hits such as Sex & the City and The Sopranos. 
(11 September 2006)

Another classic set for Edge treatment 
Peter Jackson is heading a big budget remake of classic British war film, The Dam Busters. Jackson will produce the movie, with fellow Kiwi and long time collaborator, Christian Rivers, making his directing debut. The 1954 film told the true story of how British forces developed bouncing bombs to destroy German dams in World War II. Jackson fell in love with the film after seeing it as a child. "There's that wonderful mentality of the British during the war - that heads-down, persevering, keep-on-plugging-away mentality which is the spirit of Dam Busters," he told industry trade paper, Screen Daily. The US$30-40 million project is due to start filming next year. 
(31 August 2006)

From screen to stage, Henderson impresses 
Kiwi actor Martin Henderson is currently walking the boards at London's Apollo Theatre with a lead role in Sam Shepard's Fool For Love. Henderson stars alongside American actress Juliette Lewis (Natural Born Killers) in the bleak story of sexual desperation, which shocked American audiences on its original 1983 release. Henderson's performance is the strongest of the cast, according to Guardian critic Michael Billington. "There's a telltale moment when Eddie lassoes a bedpost in a demonstration of macho power: Henderson does it with the negligent ease of a man who has spent half his life in the saddle. But he also implies that Eddie, for all his imposing authority, is fundamentally weak: however much he may lust after May or bully her date, he is reduced to a quivering wreck when his current meal ticket comes in pursuit of him in a black Mercedes." 
(16 June 2006)

Too much too soon? 
The release of United 93 - the first Hollywood film about 9/11 - has sparked controversy in the US, as well as further afield in NZ. Directed by Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday, The Bourne Supremacy), United 93 follows in real time the one flight which failed to reach its intended target, instead crashing in a Pennsylvania field and killing all on board. Subsequent cockpit voice recordings reveal an attempt to overpower the terrorists by a group of passengers. One of these passengers was Alan Beaven, a NZ environmental lawyer played in the film by British actor Simon Poland. "For me personally, I'm not sure I'd go [to the film.] I think it would be a little too close to home," says brother Ralph Beaven in Stuff. "I don't want to go down that track again. It would be very emotionally charged, especially seeing someone else represent your brother." United 93 opens in the US April 28. 
(16 April 2006)

Flux flexes its global muscle
Auckland-based Flux Animation has signed a $US5.7 million contract to work on the eagerly anticipated Singaporean children's series, Master Raindrop. Flux joins Singapore's Big Communications and German television company Yoram Gross-EM on the project, which has already been sold to Australia's Seven Network, TVNZ and Nickleodeon Asia. A 2D/3D animated action adventure comedy series, Master Raindrop is based on classic Asian myths and legends. "This will be the first official co-production between NZ and Singapore," says Flux managing director Brent Chambers. "It represents a huge step forward for the NZ industry." 
(29 April 2006)

 

Kiwi contributes to Anger canon
Auckland University graduate Alice Hutchison has written an internationally acclaimed book on cult 1960s filmmaker Kenneth Anger, the artist who many believed defined the Age of Aquarius with such iconic works as Invocation of My Demon Brother (scored by Mick Jagger), Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (which anticipated 60's psychedelia), and Lucifer Rising (the final piece in the acclaimed Magick Lantern cycle). Titled simply Kenneth Anger, the book has already been hailed as one of the definitive pieces on the notoriously difficult and reclusive artist. A Film Journal review describes Hutchison's work as "stunningly produced … Gaining permission [from Anger] to reproduce a huge range of film stills, many of them not previously published, is Hutchison's triumph." Read the Listener story on Hutchison's book here. 
(November 2005)

No.2 No.1 
Toa Fraser's debut feature No.2 won the World Cinema Audience Award: Dramatic at the 25th Sundance Film Festival in February. "[From] a humble backyard in Mt. Roskill in the Pacific, on behalf of the hundreds of people that worked on and invested in the movie, we want to thank the audiences of the Sundance Film Festival, for coming and celebrating life with us," said Fraser in his acceptance speech. "God bless Mt. Roskill." Two World Cinema Audience awards are bestowed at Sundance each year, one for dramatic film the other for documentary. 
(10 February 2006)

Keith gets the Grammy
Whangarei-born country music sensation, Keith Urban, has won his first Grammy Award. Urban was named best male country vocal performer ahead of Toby Keith, Willie Nelson, George Jones, Delbert McClinton and Brad Paisley. This follows his best entertainer and male vocalist trophies at last year's Country Music Awards. Urban's Grammy win was nearly overshadowed by his date to the awards - actress Nicole Kidman, the first public appearance by the couple.
(17 February 2006)

All features great and small 
Debate over the effects of big budget US films such as King Kong and the Narnia series being filmed in NZ continues, with most in favour of the Hollywood blockbusters. "The blockbusters have been phenomenally helpful for people like us trying to get a film made," says Toa Fraser, whose debut feature No.2 recently won an audience award at Sundance. "I embrace the blockbusters and the Hollywood back lot as long as we can use it to tell our own stories." Hollywood funded films have boosted local production financing to a record NZ$596 million ($406 million) in the year ended 31 March 2005, from roughly NZ$300 million in 1999. "That two of the biggest films in the world were made in NZ is an extraordinary achievement,'' says NZ Film Commission CEO Ruth Harley. "Our industry is the most vibrant it has ever been."
(9 February 2006)

Juggling juggernauts with local stories 
NY Times piece entitled 'Spunky NZ film Industry Takes on the Hollywood Juggernaut' ponders the pros and cons of NZ's bold new presence in the international film community. Interviewees such as director Vincent Ward and producer John Barnett worry that big budget Hollywood projects shot in NZ have driven up production costs for more modest, local films. "You get six years of Xena and Hercules, three or four years of Lord of the Rings or a year or two of King Kong, and you have a whole generation of film crews who have worked only on big-budget productions," says Barnett. "And they say, 'This is what I get paid, and it's your problem if it's a low-budget job.'" NZ Film Commission CEO Ruth Harley opposes the view that big budget projects stifle their local counterparts, pointing out that "the year under review has been one of the most successful in the organization's 27-year history, with more local films being made than ever and more local films winning awards and acclaim overseas." Producer Tim White, production designer Phil Ivey and OnFilm editor Nick Gant also support the new balancing act between an international and national film industry. "Those big films provide some continuity of work for local film crews," says White. "Then those people bring skills they've honed to smaller productions like [Toa Fraser's] No.2." 
(2 January 2006)

The lion, the witch and the evangelicals 
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe will not only be doing battle at the box-office but also for the souls of mankind, according to an article published in the Guardian. US groups such as Catholic Outreach and the National Association of Evangelicals intend to use the film - and its projected sequels - as a preaching tool to reach the masses, due to its overtly Christian themes and symbolism. Bill Pullman, acclaimed fantasy author and vocal critic of Narnia's creator, C.S Lewis, describes the popular series as "a peevish blend of racist, misogynistic and reactionary prejudice; but of love, of Christian charity, [there is] not a trace." Disney's marketing campaign for the first Narnia instalment - filmed in NZ by Kiwi Andrew Adamson - is one of the biggest in recent cinema history. 
(16 October 2005)

Local epic lures Donaldson home
An interview with The World's Fastest Indian director Roger Donaldson is the cover story for the October issue of Inside Film. Starring Sir Anthony Hopkins, the feature is described as the culmination of a 30-year dream for Donaldson, who made a documentary about the film's subject - Invercargill land speed record holder Burt Munro - back in 1971. As well as speaking about the movie itself, the US-based director talks about the present state of the NZ film industry ("pretty impressive… NZ seems to make a fair mark for itself") and his own desire to make more films back home. "I've got some [films] in development and some more movies I'd like to make in NZ," he says. "If I had a great science fiction movie to make or something like that I'd definitely think about making it in NZ … I'm always looking for some excuse to come back." 
(October 2005)

The sweet sound of success
Dilworth School alum Mark Petrie (above right) is carving an impressive career in film and television scoring in LA. Petrie completed a degree in film composing at Boston’s Berklee School of Music in 1999. He is now working for the company which creates music for reality TV shows The Apprentice, Rock Star INXS and The Biggest Loser, as well as running his own music production house, MX IN. Last year Petrie won the award for Best Score for his work on Cuban-American film Café and Tobacco at the Moondance International Film Festival in Boulder, Colorado.
(August 2005)
  

Hot property
Actor Martin Csokas is hailed as “the new Russell Crowe” in the July issue of Australian Vogue. Csokas’ recent projects include The Bourne Supremacy with Matt Damon, Asylum with Natasha Richardson and Sir Ian McKellen, Ridley Scott blockbuster Kingdom of Heaven, WW2 action flick The Great Raid, and the hotly anticipated Aeon Flux with Charlize Theron. “I’ve had a run of films, now I’m getting myself together,” he says. “[LA] is as nice a place as anywhere and it’s practical.”
(July 2005)
   

Cinderella Man
Russell Crowe won widespread acclaim for his role in Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man. Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “At the centre of all [its] richness is another irresistible star turn by Crowe. As his Oscar-winning performance in Gladiator proved, no contemporary actor is better at conveying an uncluttered personal integrity and nobility of spirit. You just want to hug the guy.” Kansas City Star: “If there were ever any doubt that Russell Crowe is the greatest screen actor of his generation, Cinderella Man should put matters to rest." Read Interview's pre-phone fracas profile here.
(June 2005)

Lovely Bones
Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens are to develop the Alice Sebold novel The Lovely Bones as their next film after King Kong. Though "The Lovely Bones" is not on the order of a major fantasy trilogy, Jackson said the book has its own complexities. The book opens with the revelation that 14-year old narrator and main character Susie Salmon was raped and murdered. From heaven, she watches how the people left behind handle her tragedy. "It's the best kind of fantasy in that it has a lot to say about the real world," Jackson said. "You have an experience when you read the book that is unlike any other. I don't want the tone or the mood to be different or lost in the film." The most perplexing problem, said Jackson, is how to convey Susie in heaven. "It's cleverly not described that well in the book, because Alice wanted your imagination to do the work and decide what Susie's heaven looks and feels like," Jackson said. "We will have to show something on film. It has to be somehow ethereal and emotional."
(18 January 2005)

Breaking new ground
Phil Keoghan’s US profile continues to climb, with a hit TV series and inspirational book - No Opportunity Wasted: Creating a List for Life – under his belt. Currently in his fifth season presenting Emmy Award-winning reality show, The Amazing Race, Keoghan’s next starring role is fronting the highly anticipated serialised TV adaptation of No Opportunity Wasted for the Discovery Channel.
(16 November 2004)

Two for Parr
Larry Parr’s Fracture scooped two major awards at the St Tropez Film Festival in October. Auckland’s Kate Elliot won Best Actress and the film was voted most popular festival entry by the audience. “We are delighted by Fracture's success,” says NZ Film spokeswoman Kathleen Drumm in Stuff. “These awards have substantially increased its chances of being picked up by a US distributor in Los Angeles.”
(28 October 2004)

Comedy with a conscience
The Ball, an Australian spoof of The Piano by Anny Slater, has been nominated by the UN for a Media Peace Prize. According to Canada’s St Johns Film Festival, “The Ball is a hilarious homage to and critique of Jane Campion's The Piano … In a few brilliantly crafted images, The Ball manages to score major laughs of recognition, as the mute heroine, Ada, travels to NZ to meet her new husband with her Scottish terrier and her soccer ball. Mistaking refugee-challenged Australian Prime Minister John Howard for her husband, Ada must deal with his strange demands and the loss of her precious ball.”
(12 September 2004)

Just don’t ask him to assume the brace position
Auckland armour maker, Warren Ormsby-Green, made Web India’s ‘What in the Weird’ equivalent with his air travel exploits. Ormsby-Green, who created pieces for LotR and The Last Samurai, wears a full set of armour when travelling by plane to avoid excess baggage charges. “The reactions I get can be pretty amusing,” he says. “Some people are very interested, some people laugh and some people can't even look at me.”
(30 September 2004)
   

King of the jungle
20-year-old Turanga Merito has assumed the lead role of Simba in the Sydney production of The Lion King, after fellow Kiwi Vincent Harder bowed out for family reasons. The Disney blockbuster draws a minimum of 16,000 viewers a week. “I'm so humbled by all of it but it gets a little scary sometimes,” said Merito to the NZ Herald. “Sometimes I wonder how did this Maori boy from Okere Falls in Rotorua get here?” NZ performers play five of the nine principal roles in the show, as well as two ensemble parts.
(14 August 2004)

Snakes alive
NZ company Silverscreen is collaborating with British and Taiwanese financiers on a film version of an ancient Chinese legend. Lady White Snake will be filmed in English with a budget of US$40 million. Cast and crew are at present under wraps, but a "leading-edge woman from New Zealand" is rumoured to be in the director's seat.
(13 July 2004)

“The estimable John Clarke”
Telemovie adaptations of Shane Maloney’s novels Stiff and The Brush Off by NZ comic John Clarke were a critical and ratings success in Australia, the former netting more than 1.3 million viewers on its one-off screening. Age: “Both films exhibit an infectious sense of the absurd and are graced by the especially tasty flavour of Clarke's distinctive writing. Not only does it spice both films but much of the time [David] Wenham even appears to be channelling Clarke in his performance (in much the same way that Kenneth Branagh does Woody Allen in Celebrity).” Clarke scripted both films and directed Stiff; fellow Kiwi Sam Neill directed The Brush Off.
(29 June 2004)

Kiwi cuisine
The NZ Film Commission party provided the best food at Cannes, according to a festival in the Age. The NZFC flew in six top chefs from Auckland for the event.
(23 May 2004)

Jane and the Weta
Weta Workshop is collaborating with Toronto-based animation house Nelvana to produce a CGI television series of Martin Baynton's popular Jane and the Dragon books. The 26-episode series is Weta's first foray into children's programming. "We have enjoyed a wonderful opportunity to create a fantastical world around the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien," says Weta Workshop founder Richard Taylor. "It is therefore a great treat to be able to create our own world for Jane and her Dragon."
(2 April 2004)

Taking Maori stories to the world
Whale Rider star Rawiri Paratene visited Hawaii in mid-April to discuss cultural themes in the film and NZ as a tourist destination. “Whale Rider has been a boom for Maori filmmakers,” said Paratene, who is now writing dramatic segments for the newly instated Maori television network. “It’s a validation that our stories can reach the world and affect people.” To conclude his Star Bulletin interview Paratene described co-star and Oscar nominee, Keisha Castle-Hughes, as “New Zealand’s best marketing tool.”
(14 April 2004)

Stopping traffic
Cliff Curtis is one of the key protagonists in the US miniseries Traffic - an adaptation of the Oscar-nominated film by the same name. Ever the ethnic chameleon (previous roles include Cuban, Iraqi, and Colombian characters), Curtis plays an illegal immigrant from one of the former Soviet states. Indy Star: "This is an explosive role, cast with a strong actor."
(25 January 2004)
 

Taranaki’s Hollywood ambassador
Tom Cruise sang the praises of Aotearoa to the US on his promotional tour for The Last Samurai, the Japanese military epic filmed largely in Taranaki. As well as the beautiful scenery and friendly locals, he was particularly taken with the adventure tourism the region had to offer, namely surfing, caving and sea kayaking. Age: “Qantas has John Travolta as its Hollywood face. Perhaps New Zealand should sign up Tom Cruise.”
(12 January 2004)
 

Xena and her sisters
Ex-Warrior Princess, Lucy Lawless, was the obvious choice to front a Discovery Channel documentary series on women fighters in history. Warrior Woman features Joan of Arc, China’s Wang Cong’er (the inspiration behind Disney flick, Mulan), Boudica of Britain, Irish pirate Grace O’Malley, and Apache warrior, Lozan. “These women have been written out of history, largely,” says Lawless, who shows off her own impressive sword skills in a duel with an Irish weapons master. Toronto Star: “… who better to present these unsung heroines than the woman who became an international icon as their fictional sword-swinging sister, Xena?”
(18 November 2003)
 

Bell Jar blues
Sylvia, Christine Jeffs’ high-profile biopic of poet Sylvia Plath starring Gwyneth Paltrow and filmed partly in NZ, described by New York Times' critic A.O. Scott as “emotionally rich … Ms Jeffs has a lyrical sensibility that matches her subject”. Andrew Sarris in the New York Observer calls it as "one of the most graceful and beautiful films of the year." IndieWire, who interviewed Jeffs, hailed the film as an all-around success: “In addition to the performances, the direction is top-notch, which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who saw NZ director Christine Jeffs’ debut feature, 2002’s Rain.” Guardian feature, 'Breaking the celluloid ceiling' notes that this year's London Film Festival was for the first time ever, opened and closed by films from (NZ) female directors - Jane Campion (In the Cut) and Jeffs. Still, the question is asked: "[W]hy - in the 75-year history of the Oscars - have only two women ever been nominated for Best Director (Italian Lina Wertmüller for Seven Beauties in 1976 and New Zealander Jane Campion for The Piano in 1993?"
(October 2003)
  

A star is Bourne
NZ actor Karl Urban, currently galloping across screens as Eomer in the LotR trilogy, will next appear in two major Hollywood sequels – for cult sci-fi / horror flick, Pitch Black, and as Matt Damon’s nemesis in the follow up to 2002 hit, The Bourne Identity. The second installment in Robert Ludlam’s Bourne series - adapted from novel to screen by Tony Gilroy - begins shooting later this year.
(7 October 2003)
   

Multi-layered myth-making
Japan Times review places Niki Caro’s Whale Rider alongside Once Were Warriors and The Piano as one of the pivotal moments in NZ cinema. “…Caro presents myth both as a connection with a deeper, mystical understanding of the world as well as a pragmatic parable, a code for living that transcends generations, providing stability and continuity, a metaphor for understanding our lives.” The film's lead Keisha Castle Hughes, has recently been cast as a “regal leader” in the latest Star Wars instalment,
(10 September 2003)
    

Making Hollywood inroads
NZ actor Martin Csokas (Rain, Shortland Street, XXX) is in the running for the lead role in Ridley’s Scott’s next film, Kingdom of Heaven. The epic period drama centres on a young peasant-turned-knight who falls in love with a queen during the Crusades. Paul Bettany, Orlando Bloom, and Daniel Day-Lewis have also been mentioned for the part.
(1 October 2003)
  

Tamahori's triple-X factor
Lee Tamahori is going from Bond to Bond-inspired as the new director of xXx. The second instalment in the lucrative franchise – in which Ice Cube replaces Vin Diesel as the titular extreme athlete-turned-secret agent – will be released in 2005.
(3 October 2003)
  

Here's to you Ms Hunter
Rachel Hunter subject of a Sky One documentary and two-part interview with The Sun in early August. She describes the documentary as an attempt to "draw a line under the whole Rod thing" and return the focus to her own successful career as a model, actress, and animal rights campaigner. Hunter's UK profile is soon to be boosted by the screening of Denial - dubbed British TV's answer to Sex & the City - in which she has a starring role.
(10 August 2003)

A view from Down Under
A forum for ex-pat NZ, Australian, and South African amateur filmmakers living in London - the UpOverDownUnder film festival - is now in its third year. Over that time, the festival has gone from a one-off show to a five-night event, which showcases recent Australasian and South African cinema releases as well as short films by the up-and-coming. The event was set up to promote "fresh perspectives on life in English capital."
(19 July 2003)

Euphoria against the odds
The world premiere of Jane Campion's An Angel at My Table was listed as one of the 50 greatest moments in the Sydney Film Festival's first 50 years of running in a Sydney Morning Herald feature. Despite being interrupted three times by projector problems - "just the worst thing you can do to a director" - the film received a "euphoric" standing ovation and caused "an unseemly rush by distributors to get to Jane."
(6 June 2003)

NYNZ - Ihimaera on Whale Rider muse
Whale Rider author and ex-diplomat to the US Witi Ihimaera interviewed in New York - the city where he penned the story behind the award-winning film. "One morning I woke up to the sound of helicopters. A whale had come up the Hudson River. My thoughts went back to Whangara, on the east coast of the North Island, where my mother's family came from, where we believe our first ancestor came to New Zealand on the back of a whale."
(1 June 2003)
  

Queen of the castle
Exuding star quality while remaining "refreshingly down-to-earth", Whale Rider star Keisha Castle-Hughes, feted in the New York Post, The State, and the Seattle Times and is cover-girl in Hawaii's Weekend Star Bulletin. Meanwhile director Niki Caro's script was awarded a US$10,000 Humanitas Prize as the film continues to ride high in North American theatres. The LA Times calls it the "most lyrical and unique film … so far this year," and the Toronto Star demands that director Niki Caro "be added to any list of emerging talent." 
(June 2003)

Everest: The Next Generation
Peter Hillary and Jamling Norgay have collaborated on a National Geographic documentary about Mount Everest to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their fathers' pioneering climb. Both have reached the famous summit themselves, and are currently touring the U.S with a series of talks entitled "Revisiting Mount Everest." 
(16 March 2003)

Hollywood hits the west coast
A charity screening of Andrew Niccol's Simone was held in his hometown of Paraparaumu, March 24. According to father Don Niccol, Simone "cocks a snook" at Hollywood by attacking "several dearly held Hollywood clichés." Proceeds from the event will be donated to the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research.
(12 March 2003)

Cruisin' Taranaki
Hollywood A-listers Tom Cruise and Gwyneth Paltrow are both currently on location in NZ. Paltrow is in Dunedin filming scenes for Christine Jeff's adaptation of the life of Sylvia Plath, while Cruise has set up home in Taranaki, where The Last Samurai is being shot. Cruise is already befriending the locals. Said one neighbour: "We were down in the paddock and he yelled out to the kids and introduced himself. We had a little natter and he said what a wonderful spot it was."
(7 January 2003)

Giving new meaning to wildlife
NZ production The Most Extreme has proved a hit with international Animal Planet viewers. The series, made by Dunedin-based Natural History New Zealand, involves a countdown of the world's weirdest animal trivia. Due to the quirky show's immense popularity, Animal Planet has commissioned a further 13 episodes, making Most Extreme NHNZ's largest and most successful series to date.
(November 2002)

UN Children's Television Workshop
A New Zealand production features in the International Children's Television Festival in Manhattan this month. The Kiwi entry in the UN sponsored exhibition, The Dress-Up Box Wonder, was written on the morning of the Sept 11 attack. The program "never addresses the events directly but presents an antidote to despair." Says curator, Jenna Alden: "It's about preserving the wonder and curiosity in life."
(1 November 2002)

Xenites unite! 
7th Xena Fest held at the University of Hawaii-Manoa June 9. Activities included martial arts demonstrations, auctions, and battle-cry contests. See the NZEDGE hot story on Lucy Lawless for the person behind the breast plate.
(7 June 2002)

Scene stealing
The LA Times surveys an "invasion of American films by directors and stars from Down Under. The biggest star now working in American films who began in his native New Zealand is Russell Crowe [...] . New Zealand's Temuera Morrison has a more important role as Obi-Wan's foe [in Star Wars]. It was perhaps only logical that Peter Jackson, a native New Zealander, would celebrate the beauty of his country, Australia's neighbour, in the Lord of the Rings trilogy."
(June 2002)

Rain brightens reviews
Christine Jeff's "sexually potent yet understated" feature debut Rain continues to make splashes as it opens across North America. The Boston Herald reports that Jeffs "easily captures the rhythm of a summer break where drinking through lazy days leads to raucous parties at night". The review's warning on content could also serve as a pithy plot summary: "sexual suggestiveness and frequent scenes of drunkenness".
(24 May 2002)

Rain: "under the surreal glare of a sunburnt hangover"
"A detached study of sleepy domestic torpor seizing up into tragic desperation, Christine Jeffs's debut feature, Rain, bears resemblance to The Virgin Suicides and Ratcatcher […] Jeffs's compositions are clean and evocative; and aided by John Toon's cinematography, the film transpires under the surreal glare of a sunburnt hangover".
(30 April 2002)

Vanity Fair enough
Ex-Shorties original Martin Henderson, after a stint across the ditch, goes west to LA and hits the big-time featuring in Vanity Fair's annual hyping Hollywood photo essay for his part in the upcoming Windtalkers. And Lee Tamahori, (currently helming the latest Bond installment), features in veteran producer Art Linson's candid account of the trials, tribulations and ego clashes involved in producing Tamahori's 1997 film The Edge. "Lee looked back at me as if to say, "I'm from New Zealand. Don't leave me here alone."
(April 2002)

Don't bank on it
"Maverick film producer" Kiwi John Maynard, (All Men Are Liars, An Angel At My Table co-produced with Jane Campion) is nominated for Best Film by the Film Critics Circle of Australia for The Bank - a movie said "to inspire as much faith in banks as George Dubya Bush does in world peace". Check the official movie site here for stills, links and reviews.
(March 2002)

Dawson's return
Australian media personality and regular on The Bert Newton Show, NZer Charlotte Dawson packs up her Louis Vuitton trunks to return home to her native country. "There are just so many more opportunities for me over there ...There is an absolutely fantastic lifestyle in New Zealand", says the former model once married to Aussie Olympian Scott Millar. "And am I so ready to live that life". 
(17 February 2002)

Film Success at Montreal
Still Life, a short film that tells the story of an elderly couple who discover that love defies even death, took out top honours in its category at the Montreal Film Festival. It is the first New Zealand short to win the top award. "I am absolutely thrilled and overwhelmed with the news of the film's success" says director Sima Urale.
(11 September 2001)

      
Fox judging
Award winning edge-actress Kerry Fox sits in the judging seat for the 54th Locarno International Film Festival.
Pdf Copy
(19 July 2001)

Fairytale victory
Kiwi co-directed  Shrek is "a computer-generated miracle. Based on William Steig’s 28-page book, the film puts forward the most marvellous case for the craziness of repressing fairytales since Sondheim’s musical Into the Woods." But, in Salon, not everyone buys the computer hype.
(28 June 2001)
 

Ancient forest
Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World filmed in New Zealand "where there are still forests that resemble those of the Cretaceous Period when the great dinosaurs walked the land".
(18 June 2001)
 

Goodbye Xena
Xena, shown in 120 countries, focus of fan-mania and Star Trek-like devotion, comes to an end. "We tried to take people on journeys that you won't go through in your real life," says Lucy Lawless, musing on the source of the Xena phenomenon. "You're not going to battle the Hindu god of death, but we'll all battle the theme of death at some stage of life". 
(17 May 2001) 

Curtain falls for Nyree Dawn Porter
"Forsyte sex symbol who conquered the world", Kiwi-born and raised star of the 60's TV show The Forsyte Saga (watched by 100 milllion people in 26 countries) remembered in The Telegraph, The Guardian and The Times. As Irene, the wronged wife of a Victorian 'man of property', Dorothy Porter's "classical good looks" became known world-wide and her performances "gripped a generation of viewers".
(12 April 2001)

Actress remembered
International tributes continue for "cucumber-cool" New Zealand-born Forsyte star Nyree Dawn Porter.
(12 April 2001)
 

Along came Lee
Along Came a Spider, edge-director Lee Tamahori's Kiss the Girls
follow-up "skillfully builds the action" and "gives sequels a good name".
(6 April 2001)

Milk in Hawaii
Price of Milk plays at the Hawaii International Film Festival.
(19 March 2001)

Lost in Te Anau
New Zealand-filmed BBC production of sci-fi dino classic The Lost  World set to be "a ripping yarn with some of the most exotic locations we've seen in television drama".
(8 February 2001)

Political thrills
"I felt that this picture was made for me, because I love politics and I love making thrillers," says Kiwi-spawned director Roger Donaldson of  missile-drama Thirteen Days, reviewed as "a sleek, fast and clean race through the facts".
(29 January 2001)
 

Cultural resonance
''Everything I saw in this film I see in my own country,'' says Maori Jillian White, speaking of Native Canadian films screened at Canada's Sundance festival.
(26 January 2001)

Greenstone hit
New Zealand historical drama Greenstone infiltrates Canada's Aboriginal Peoples Television Network.
(15 January 2001)

Rogue Anna Paquin is  Premiere Cover mutant
Playing the character of 'Rogue' in Bryan Singer's (Usual Suspects) blockbuster adaptation of comic legend X-Men, Anna Paquin makes the special edition cover of July's Premiere. Like Paquin's Oscar winning acting talent, Rogue is known for her ability to 'absorb'. Find out how Paquin's 'endowment' became a point of controversy on the set.
(July 2000)
  

Jesus and the second coming
Kiwi director Alison Maclean wowed Cannes with the moody Crush, then took a seven year maturing process, through Sex and the City, Homicide and a Natalie Imbruglia music video, to release the indie-hit Jesus' Son. The seven year itch has been redeemed by critical and popular success. Ripe affirmation for Maclean (and the nzedge) who, "feels happiest on the avant-garde edge of the film industry".
(2 July 2000)

From one edge to another to take up the Haka challenge
From Vancouver on the edge of the Atlantic, director Jonathan Tammuz will continue a global roll to the edge of the Pacific to direct "Haka" an 1850s-set $30million British production. The production will be filmed in New Zealand later this year.
(30 June 2000) 

Alison Maclean gives Jesus' Son the Kitchen Sink treatment
The story of a grunged out herion addict 'FH' (Billy Cudrup), based on the stories of Dennis Johnson and inspired by the Lou Reed lyric, also stars Oscar nominated Samantha Morton, Holly Hunter and Dennis Hopper. "A story of levity and grace", it is directed by acclaimed New Zealand director Alison Maclean.
(6 June 2000)

Maclean movie puts the art before the horse
Feed gets a shot in the arm from director Alison Maclean. "We all know what to expect from '70s smack movies. So why is Jesus' Son so unexpectedly good? Maclean's movie, like the much revered short story collection on which it is based, happens to be a real work of art..."
(23 June 2000)

Short Infection bugs Cannes Festival
New Zealand director James Cunningham's short film - a digital action thriller about a mutant hero that invades a computer system to destroy student loans - has been selected to compete in the prestigious 53rd Cannes Film Festival.
(May 2000) 

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 Australia and be directed by New Zealander Ellroy Elkayem, who co-wrote the script.
(30 March 2000) 

Demon talent 
NZ's Emily Barclay was named Best Lead Actress for her role in Suburban Mayhem at the Australian Film Industry (AFI) awards, December 7. The 22-year-old beat heavyweights Laura Linney (Jindabyne), Abbie Cornish (Candy) and Teresa Palmer (2:37) for the honour. "Emily is very, very brave and the performance needed to be slightly reckless - a demon that possesses your soul for a while," said Suburban Mayhem director Paul Goldman in the Herald Sun. The film itself was nominated for 12 AFI's and won three - for Best Lead Actress, Best Supporting Actor (Anthony Hayes) and Best Original Music Score (Mick Harvey). 
(8 December 2006)

Maori Mary's Nativity
Keisha Castle-Hughes' new film The Nativity Story opened to praise from the Vatican at its world premiere, when the film was greeted with applause by an audience of more than 7,000 at the Vatican's Pope Paul VI auditorium. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state, described the film as a faithful representation of the gospel accounts of the birth of Jesus Christ: "It is well done. It reproposes this event which changed history with realism but also with a sense of great respect of the mystery of the Nativity." The Vatican's endorsement of the film is seen as significant in light of 16-year old Castle-Hughes' pregnancy, announced in October. The Maori actress of Whale Rider fame was joined in her starring role by a truly multi-cultural cast, including actor Oscar Isaac of Guatemalan heritage, playing Joseph, and Shohreh Aghdashloo, a Muslim actress playing Mary's cousin Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. The Nativity Story was released in the US and most other countries on 1 December to decidedy mixed reviews. 
(29 November 2006)

Jackson gets his game on 
Peter Jackson has extended his relationship with Microsoft by signing on for two further film adaptations of the company's computer games. Wingnut's Jackson and Fran Walsh are currently executive-producing a film adaptation of the best-selling Halo franchise; next he will produce a sequel to Halo as well as an original film with an interactive game spin-off. He has also announced the imminent launch of Wingnut Interactive Studio, a NZ-based production house which will develop new properties for Microsoft's Xbox 360 next-generation console. "Microsoft has built an amazing living canvas with Xbox 360 and Xbox Live, which allows the storytellers of our time to express themselves in a new medium," says Jackson. "...From a movie-maker's point of view, it is clear to me that the Xbox 360 platform is the stage where storytellers can work their craft in the same way they do today with movies and books, but taking it further with interactivity." 
(29 September 2006)

Fourth Emmy for Keoghan, Amazing Race 
Christchurch-born Producer/Host Phil Keoghan lined up for his fourth successive Emmy Award in Los Angeles for Outstanding Reality/Competition Program. The Amazing Race is now in its 10th season. Teams race for more than 40,000 miles in under 30 days in pursuit of the $1 million prize. Also featuring at the Emmys was Wellington-born UK screenwriter Richard Curtis, who won for outstanding writing for a miniseries, movie or dramatic special for The Girl in the Café. The work of New Plymouth-born cinemaphotographer Rodney Charters helped the heart-pounding thriller 24 to the Emmy for best drama for the first time and the show's star Kiefer Sutherland for best actor in a drama.
(August 28 2006)

Epic in more ways than one 
NZ director Vincent Ward relates the harrowing experience of filming River Queen in a candid interview with the Sydney Morning Herald. Weather, illness and car crashes aside, it was lead actress Samantha Morton who provided most of the drama on set. "Samantha is one of the most talented actresses I have ever worked with, but the reality is she's lived a tough life … I saw grown men cry [on set]. She made them cry," he says. "[But] I'm a director, so I defend my actors. I defend talent and she's fantastic, so I forgive talent anything." River Queen is the epic story of a woman caught on both sides of a brutal war between English colonialists and a Maori tribe in 1860s NZ. 
(30 June 2006)

Coming of age Keisha
Castle-Hughes is to star alongside Toni Collette in the upcoming Australian black comedy Hey, Hey, It's Esther Blueburger. Castle-Hughes plays a 13-year-old Jewish girl struggling to fit in both at school and at home. Filming takes place in Adelaide and Sydney in October. 
(11 May 2006)

Keeping it local 
One of NZ's most successful producers Tim White returned to work on Toa Fraser's debut feature No.2. An Ilam graduate, White's producing credits include Ned Kelly, Map of the Human Heart, Two Hands, Oscar and Lucinda, and Death in Brunswick. He was chief executive of Fox Icon, a cooperative venture between 20th Century Fox and Mel Gibson's Icon Productions, and until last year headed Working Title Australia, the Antipodean branch of the UK production house behind Bridget Jones, Billy Elliot and Four Weddings and a Funeral. White describes working on No.2 as the best homecoming he could ever ask for in an interview with Stuff. "I was really drawn to finding a story that explored the incredibly vivid, energetic Pasifika culture and the very thing that made Auckland attractive in a way that I'd never really appreciated long ago." His next project is Scarfies director Robert Sarkies' film about the Aramoana massacre. 
(11 December 2005)

Starlet with edge 
Kiwi actress Emily Barclay (In My Father's Den) has the starring role in Suburban Mayhem, an Australian film currently screening at Cannes. A very black comedy, Suburban Mayhem revolves around an amoral young single mother (Barclay) who decides to kill her father. It is the much-hyped debut feature by 27-year-old Australian screenwriter Alice Bell. "I didn't find [my character Katrina] totally unsympathetic," said Barclay in her first press conference. "She's manipulative and volatile and lawless, but she's also crazy and wild and takes no prisoners and doesn't answer to anyone." 
(21 April 2006)

The many facets of King Kong
Peter Jackson's King Kong graced the cover of the January issue of Cinefex, America's premiere cinema effects magazine. Inside is a 45-page in depth look at the incredibly detailed digital, physical and emotional processes which went into the making of the film. The article is the result of extensive interviews with 30 people involved in the 2005 remake, including director Peter Jackson, whose interview is available online at the Cinefex website. Cinefex: "Mounted on a scale that, in many respects, outstripped the Lord of the Rings films - with more visual effects than any single Tolkein film, and more creatures and miniatures than the entire trilogy combined - King Kong pushed all levels of production to new heights." Despite the technical wizardry involved, Jackson believes the true impact of the film stems from the enduring emotional resonance of the original story. "I always felt that we love Kong because we understand his tragedy … The basic irony and the terrible tragedy is that Kong follows his heart and that leads to his downfall. That, I think, is what gives the story its power." 
(January 2006)

Keoghan living large 
LA Times interviews Phil Keoghan, the Kiwi host of Emmy Award-winning reality series The Amazing Race. The "savvy NZ native" discusses everything from his lucky break into TV ("there was no degree that you could do in broadcasting and communications, so out of the whole country they would take two people from all the high schools to work for the national network, and I was lucky enough to get one of the spaces") to his life-altering brush with death while filming Spot On ("I said I wasn't going to live my life the same way, so I wrote a list of things to do before I died. Then I decided that I would do everything humanly possible to turn the list that I wrote into my living.") The Amazing Race recently began its ninth season on US network CBS. 
(12 March 2006)

Whale Rider to North Country
Whale Rider director Niki Caro has officially earned her Hollywood stripes with the release of Warner Brothers' North Country. Starring Charlize Theron, Sissy Spacek, Frances McDormand and Sean Bean, North Country is a fictionalised account of the first major sexual harassment case in the US. Variety describes the film as "an emotionally potent story told with great dignity" in which Caro "creates a vivid sense of the women's isolation and powerlessness." Charlize Theron made the long trip to Auckland for North Country's NZ premiere, telling NZPA "I wanted to come and support Niki because I know that this is her home town and I'm so incredibly proud of her." Theron has been nominated for an Oscar as Best Actress for her performance. 
(28 January 2006)

Mt Roskill meets Utah… and the world 
No.2, the debut feature film by playwright Toa Fraser, has been selected for competition at Sundance 2006. Based on his award winning play of the same name, No.2 stars a mixture of international and local actors - including Ruby Dee (Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing) in the central role of Nanna Maria. "From a backyard in Mt. Roskill to the Sundance Film Festival, it's crazy and very cool, a big honour," says Fraser in Arts Calendar. "I'm very proud of the film and can't wait for audiences to get to see it." The 2006 Sundance Festival sees a return to its independent roots, with a slimmed down program and greater emphasis on the discovery of new faces and names. No.2 is one of just 16 films selected for the festival's international dramatic section. 
(29 November 2005)

Meet Me in Miami 
Christchurch-produced independent film Meet Me in Miami premiered in one of the prime spots at the prestigious Los Angeles International Latino Film Festival on October 29 at The Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. Starring two of the biggest Latino film and television sensations Carlos Ponce and Eduardo Verastegui, the romantic comedy follows Luis Montero, an heir to a wealthy hotel chain and one of Miami's most eligible bachelors, as he and his best friend Eduardo board a plane to New Zealand to win back Luis' childhood sweetheart Julia, played by Tara Leniston. The film was shot in nine weeks, seven of those in Christchurch and two on the Californian coast. The Christchurch actors include Brigid McClelland, Richard Burtt, Nicholas Bollen and Claire Bruce. Meet Me in Miami is produced by Lisa Abbott, and directed by Eric Hannah and Iren Koster. Christchurch based Abbot said, "It is a huge honour for Meet Me in Miami to be included at the LA Latino International Film Festival where it will be up against some of the very best Latino films in the world. Rarely are comedies invited to compete in this competition so I am thrilled Meet Me in Miami has been considered for this year's festival and is nominated for the competition awards." 
(30 October 2005)

Kong is coming 
Wired magazine's October issue features a lavish 16-page look at Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong, due to hit cinemas this December. Wired examines the greatly anticipated film through an extensive selection of behind the scenes images in a King Kong portfolio by Art Streiber and Jackson's online diary entries found on kongisking.net. The "post-production diaries" started last September, chronicle the making of King Kong in bite sized three to four minute installments of footage, that when complete will have a collective running time of nearly six and a half hours. "The Kongisking journals are more than a mere tease. They have blossomed into a real-time documentary about the making of King Kong, the world's first comprehensive, downloadable study of how a $175 million movie gets made, down to the last fleck of modeling clay." 
(October 2005)

On the right path
Another talented Urban, Karl is to star in the upcoming US$30 million Viking epic, Pathfinder. Directed by Marcus Nipsel (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and written by Laeta Kalogridis (Alexander), Pathfinder tells the story of a Viking child (Urban) left behind during a battle between Native Americans and Norse warriors in pre-Columbus America. Urban is also reportedly a contender to take the reins from Pierce Brosnan as the next James Bond. According to Bond fan-site MI6, he is the right age, is a recognizable but not yet big name, and has proven himself adept at genre fare.” The next Bond film – Casino Royale – will be directed by fellow Kiwi Martin Campbell, who also made 1995’s Goldeneye.
(15 August 2005)
  

North Country 
North Country is Niki Caro's directorial follow-up to the hugely successful Whale Rider. Set in the iron mining region of north Minnesota, North Country tackles sexual harassment in the workplace and is based on the book Class Action: The Story of Lois Jenson and the Landmark Case That Changed Sexual Harassment Law by Clara Bingham. The film stars Charlize Theron and Frances McDormand with Sean Bean, Woody Harrelson and Sissy Spacek. Theron delivers another gritty performance in the role of single mother Josie Aimes, who rallies her female coworkers to rise above unfair treatment they face at a local mining company. Caro said: "With North Country, I was so shocked that these events had happened in such recent history. I was very intrigued by the fact that every person in every industry I've talked to has heard of sexual harassment. And yet, in a cinematic culture that damages and demoralizes female characters with embarrassing regularity, making a film about sexual harassment seemed like a bold act. Nobody's made this film before."
(20 October 2005)

Alan Dale heart-attacked from The O.C.
Dunedin-born actor Alan Dale’s role as wealthy Orange County real estate mogul, Caleb Nichol (“deep down, he is a conniving man that won't stop until he gets what he wants”) in the hit show The O.C. has ended after his character was struck by a fatal heart attack and buried in the season finale (Caleb Nichol had started the year facing corruption charges, was forced to acknowledge his illegitimate daughter, suffered a heart attack, dealt with a blackmailer and initiated a divorce action against his trophy wife). Alan Dale started acting at the age of 12 in his parents theater group. After school he moved to Auckland, married and began a job as a milk man. While making his deliveries one day, he heard that the breakfast radio announcer was quitting, he finished his deliveries and went to apply. He landed the job. In 1979, 10 days after arriving in Sydney, he landed his first television role in The Young Doctors. After three years as Dr. John Forest, he went on to star in Neighbours as Jim Robinson, his defining role, for eight years. After re-marriage to former Miss Australia, Tracey Pearson he moved to Los Angeles where he has been in many programs such as E.R, The X-Files, Navy NCIS, The Practice and The O.C. He also had a role in movie Star Trek: Nemesis and was one of the voices in the X-Men video game. 

Wild about Buddha
Anna Wilding’s feature length documentary Buddha Wild sold out its sneak preview sessions at Rialto Cinemas as well as in Thailand, with all proceeds going to the tsunami appeal. Expect big things on the international festival circuit.
(February 2005)
   

From South Korea with love
NZ launched its inaugural South Korean Film Festival in Auckland on October 22. Actresses Chang Mi-hee and Park Sol-mi, directors Kang Je-gyu and Kwak Jae-yong, and critic Yu Gi-na attended the week long event, which featured such films as Tae Guk Ki, Yopkijogin Kunyo and Untold Scandal. NZ will also host its first major Korean art exhibition at the Waikato Museum of Art and History next year. Entitled 'Poetics of Line and Color: Korean textiles and costumes of the Choson Dynasty,' the show focuses on traditional Korean wrapping cloths (bojagi).
(27 October 2004)

Melancholy masterpiece
The Australian mainstream release of In My Father’s Den has seen writer/director Brad McGann dubbed “NZ’s answer to Ken Loach.” Features in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age focus on the humble manner in which McGann overcame his “new kid on the block status” to create a masterpiece of NZ film. So far, In My Father’s Den has won the International Federation of Film Critics prize at Toronto and the Youth Jury Prize at the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain. It also made the cover of Australia’s Inside Film October edition, which described it as simply “superb.” “What was wonderful about In My Father's Den was that it was like coming back to a little patch of land in NZ,” says McGann in The Age. “When you start digging in your own soil, it's interesting how satisfying it is to realise the wealth of material you become conscious of.”
(22 October 2004)
 

International acclaim for national story
NZ/British co-production In My Father’s Den won the prestigious Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique (FIPRESCI) award at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Directed by NZer Brad McGann and based on the novel by Maurice Gee, festival judges praised the film for its “emotional maturity, striking performances, and visual grace.”
(19 September 2004)
 

 
A weighty story
A feature-length biopic of NZ sporting icon Precious McKenzie is in the works, with London-based Precious UK Ltd and South Africa’s Unital Films International already on board. The screenplay, written by Tauranga’s Lance and James Morcan, was promoted at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, earning widespread interest from investors. McKenzie was born in South Africa but won weightlifting medals for England and NZ at the Olympic and Commonwealth Games respectively. He currently lives in Auckland. See Scoop story for further details.
(1 September 2004)
    

Neill on board
Sam Neill is to star in a BBC Two adaptation of William Golding’s acclaimed sea trilogy, To the Ends of the Earth. Directed by David Attwood, the three 90-minute programs will be filmed in South Africa. Executive Producer Justin Bodle: “[This] is event television in its purest sense, an ambitious production that brings together a highly respected team that have the talent and tools to realise William Golding's vision magnificently on screen.”
(16 July 2004)   

Prime slot for Kiwi production
In My Father's Den opened this year's Sydney Film Festival - the first time a NZ feature has done so in the event's 50-year history. Directed by Brad McGann, the film is based on Maurice Gee's novel of the same name and stars British actor Matthew MacFadyen, Australia's Miranda Otto, and Kiwi newcomer Emily Barclay. "It really is one of the best films that I have seen for a very long time," says festival director Gayle Lake. "It examines the bigger questions in relation to how we feel about family, how you can never run from the past and at some point to achieve a level of redemption in your life, you have got to face up to the music."
(10 June 2004)

Two Cars, too beautiful
Two Cars, One Night by Taika Waititi was named Best Short Film at Germany’s prestigious Berlinale festival. The film, which also showed at Sundance 2003, explores the relationship which develops between two children while waiting for their parents at a rural NZ pub. Said the Berlinale judges; “This beautifully photographed black-and-white film reflects human codes and behaviour in a charming and poetic way.”
(10 February 2004)

Another award for the kete
Niki Caro’s Whale Rider was named Best International Film at the 2004 IFP Independent Spirit Awards in Los Angeles. The IFP website calls Whale Rider a “radiant story of an exceptional little girl's coming of age, and of a proud Maori community's struggle to embrace new ways of thinking.”
(28 February 2004)

A delightful upset
Peter Jackson may have been a shoe-in for an Oscar nomination, but the inclusion of first-time thespian Keisha Castle-Hughes (Whale Rider) in the Best Actress category came as a welcome surprise. At just 13 years of age – 11 at the time of filming - Castle-Hughes is the youngest ever actor to be nominated in her category. Her agents had been plugging for a Best Supporting Actress nomination, but instead Castle-Hughes is up against the formidable competition of Diane Keaton, Charlize Theron, Samantha Morton, and Naomi Watts. Castle-Hughes recently won the Young Actor gong at the Critics Choice Awards in LA.
(27 January 2004)
   

Call of the wild
A combined BBC and ABC production team has spent 3 years filming the first comprehensive nature program on Australasia. The 6-part series - Wild Australasia - uses state-of-the-art technology and daring camera-work to bring virtually unexplored regions to the screen. The Age mentions infra-red footage of foraging kiwis, and kea terrorising parked cars at NZ ski-fields as two particular highlights.
(28 January 2004)

Lions and witches in Kiwiland
Pre-production on The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe is officially underway in NZ, with Weta Workshop on board for the visual effects and Kiwi Andrew Adamson (Shrek) at the helm. The £62 million project is the first in a series of 5 films based on C.S Lewis' best-selling Narnia series. Minister for Industry Development, Jim Anderton, calls it "a vote of confidence in our country as a location for film and screen production ... it means more opportunities for New Zealanders to learn new skills and find employment in an exciting and creative industry." Says Adamson in USA Today, "I always thought Narnia was real. I don't want to make the book as much as my memory of the book. Aslan has to be a talking, emoting character."
(19 December 2003)

Black sheep and proud of it
Jane Campion discusses love, Hollywood, and women directors with Harpers & Queen. “Jane Campion seems to have the wrong name. ‘Jane’ is one of those names that belongs to girls who play skipping-rope, while ‘Campion’ is reminiscent of that delicate wild flower of country lanes, the pink campion. The 49-year-old New Zealander has a mass of thick, strong hair, an unflinching gaze, and facial bone structure that could have been hewn from stone to resemble a pagan mask. You certainly wouldn’t want to be in the same room as this woman when she got pissed off at one of her Hollywood people … Once you’ve got used to the fiery Medusa Campion, you start to notice another quality that is a strong part of her make-up – something that could be wisdom, or perhaps a type of inner calm.” Campion revels in her outsider status: “Oh, Hollywood loves its mavericks; it loves its black sheep. They’re always trying to bring them into the fold. They don’t know how to breed originality so they buy it. And I’m not for sale – so they leave me alone.”
(November 2003)
 

“Dark fairytale” played out on the edge
Gaylene Preston and Rachael Blake – NZ director and Australian star of Perfect Strangers – speak to the Age about filming on the South Island’s rugged West Coast. Preston used the sense of physical unease to the film’s advantage: “I remember thinking during the shoot that it was so much better where we were than everybody being in comfortable green rooms and everything being done in a studio.” The Age critic agrees: “The result is a little like a dark fairytale … it’s clear that Preston pushes her characters as close to the edge as she does herself and her cast.”
(19 October 2003)
    

Watching wildlife world-leaders
Kiwi production company NHNZ scooped three awards at the 2003 NaturVision wildlife film festival held in Munich, Germany. The Case of the Baby-Faced Assassin (above) – a documentary on Australia’s nocturnal carnivorous marsupial, the quoll, by Rod Morris – beat out 149 entries from around the world to take the Grand Prix award. Tropic Gothic – Ruth Berry’s program exploring the history behind a settler’s cottage in North Queensland – picked up both the Best Innovation and Youth Jury Prize. NHNZ also received two bronze “Chris Awards” at the 51st Columbus Film & Video Festival, and is one of four television companies in the world to be asked to compete for this year’s distinguished Prix Jules Verne award at the Image et Science festival in France. Managing director, Michael Stedman: “NHNZ’s science programmes span the frontiers of scientific, technological and biomedical research to reveal the cutting-edge discoveries which are shaping our lives.”
(2 October 2003)

Lady Ngila
"The costume designer deserves a knighthood." Award-winning Kiwi costumier, Ngila Dickson, receives nameless praise in Empire magazine for her "impressive rendering of 19th century Japan" in previews of Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai - which recently finished filming in Taranaki.
(13 June 2003)

Hunter in denial
Rachel Hunter has won a role in Britain's eagerly anticipated version of Sex & the City - Denial. The show, which has been at the centre of an international bidding war, is being touted as "the hottest thing to hit British TV in a long while." Hunter plays a socialite in the series, which began filming June 16.
(3 June 2003)

Whale riding on east (and west) coast
NYTimes' critic Elvis Mitchell praises Niki Caro's Whale Rider as having the "inspired resonance of found art [...] wickedly absorbing", and the quiet charisma of actress Keisha Castle-Hughes.The film along with fellow NZ product Her Majesty screened at the 2nd annual Tribeca Film Festival in New York, selling out well before the festival's opening date. The film won the World Cinema Audience Prize at the high-profile Robert De Niro-helmed event, fresh from claiming the equivalent award at the 46th Annual San Francisco Film Festival.
(3 May 2003)
  

X-factor 
Anna Paquin featured in New York Daily News, one of numerous high-profile interviews given during her hectic promotional tour for X-Men 2. Currently finishing an English major at Columbia between films, Paquin's next plan is to take a much-needed break from Hollywood and return to theatre work. "I would just love to be in New York for a while working … to go home at the end of the day, hang out with my friends, just have a regular life."
(28 April 2003)
    

FAQ: "Why (oh God, why)?"
NZer Simon Jansen profiled as online icon of the week in The Scotsman's "lazy guide to net culture." Jansen is a master of asciimation; making moving pictures out of letters, numerals and punctuation marks. His epic work - which he began in 1997 - is asciimating the original Star Wars film. Scotsman: "You won't be amazed by the special effects but rather by the sheer effort that has gone into translating a multi-million dollar blockbuster from expensive celluloid to a series of numbers and letters."
(30 April 2003)
   

Jackson (and NZ) goes ape
Watch out Sky Tower: Peter Jackson is to direct a remake of King Kong for Universal Pictures. The epic production will be filmed on location in NZ and released globally in 2005. Says an elated Jackson; "No film has captivated my imagination more than King Kong. I'm making movies today because I saw this film when I was 9 years old. It has been my sustained dream to reinterpret this classic story for a new age."
(30 March 2003)

Toy Love a "clear winner"
NZ comedy Toy Love has won the Audience Award at Portugal's Fantasporto 2003 film festival. Says writer-director Harry Sinclair; "I'm thrilled about the award. It's a highly respected festival, so it will certainly raise the film's profile in Europe. Those Portuguese know a good comedy when they see one."
(6 March 2003)

Saint Cruise of Taranaki
Tom Cruise - Taranaki's favourite adoptive son - has come to the financial aid of a local school. The Edge radio station had offered $5,000 to whoever could get the Hollywood star on air. Cruise promptly called in and offered to match the price if stakes were upped to $7,000. He then donated his prize-money to Urenui junior school, which has been fundraising for an outside shelter.
(12 February 2003)

Weta puts out feelers
New York-based Ohio Edit is to represent Weta Digital on the US commercial circuit. Company heads Peter Jackson and Richard Taylor decided that their acclaimed effects house would benefit from small international projects in between the epic-scale productions for which they are now known. Jackson calls the move "a smart way to keep everybody busy throughout the year." 
(2003)

Co-host Clark
Helen Clark appeared on America's top-rating Today Show to promote an upcoming Discovery Channel program on NZ. New Zealand: The Royal Tour sees the PM take American presenter Peter Greenberg on a guided tour of Aotearoa; caving, abseiling et al. Tourism NZ expects the show to add to the attention swell heading NZ's way.
(16 December 2002)

Independent film in the wars
An independent British film telling the story of a New Zealand WW2 hero has ignited a "trans-Atlantic row over Hollywood movie muscle." Two Men Went to War is to be screened in a paltry 6 out of over 3,000 cinemas in the UK because its makers and distributors are unable to foot the £200,000 promotion bill. The film, praised by critics as "a cross between a classic Ealing comedy and Dad's Army, brings to the screen the adventures of Private Leslie Cuthbertson, a 20-year-old trainee dental technician, and Sergeant Peter King, a 55-year-old New Zealander. The odd-couple mounted a two-man invasion of occupied France in 1942, two years before the official D-Day landings.
(5 November 2002)

Whale Rider: People's Choice at Toronto
Whale Rider swerves past Bend it Like Beckham to win the prestigious AGF People's Choice award at the Toronto Film Festival - an award previously won by Amelie and Crouching Tiger - Hidden Dragon. Directed by Niki Caro and based on the book by Witi Ihimaera, Whale Rider received standing ovations at both its public screenings. First-time actress and star of the movie, 12 year old Keisha Castle-Hughes, was widely praised for her, "quietly heroic performance as a Maori girl who assumes a mythic mantle of leadership over the objections of her traditionally minded grandfather." Sydney Morning Herald: "one of the film world's minor miracles".
(13 September 2002)

Children subject of Her Majesty
The Edinburgh International Film Festival screens the "quirky New Zealand film" Her Majesty. Mark J Gordon's feature (from a Sundance award-winning script) tells the story of an impassioned young Royalist during the Queen's 1953 tour of NZ. Festival publicity describes Her Majesty as "a delightful, heart-warming film for all ages […] the story of one little girl's dream."
(14 August 2002)

Wild West Coast designs production
Sam Neill films in NZ for the first time since The Piano on South Island's rugged West Coast. Perfect Strangers, directed and produced by noted NZ documentary maker Gaylene Preston (Bread and Roses), also stars Australian actress Rachael Blake (Lantana). "It doesn't get more beautiful than this", Neil remarks on the setting of the romantic thriller.
(6 June 2002)

Bug Movie 2002: Eight Legged Freaks
"What do you get when you cross toxic waste with a bunch of exotic spiders? Eaten." The Washington Post gives the skinny on Eight Legged Freaks - the feature debut for Kiwi director and co-writer Ellory Elkayem. Starring David Arquette, from the producers of Independence Day and Godzilla, it's a spun-out araction genre-happy, "intentionally campy movie, which combines special effects with humor." "Help me!" (above, Elkayem on set)
(10 May 2002)

Good morning USA from NZ
Wake up! To coincide with the 'Amazing Race' visiting New Zealand, roaming New Zealander ambassador of down under adventure, Phil Keoghan, will be staging ' Kiwi Week' on the CBS Early Show. Including Queenstown bungee, sheep shearing, fly-fishing lifestyle getaway, Hokitika Wildfood's Festival and Lord of the Rings. Phil is currently looking for stories of off-island Kiwi experience for an upcoming 'slice of life' show: E-mail here.
(April/May 2002) 
 

The empire strikes back
The SMH finds Tem Morrison carrying the antipodean banner in the new Star Wars blockbuster, Episode II: Attack of the Clones - the latest installment of George Lucas's epic fantasy: "The best chance to shine falls to New Zealand's Temuera Morrison, best known for Once Were Warriors, who plays an evil bounty hunter." Morrison appears with fellow NZers Daniel Logan as a young Boba Fett ("impressively acted" according to the Houston Press), and Jay Laga'aia alongside thirteen Australians in the cast and "stormtroopers with New Zealand accents".
(14 April 2002)
 

Wellywood Story
LA film producers look to the edge for inspiration in an attempt to reverse the trend of productions increasingly being shot in foreign locations to cut costs: "Los Angeles is not like Wellington", says Lord of the Rings executive Mark Ordesky. "To make the movie they said how can we help? No wheels needed to be greased. LA is too complex a place for that to truly happen". 
(28 March 2002)

Edge power play
"Are [NZer] Tim Bevan (43) and Eric Fellner (41) the most powerful London-based film producers in history? As Working Title (of which they are co-chairmen) is responsible for Bridget Jones's Diary, Billy Elliot, Notting Hill, Elizabeth, Bean and Four Weddings and a Funeral, the answer is almost certainly yes. No one in the British film industry has an international hit-making track record that comes close. And as Working Title is also home to the Coen brothers, they have the arty side covered, too". Visit the NZEdge Hot profile on Bevan.
(17 February 2002).

Bollywood or bust
Lush locations, talent and technology make NZ an ideal shooting location for Bollywood. Its almost monsoon season down under with the production schedules over-flowing, "the total number of song and dance routines filmed in NZ has gone up to 80"... Already New Zealand earns almost as much income from cinema as it does from wool. 
(1 February 2002)

Dead chuffed
The A-list from the cinematic, corporate and consulate worlds turned out for a deliciously irreverent Sam Neil tribute honouring his 25 years in film and his contribution to New Zealand, Australian, and American culture and commerce at the Qantas Australia Day Ball hosted by the Australian American New Zealand Association (AANZA) at the St. Regis Hotel, LA. Tributes flowed from Mel Gibson, Rob Lowe, Tim Finn, Peter Jackson. Above: Neill and Billy Zane.
(26 January 2002)

Her Majesty
A preteen girl's obsessive quest to cross paths with young Queen Elizabeth during latter's 1953 New Zealand tour provides the charming focus for Her Majesty, L.A based director Mark Gordon's polished feature debut. New Zealand provides the "mildly exoctic" setting for the film, which opens to rave reviews.
(October 2001)
 

Nature Film Fest Sucess
Natural History New Zealand walked away with two awards at at the Japan Wildlife Film Festival, one of the industry's highest-regarded wildlife television festivals. The Crystal Ocean won the Underwater Award, while the nine-part Wild Asia series picked up the Asia/Oceania Award.
(September 2001)

Is anybody out there?
Front man Sam Neill presents the BBC's "awe-inspiring journey around our Galaxy and beyond in the ground-breaking new documentary series Space." 
(23 July 2001)

Animation just-in-time
"Every step of the way was a challenge and fun at the same time," says New Zealand director Andrew Adamson on developing the technology for Shrek, the cutting-edge animated tale that's cleaning up at the box-office.
(29 June 2001)
 

What's xenophobia?
Fear of the warrior princess, of course. "Xena: The Warrior Princess,' which leaves the syndicated airwaves this week after six seasons, can be secure about its place in popular culture: It's become a reliable punchline".
(14 June 2001)

Golden Kiwi
Robert Ebert claims Kiwi Alison MacLean for America, giving edge femme attitude to his "new golden age" directors list. MacLean, Tarantino, Soderbergh and others are "doing work as interesting as the 1970s golden-agers like Scorsese, Coppola, Altman and Malick".
(15 May 2001)
 

Sharp snapper
Edge videographer Geoff Mackley plays chicken with lava and chases tornadoes in his holidays: he's "the crocodile hunter of natural disasters".
Pdf Copy
(24 May 2001)

Price of Milk rising
Milk continues its smooth reception: "innocent, physically passionate, earnestly romantic and self-deprecatingly funny".
(6 April 2001)

Rugged White Guys from Down Under
"These are the rugged white guys who rely, in the final analysis, on their own abilities. We enjoy actors who are like their roles," says New York University Professor Toby Miller. "For example, we know Russell Crowe can handle himself with his fists, much like his character in L.A. Confidential."
(19 April 2001)

Not bitter
Winning an Oscar gives you leverage; enough leverage to extract the last drop of VB from the Australian embassy in Washington.
(11 April 2001)

Cheapy crawlies
Weta get the best value FX? WETA, Peter Jackson's Wellington studio.
(29 March 2001)
 

Maori on film
The 24th Douarnenez Film Festival, held in Brittany 18-25th of August focuses on "The Maori of Aotearoa". The festival will screen films like Utu, Ngati and Once Were Warriors in conjunction with meetings and debates with directors, writers and historians, workshops, exhibitions and music all centred on Maoritanga and contemporary Maori issues.
(April 2001)
 

Amazing Phil
The mad New Zealander of US television, Phil Keoghan to host Amazing Race, a globe-trotting version of Survivor.
(21 March 2001)
 

Oscar landmark
Holly Hunter's performance as a mute immigrant in nineteenth-century New Zealand in Jane Campion's The Piano is lauded as one of the best Oscar performances ever and a landmark in Feminist filmmaking: "actresses playing assured women and actors playing demoralised men". 
(18 March 2001)

He doesn't care where,
he still won't be mayor.
Sam Neill has gracefully refused Tim Shadbolt's invitation to stand for mayor of Queenstown, despite the promise of "lots of buddy mayors".
(25 March 2001) 
           

Milking the humour
PDF copy
"The New Zealand sense of humor is understated," says hot-flick Price of Milk director Harry Sinclair. "Like (the scene where) the two cars turn upside-down and the guy gets out and says, 'It's a tricky corner, that one.' That feels like New Zealand to me."
(28 February 2001)
                    

Dinosaur amore
Sam Neill confesses to feeling something for his Jurassic co-stars: "There was one little female velociraptor who had a cute haircut, but it was never anything more than holding hands… holding claws."
(27 January 2001)

 

Prehistoric background
New Zealand provided the background - and the KY jelly - for the phenomenly successful Walking with Dinosuars, soon to be followed by The Ballad of Big Al.
(22 January 2001)

Maclean, you've done it again
Alison Maclean's Jesus' Son: "scruffy, loopy and terrifc" on video. 
(11 January 2001)

Dishy Neill
Sam Neill puts in a "terrific performance" in The Dish, a "little-known story of how an obscure Australian tracking station provided the crucial downlink for the worldwide broadcast of the 1969 moon walk", which has garnered excellent critical reaction.
(January 2001)
 

Fantastically weird
"The Price of Milk is a fantastically weird and funny little film. Boasting the sort of edgy, quirky slant usually only maintained in short film, it never compromises its oddness which is a joy." 
(December 2000)

O'Donnell's limit
"As star of the (Kiwi-directed) mountain-climbing epic Vertical Limit Chris O'Donnell had been helicoptered to the edge of a jagged rock formation in New Zealand's rugged Southern Alps and deposited to "hang out'' for the rest of the day."
(20 November 2000)
 

Location location
New Zealand is hot property, drawing location scouts who scour the planet looking for the perfect waterfall or mountain stream.
(20 November 2000)
 

Location #2
"As globalisation impacts mainstream Indian cinema, one of the early fall-outs is a flight of locations, with Indian film-makers snapping up every excuse in the book to shoot everywhere - from Alaska to New Zealand."
(19 November 2000) 
  

Vertical limit
The stunning slopes of Aoraki (Mt Cook)  backdrop Kiwi Martin Campbell's ice action thriller, Vertical Limit. Starring Chris O'Donnel and Nicholas Lea, Vertical Limit is scheduled for 15 December release.
(November 2000)
 

Top Class
Chopper, New Zealand-born director Andrew Dominik's acclaimed bio-pic of the maniacal murderer, has received Australian Film Institute noms for Best Film and Best Direction, plus eight other nominations including Best Screenplay (penned by Dominik).
(18 October 2000)

Truman to Simone
Oscar-nominated Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, The Truman Show) has scripted and will helm Simone. Al Pacino stars alongside an mysterious actress who may or may not be real.
(30 September 2000)

The Piano plays on
Holly Hunter, who played a mute Scottish widow in Jane Campion's The Piano (1993), muses on the unexpected success of the movies. "It was a $5 million movie in New Zealand, and it ended up making $150 million." The Piano earned a Best Actress Oscar for Hunter, as well as the famous awards to Campion for Best Original Screenplay, and Anna Paquin for Best Supporting Actress.
(02 September 2000)

Edge Factor
Canadian-born, New Zealand-raised Anna Paquin is studying English literature of Columbia University and starring in two hot movies – X-Men and Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous. Winning the Oscar was "pretty much the flukiest cool thing that's ever happened to me. I didn't know I liked acting, I didn't know about any of this stuff before, but now I've got all these wonderful opportunities to work with people who are the best in their field and the world and I get to play in this really cool playground. It's really a great thing. It's what I love doing."
(26 August 2000)
 

Rogue Paquin: mutant rebel with a cause 
Paquin stars in Bryan Singer's blockbuster adaptation of the comic X-Men. In the high tech parable of good and evil, Paquin offers "a surprisingly poignant performance." Expressing well the hazards of being an adolescent mutant, Rogue, when embracing a boyfriend, nearly kills him by draining his energies so that he lapses into a coma. 
(14 July 2000)

Romance and roadkill in Jesus' Son
Director Alison Maclean's edge aesthetic gets sharper: described by the New Yorker as having a "big messy emotional talent", she is thrilled that audiences are connecting with the romance rather than the wierdness. But don't expect the acclaim to have crushed her visual sensibility: "When Alison Maclean is behind the camera, the middle of the road is a dangerous place to be ..."
(July 2000)

Heavenly Creatures: In New York not all angels are innocent 
From New York Daily News TV preview: "Lynskey and future "Titanic" star Winslet are phenomenal as two alienated teens in 1950s New Zealand who construct their own, ultimately lethal fantasy world in Peter Jackson's imaginative account of an infamous real-life murder case"
(1 June 2000)

Niccol turns into Hollywood gold
Kiwi Andrew Niccol is to write and direct 'the Hollywood project', rumoured to star Al Pacino as a down and out movie producer. Niccol was Oscar nominated for the screenplay to The Truman Show and directed the acclaimed sci-fi thriller Gattaca, starring Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke.
(22 May 2000) 

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.
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(16 April 2000) 

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.
(24 March 2000)

Production designer Andrew McAlpine has created a plausibly and attractively rough-hewn compound for the back-to-nature frolickers
"The Beach" (Film Review)
(2 February 2000)

No opportunity wasted 
Emmy Award winning, adventure TV producer and presenter, Phil Keoghan returns to New Zealand to host new local series N.O.W. - No Opportunity Wasted. Based on the hugely successful Discovery Channel series and book of the same title, N.O.W. gives 26 New Zealanders the chance to realise their dreams, conquer fears and meet amazing challenges, all within a period of 72 hours. The inspiration for the show comes directly from Keoghan's own zealous life philosophy, attributed to a near-death experience at the age of 19. "The idea behind N.O.W. is to give people the chance…to break their rules, let go of the handrails, face their fears, take a leap of faith and swerve off the road they've been following for years", says Keoghan. No Opportunity Wasted screens in New Zealand on Sunday nights at 7.30pm on TV2.
(17 November 2006)

World class visionaries 
Weta Digital is to provide special effects for upcoming Hollywood blockbuster Avatar. Directed by James Cameron, the US$200 million sci-fi epic will be almost entirely made up of computer generated action. Cameron used George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic for visual effects in his previous films Titanic, The Abyss and Terminator 2, but has switched to Weta Digital on the strength of its award-winning performance capture animation. "Weta have proven themselves a leader in visionary effects," says Cameron. "Along with their world-class capability comes a genuine passion to blaze new trails." 
(4 August 2006)

The Edge in 24 
The tense, edgy feel of the Emmy Award-winning series 24 is largely propelled by the work of New Zealander Rodney Charters csc asc, who has been Director of Photography for all five series. Growing up in New Plymouth, Charters tagged along with his father, a still photographer who served as a photo reconnaissance technician for the Royal New Zealand Air Force during World War II. He graduated from the University of Auckland with a B.A. in art history and the Royal College of Art in London. His first feature film work was on Youngblood in 1986 and Charters has subsequently lensed Car 54, Where Are You? Kull the Conqueror and The Intern. Before 24, he worked as DOP or director on Roswell, The Pretender and Hercules and has shot more than a dozen TV movies. Since the plots of 24 are complex and pile intrigue upon intrigue, Charters uses handheld cameras, unusual angles, out-of-focus shots and constant movement to build tension. The DOP said he tries "to give the impression that you (the audience) are an observant participant in the action as it unfolds." Charters said he is applying the documentary training he acquired early in his career to his work on 24. "To be a documentary shooter is to do a delicate dance between you and the subject. You want to get the viewer to see what you felt was important."
(August 2006)

Vampires invade Auckland
Vampire film 30 Days of Night is the latest Hollywood blockbuster to be filmed in NZ. Based on a horror comic book series, 30 Days of Night is set in Alaska where locals live in complete darkness for one month a year. The film will be co-produced by Spiderman director Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert, who is married to Kiwi actress Lucy Lawless. Shooting begins in Auckland in July. 
(10 May 2006)

Hansen homeward bound?
MTV Europe’s head, New Zealander Brent Hansen has retired after nearly two decades with the company. Hansen joined MTV in 1987 as a news producer and soared through the ranks to become the President of Creative and Editor in Chief of MTV Networks International. “Brent’s strong, creative instincts have … helped us achieve a unique editorial voice and music credibility that will continue to lend integrity to our brands for years to come,” says MTV Networks International president Bill Roedy. Always maintaining he would retire from the top job at 50, and after 18 years in London, Hansen is looking forward to making “time for my relationship with New Zealand.” 
(17 February 2006)

Pride of the Asia-Pacific 
Sam Neill is the inaugural subject of Peschardt's People, a 13-part BBC series hosted by veteran foreign correspondent Michael Peschardt. The series aims to introduce global viewers to "some of the most famous people in the Asia-Pacific region," such as Neill, burns specialist and Australian of the Year Dr Fiona Wood, Singaporean violin virtuoso Vanessa Mae, and groundbreaking Indian author Shobhaa De. Peschardt spent three days on Neill's private estate and vineyard in Central Otago discussing everything from multiculturalism in NZ to his relationship with Steven Spielberg. "Sam was utterly charming," says Peschardt in the Age. "And he wasn't acting." 
(30 March 2006)

Buddha Wild On
The distinctive and original film "Buddha Wild Monk in the Hut" by LA/Christchurch director and actress Anna Wilding (Carpe Diem Films) premiered at the Laemmle Cinema Los Angeles on March 24. Shot in a gritty news style combined with the full colours and sounds of a poetic narrative feature, Buddha Wild travels inside Thai culture and the Sri Lankan and Thai Buddhist missionary life. It discusses issues of war and religion, and the role of women in Asia. "A surprisingly pleasant trip" with a "homespun honesty and integrity" said LA Weekly. Union Jack newspaper said the film “captures our attention; the monks open up the most they have in a long time". Anna Wilding says the film contains a simple message - to treat each other with respect and "loving kindness". She says of the monks, "they have a freedom we do not have, yet they have a freedom we will never know."

Another lovable monster for Letteri 
Weta Digital head Joe Letteri is to be visual effects supervisor on the upcoming children's feature, The Water Horse. Letteri was part of the Oscar-winning visual effects team for Peter Jackson's King Kong. Based on the book by Dick King-Smith, The Water Horse tells the story of a lonely boy in Scotland who finds a mysterious egg on the shore of a loch. The film begins production in Scotland and NZ in May 2006. 
(9 March 2006)

Model of multi-tasking 
RH is the host of new US reality TV show Style Me. In an interview with Media Village, she describes the show as "offering real honest and interesting insight into the world of stylists." RH has numerous other ventures, including designing men's and women's jewellery for Demeter's Goddess Collection and writing a book - "not about who my lovers were, but my personal experiences, from my children to my love of Africa." 
(26 January 2006)

A thing of wonder 
Released in December, Peter Jackson's King Kong has received near unanimous praise from critics and movie-goers around the world. "This new King Kong is a folie de grandeur with real grandeur; in its power, its spectacle, and its spine-tinglingly beautiful vision of 1930s New York, it is a thing of wonder," raves the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. "There's no cage strong enough for the sheer brute strength of Jackson's movie, a muscularity matched by its ingenuous love for the great beast himself. Like his tiny blonde worshipper, you will be in the palm of his hand." New York Times reviewer A.O Scott is similarly effusive. "[Jackson], who not so long ago was making low-budget monster movies in his native NZ, clearly wants to hold onto the artisanal, eccentric spirit of the past - his own and that of the art form he loves … He succeeds through a combination of modesty and reckless glee, topping himself at every turn and revelling in his own showmanship." 
(9 December 2005)

Kiwi story rings true in US 
Roger Donaldson's World's Fastest Indian, with Sir Anthony Hopkins playing NZ motorcycle legend Burt Munro, has been largely praised in the US. Hollywood Reporter: "A pleasingly whimsical and slyly mischievous road movie that features an aging, quixotic hero … a feel-good Christmas movie and a potential hit film among the over-25 set." Variety: "The film offers no complexities, details about Burt's earlier life and family or even hints about why his old bike is so much faster than new models. Button-pushing score emphasizes the most obvious emotional notes of the story. LA Times: "[Hopkins is a] wild dark horse in the Best Actor derby." 
(November 2005)

Kubrick's successor? 
The latest Hollywood release by Kapiti-grown, LA-resident writer-director Andrew Niccol (The Truman Show, Gattaca) is Lord of War. Described by the Guardian as "a moral fable treated with a surface realism," Lord of War tells the dual stories of a Ukrainian-American gunrunner (Nicholas Cage) and the Interpol agent (Ethan Hawke) determined to bring him down. Hawke had this to say of Niccol in an Australian Vogue interview: "I really believe in him. Andrew thinks differently from anybody else making movies. I feel he could really wind up being the Kubrick of our generation." 
(16 October 2005)

Doomed for success 
"Doom may be by the numbers … But those numbers add up to the most cleverly engineered video-game movie made to date." Starring NZ actor Karl Urban and NZ affiliated Dwayne Johnson (aka "The Rock"), Doom has impressed critics and film-goers with its innovative take on the game-to-movie genre, if not for its intricate plot and characters. During his promotional run for the film, The Rock (who spent time in Grey Lynn as a child and whose mother is Samoan) spoke to NZ's Sunday Times about his origins: "My Samoan heritage is extremely important to me … I don't get to see them as often as I would like to but the love is there, and to all my family in NZ, talofa lava." 
(21 October 2005)

Narnia comes to life 
Excitement is growing for the December release of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. Filmed in New Zealand and directed by New Zealander Andrew Adamson (noted for his Shrek successes), this first installment in the Chronicles of Narnia follows the journey of four siblings through an enchanted wardrobe into a magical wonderland of mythical creatures, fantastic adventures, Aslan the Lion and the White Witch. With a reported budget of $100m (US), the cast features Tilda Swinton and Liam Neeson as well as a number of New Zealand actors including Elizabeth Hawthorne and Shane Rangi. Adamson was pleased to have the opportunity to bring C.S. Lewis's much loved story to the big screen. "It's a classic already and I couldn't pass up this opportunity to film what is such a special story to millions of people. I really want the movie to be as lasting as the book."
(21 October 2005)

The amazing Phil 
New Zealand presenter and producer Phil Keoghan has continued his winning streak with The Amazing Race. Produced by Hollywood heavyweight Jerry Bruckheimer, the show was named outstanding reality programme for the third time at the Emmy Awards. Keoghan has co-created and co-produced a number of successful shows since leaving New Zealand. He recently returned to New Zealand to film the documentary New Zealand: Movie Paradise, a one hour look at what attracts US movie makers to this country, aimed at promoting New Zealand to the American tourist market.
(29 September 2005)

Cinematic landmark
Rowan Woods’ Little Fish has been dubbed “the most important film in a year that's looking like a dramatic turnaround for Australian movies.” Kiwi actors Martin Henderson, Sam Neill and Joel Tobeck join Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving and Noni Hazlehurst in a powerhouse Australasian cast. Henderson in particular has earned rave reviews for his performance as crippled speed dealer Ray – a far cry from his usual romantic lead or love interest roles. Sam Neill plays an underworld kingpin on the wane and Tobeck his sinister lieutenant. Those in the know can also spot a cameo by Bic Runga as a cabaret singer. Sunday: “[It’s] the characters of Little Fish you remember. The actors and their director have brought such veracity to them that the film has the complexity and unpredictability of real life.” Little Fish opened the Melbourne International Film Festival and will screen at the Toronto International Film Festival.
(9 September 2005)
   

Fox buys slice of Kiwi reality
US cable network giant, Fox Reality, has purchased the rights to a three NZ reality TV shows; Treasure Island, Treasure Island Extreme, and The Bounty Hunters. “These shows are really strong examples of compelling reality television,” says Fox Reality COO David Lyle. “Our audience responds to human dramas in Reality Television whether they take place with Americans in a Honduran resort, British on the Costa Del Sol or even, we hope, New Zealanders racing around a Pacific Island.” All three shows were produced by Touchdown New Zealand.
(7 August 2005)
   

World’s fastest kiwi
Screenwriter and director Roger Donaldson’s film The World’s Fastest Indian was a roaring success at the Cannes Film Festival. It has quickly become the most sought after feature in the Cannes Market with key distributors clamouring to secure it. Anthony Hopkins plays New Zealander Burt Munro, a man who spent several decades modifying a 1920 Indian Scout motorcycle. The film follows Munro as he fulfills his lifelong ambition to race at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, where he eventually sets the land-speed world record that still remains unbroken. Shot on location in New Zealand and Salt Lake City, Utah, Donaldson describes it as “an uplifting and inspirational story in the spirit of such films as Rocky, Billy Elliot and Chariots of Fire." 
(August 2005)

Buggin’ out
NZ entomologist, writer, broadcaster and educator, Ruud Kleinpaste, is a hit in the US as the host of Animal Planet's Buggin' With Ruud. "In Buggin' With Ruud, the energetic, fearless Kleinpaste subjects himself to no small amount of indignities to show the amazing things that bugs can do - from crawling into a freezer (with a temperature probe 'up his bum') to show how NZ crickets survive the winter, to being locked into a hyperbaric chamber to make a point about dragonflies and oxygen."
(19 June 2005)
  

Shattering cinema
Another fantastic review for award-winning NZ film, In My Father’s Den. “They say that NZ wears its people lightly: the land is so strong, so exciting, so varied and so remote that its people could be blown away and it would hardly notice. But the people in this film would take some blowing away, being entangled with each other and bound to the place by memories, guilt and hatred … The drama is hidden within many layers. Peel away one and we uncover more of the dark secrets, the suppressed and ancient tragedies of the small town. The climax is shattering.”
(28 June 2005)
   

Standring gets teeth into international market
According to Empire magazine, Glen Standring’s Perfect Creature is NZ’s largest ever international film sale. Set in an alternate 1960s/70s NZ, the highly original vampire tale stars British actors Dougray Scott and Saffron Burrows. Perfect Creature has been purchased by 20th Century Fox and will receive widespread international release. Standring’s debut feature, The Irrefutable Truth About Demons, also sold strongly overseas.
(15 May 2005)
  

Wilding at heart (2) 
A stylish black and white music video by LA-based nzer Anna Wilding (and relative of Wimbledon chamption Anthony Wilding) reached final competition of the first ever Los Angeles Femme Festival held in May. The film festival platforms the commercial work of current and emerging A-list women film makers. Over 1500 music video and feature film entries were received for the festival. Rebel in Me was one of six music videos in final competition. The fluid and inspiring music video, which is a remake of the Jimmy Cliff song Rebel in Me, was filmed on 16mm and features Polynesian artist Moana and the Moa Hunters. Wilding is also in the film. (24 May 2005)

My Favourite Ape
Compared with his work as an Oscar-winning director and the filmmaker behind the most popular trilogy in movie history, Peter Jackson's first attempt to remake King Kong was by any measure amateurish. Jackson painted the Manhattan skyline on an old bedsheet, constructed the Empire State Building out of cardboard and pinched his mother's shawl to craft the giant gorilla's fur. It didn't look like much, Jackson admits, but then again he was 13 years old. If filming The Lord of the Rings was Jackson's cinematic passion, remaking King Kong has been a lifelong obsession. For as much resolve as the 43-year-old Jackson exhibited in adapting JRR Tolkien's books about hobbits and elves, the director has shown even more perseverance in retelling the legendary beauty-and-the-beast story. Jackson essentially owes his career to the original 1933 King Kong: Had he not seen it, he says, he might not have become a filmmaker.
(5 February 2005)

Connolly lost for words?
Billy Connolly’s World Tour of New Zealand screened in Scotland over December, to widespread appreciation. “Driving his three-wheeled motorbike through some of the world’s most dramatic scenery with the sun blazing overhead, Connolly looks like he’s having the time of his life … [If] Connolly the performer is as rude and lewd as ever, the offstage persona is a world apart. Climbing through the Waitomo caves with their stalagmites and visiting a volcano, Mount Tarawera, he seemed humbled by nature and genuinely interested in everything going on around him.”
(28 December 2004)

Big shoes to fill
Peter Jackson unveiled some of his models and sketches for King Kong at the CineAsia movie convention in Bangkok. “It's not a love story; it's a story about love,” he told the convention audience, before promising that the film’s sets and FX would rival those used in the award-winning LotR trilogy.
(10 December 2004)

Accidental winner
Sally Andrews won Best Actress at this year’s San Diego Film Festival for her starring role in NZ feature, Her Majesty. The 15-year-old Hutt Valley High School student is a self-described “accidental actress,” who only joined a talent agency because her younger cousin did and almost didn’t bother auditioning for her award winning part. Her Majesty is set in NZ in 1953, against the backdrop of Queen Elizabeth’s royal tour.
(24 October 2004)

Scene stealer
Star feature on veteran US stuntwoman Jeannie Epper makes mention of her NZ protégé, Zoë Bell. Bell’s career to date includes doubling for Lucy Lawless in Xena, Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, and Halle Berry in Catwoman. She specializes in fights and harness work, and has experience with air rams, fire burns and high falls.
(19 September 2004)

Hollywood’s latest bad boy
Karl Urban (LotR, Chronicles of Riddick) has won over US critics with his portrayal of “malignant hit-man Kirill” in the critically acclaimed action sequel, The Bourne Supremacy. According to the Chicago Tribune, “Urban, playing Kirill like an Olympic athlete of death, has blood-freezing moments,” making him a key figure in “a crack supporting cast.” Also starring Martin Csokas as another evil doer.
(August 2004)

The world hears our stories
Fracture, an adaptation of Maurice Gee’s novel Crime Story by Larry Parry, is to make its North American debut at the 28th Montreal World Film Festival (26 August – 6 September). Starring Kate Elliott, Jared Turner, John Noble, and Cliff Curtis, the film has already shown at Sicily’s Taormina Festival and will feature in Germany’s Hof Festival in October. Four other NZ films were selected for Montreal; Fleeting Beauty (Virginia Pitts), My Father’s Shoes (Samantha Scott), Tiga e le Iloa (Popo Lilo), and Boy (Welby Ings).
(30 July 2004)    

Harry Potter gets Edge makeover
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban has received reviews far outstripping the first two films in the franchise, thanks largely to its radical new director cinematographer team of Alfonso Cuaron (Y Tu Mama Tambien) and NZ's Michael Seresin (Bugsy Malone, Angela's Ashes, Midnight Express). Cuaron explained his "unexpected but inspired" choice of partner in an American Cinematographer profile on Seresin: "I've been a fan of Michael's work for a long time. I always like his reliance on a single light source, and the fact that he's pretty uncompromising [...] He grounded the whole film in reality. It doesn't have a storybook kind of look; it's something grittier."
(June 2004)
   

More than just a pretty face
The NZ High Commission in India hosted a festival promoting cultural exchange between the two nations in Delhi, April 5-28. Entitled Aotearoa: The Land of the Long White Cloud, the event included a film festival, art exhibition, lecture program, and a musical concert. NZ High Commissioner to India, Caroline McDonald: “There are a couple of reasons for organising Aotearoa in Delhi. One, we want to showcase aspects of NZ beyond its cricket and picturesque locales. Secondly, despite rapid developments in the Indo-NZ relationship, there has hardly been any interaction at the cultural level.”
(5 April 2004)

Riding her wave of success
Whale Rider star, Keisha Castle-Hughes, spoke to the New York Post about her week spent in Hollywood prior to the 2004 Academy Awards - for which she was the youngest ever nominee in the Best Actress category. Her engagements included presenting The Simpsons creators with an animation prize at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, featuring as a guest on Oprah, and attending the Independent Spirit Awards with Peter Jackson. Castle-Hughes wore a dress by NZ designer Liz Mitchell to the Oscars, with a whale pin in her hair for good luck.
(28 February 2004)

From Hollywood to Bollywood
NZ actor Martin Henderson is currently starring in Torque, the big-budget Hollywood motorcycle flick by the makers of 2 Fast 2 Furious and xXx. He describes Torque as a movie that "doesn't take itself too seriously. It's like a cartoon, we're taking the piss out of the (action) genre ... we're kind of winking at the audience." Henderson also plays Britney Spears' cheating boyfriend in the pop star’s latest music video, Toxic.
(12 January 2004)

Here's to you, Ms. Caro
Whale Rider director, Niki Caro, was named one of Ms. Magazine’s women of the year for 2003, alongside Salma Hayek, Eileen Fisher, and Loune Viaud. The US feminist publication recognised Caro as continuing an impressive line of female directorial talent – and female power figures in general – coming out of NZ. “The NZ film industry has produced stellar female directors such as Alison Maclean and Jane Campion, so Caro says, “I feel like I’ve never really had to fight to be a feminist or a filmmaker.” She proudly notes that NZ was the first country to grant women the vote and that its three most powerful government leaders—the prime minister, the chief justice and the governor-general—are all women. Caro says she set out to make a film about leadership. “Stories about girls Pai’s age tend to be about sexual awakening. I wanted to tell the story of how Pai awakens to her own strength and power,” she explains. “I was more interested in raising the question of what makes a great leader and how these leadership qualities show up in the heart, mind and spirit of a young girl.”
(December 2003)
   

Winning ways continue for Whale Rider
International plaudits continue to come for Niki Caro's 2002 hit, Whale Rider. Whale Rider beat Hollywood blockbusters 28 Days Later and The Wild Thornberry's to win the feature film category at the 2003 Environmental Media Awards in LA, was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Australian Film Institute Awards (first place went to Peter Jackson's The Two Towers), won the adult vote in the Bafta children's awards, and was tipped by Variety magazine as a "scrappy contender"  in the lead up to the 2003 Oscar nominations. The story of an East Coast Maori community also provided the focal point of a National Geographic feature on 'The Fight For Indigenous Films.' Frustrated by the rarity of such indigenous stories as Whale Rider and (Inuit) Atanarjuat  reaching the silver screen, National Geographic recently launched the All Roads Film Project, "to reflect the rainbow of faces that make up our cultural universe, and inject a broader range of experiences into mainstream culture." The film's soundtrack - by ex-Dead Can Dance lead, Lisa Gerrard - was praised in the September issue of Mojo magazine: "Gerrard couples her muezzin-like glossolalia with the rich Polynesian traditions of vocal music to paint an evocative picture of a culture in uneasy liaison with the 21st century."
(18 November 2003)

Making the cut, taking a break
Jane Campion has been welcomed back by cinema critics and audiences after a 4 year break between films, with her harrowing thriller/love story, In the Cut. USA Today describes the film as “a bleak walk on the wild side into a neo-noir hell … [by] Campion, known for searing dissections of the female psyche,” while the Seattle Times calls Campion “one of the more fearless minds in cinema.” In the Cut was the closing feature at an Antipodean film festival in St Tropez and Campion was the keynote speaker at Seattles’s 'Felliniana' – a celebration of iconic filmmaker, Federico Fellini. Campion has decided to take a 4-year sabbatical: “It's something I've been dreaming about for a few years. I'm almost 50 now and I've been working in the industry for 20 years … I actually think I've satisfied myself enough career-wise to really love doing nothing.”
(October 2003)
  

Perfect Strangers: gales humour
Sam Neill, Rachel Blake (Lantana) and Joel Toebeck star in Gaylene Preston's genre-bending twisted-tale of a pick up gone wrong on the South Island's rugged West Coast or, "chick flick - deconstructed ... subversion of the Cinderalla story" as Sam Neill describes it, interviewed in the SMH. David Stratton in Variety: "Preston's best work in film to date ... Blake is sensational." Evan Williams in The Australian: Preston has come up with something "stylish, funny, and disturbing. And it's a genuine original. Preston balances the shifting moods and layers of the story with great skill ... there are dazzling touches of visual invention ... Alun Bollinger's camerawork is beautifully atuned to the lonely desolation of the landscape." Williams name-checks Zemeckis, Mostow and Speilberg as directors who've handled the same material, but warns that, "Preston has deeper ideas in store".
(11 October 2003)
 

Amazing win
New Zealand Edged Phil Keoghan (with wife Louise, above) as host was among the Emmy winners for his role in The Amazing Race, the Jerry Bruckheimer produced reality show that picked up Outstanding Reality/Competition Program at the US TV industry's most prestigious awards. The globe-trotting show ("the critical darling of the reality TV genre") has recently been green-lighted for a fifth series by CBS.
(23 September 2003)

Paramount acquires Antipodean direction
Andrew Dominick - the NZ-born director behind hit Aussie film Chopper - is soon to make his mark on the US movie scene. Dominick has been signed to develop and direct The Demolished Man for Paramount Pictures. The film is based on the best-selling science fiction book by Alfred Bester about a future where crime is controlled by telepathic citizens.
(4 August 2003)
 

Whale Rider vs. Hulk
Whale Rider was one of four 'art house' films to be awarded lottery grants by the UK Film Council, in an effort to bring a wider variety of works to British cinemas. The money will be used to make more prints, giving the film the chance to compete in distribution against such big-screen monopolisers as Hulk and T3.
(25 July 2003)
   

Narnia to Aotearoa
The multi-million dollar production of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is now likely to be shot substantially in NZ, following the government's decision to allow a tax-exemption grant for film companies shooting in Aotearoa. Helmed by NZ-born director, Andrew (Shrek) Adamson, the film will be the first of a possible series of five adaptations of C.S Lewis' Narnia chronicles. Adamson predicts a LoTR-like boost to the country's film community and economy. "As Wellington became Middle-earth, there's a good possibility that locations in New Zealand will become Narnia." From the land first to the sun, "time is money." Adamson tells the LA Times.
(2 July 2003)

Mita takes pride of place
Maori filmmaker Merata Mita was the star guest at Montreal's 13th First Peoples' Festival last month - a celebration of the world's aboriginal cultures. The Cinematheque Quebecoise held a retrospective of her work - which includes Bastion Point, Mana Waka, and Hotere - from June 14-22. Mita also spoke on the significance of Whale Rider's success in the Montreal Gazette: "Events like Whale Rider help in our transformation from self-hatred to pride. [The film] allows us to say that our culture has depth and it has beauty and the resilience to survive all these centuries."
(14 June 2003)

The art of myth-making
Whale Rider director Niki Caro speaks to The Age about the intricate cultural process involved in a "white woman" making a Maori film. Despite early resistance to her involvement, and her subsequent self-doubt, Caro feels vindicated by the remarkable emotional response the film has elicited around the world and, most importantly, in NZ. "It's just a total lovefest … For a lot of pakeha people it's opening the Maori world up to them, the Maori world that I know, which is very positive and strong and important and spiritual … The film offers a little portal into it, and I think people are really grateful for that."
(9 May 2003)
  

Bollywood Hills
NZ based Bollywood production company - Kuran Films - cottoned on to the the country's scenic opportunities well before Lord of the Rings. Established in 1993 by Kamal Singh, Kuran now has 80 films to its credit - shot mostly in the South Island. The recently wrapped Main Prem Ki Deewani Hoon (Crazy for Love) is already being hyped as Bollywood's film of the year. 
(25 May 2003)

In his father's image, the shadow of a mountain
Peter Hillary interviewed about his own Everest experience and his part in the filming of National Geographic's documentary, Surviving Everest. "Our challenge was not just to climb, but to make the film about the climb. It wasn't easy … One important point, if mountaineering is your cup of tea, never take Everest for granted."
(27 April 2003)
   

Wellywood weighs in
An Anna Fifield Financial Times feature reviews the remarkable growth of the NZ film industry in the wake of its latest coup: Peter Jackson's King Kong. "For the country's film industry, the project marks the latest episode in its rapid development from a niche film location to one for the classic blockbuster." The debate continues over whether or not international films should be offered tax breaks as further incentive to shoot here and whether the international influx is at the neglect of native story-telling.
(4 April 2003)

Are you looking at us?
PJ helmed, NZ-made Lord of the Rings...Russell Crowe in Beautiful Mind...Andrew Adamson co-directed Shrek. The Oscars go antipodean as the edge gives Hollywood a prod in tandem with a strong Australian presence. LotR is front-running, gaining 13 nominations. "The hit movie was made in New Zealand and has given the country its highest profile in the film world for years". Jackson: "The awards are a by-product, they are not the reason you make a film. But I'm thrilled that so many Kiwis have been nominated."
(13 February 2002)

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Raining at Sundance
Christina Jeff's evocative feature Rain screens at the Sundance Film Festival with Merata Mita's portrait of painter Ralph Hotere, Hotere, and short bursts of edge cinema in Adam Steven's Beautiful, Tainui Stephen's The Hill, and Sima Urale's Still Life: "The acting in Rain is superb, and the child actors (Alicia Fulford-Wierzbicki as Janey and Aaron Murphy as Jim) are beyond comparison. Not your usual adultery/coming of age film, Rain's  portrayal of the dark and complex interaction between mother and daughter, as well as its virtuoso command of mood, tension, and surprise, and its powerfully artistic sense of visual image, puts it in a class of its own".
(20 February 2002)

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Amazing Race amazing TV
"More than a thrill a minute" is packed into The Amazing Race, a "dazzling and fascinating show that brings new energy and respectability to the reality genre." Contestants are sent around the world - literally - to compete for a million-dollar prize. It's all held together by Kiwi presenter Phil Keoghan, who is now based in the US and loving the challenge.
(5 September 2001)

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More Kiwi on Aussie screens
Selling 26 episodes of Street Legal to the Aussies has quadrupled the amount of programming NZ has over the ditch. More importantly, it helps clear the way for further sales.
Archived story
(3 September 2001)

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Kiwi Koala
New Zealand film company Daybreak Pacific imported actors and animatronic Koala's to Auckland for the shooting of Ozzie, a New Zealand made film featuring an Australian icon.
(18 August 2001)
 

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The X-factor
From sword and sorcery to the paranormal, Lucy Lawless moves from Xena to The X-Files, where "we're thrilled to work with Lucy, whose work we've admired for a long time," says X-Files producer Frank Spotnitz.
(30 July 2001)

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Tamahori, Lee Tamahori
New Zealand director picked as front-runner to direct next Bond movie, with Pierce Brosnan still in the hot seat as 007.
(31 July 2001)

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Fractured fairytale
"It's not often you can say an animated feature's rich in subtext, but much-acclaimed fractured fairytale Shrek fits the description... beneath striking visuals and a classic hero-princess-villain story arc, there's a frothy adult undercurrent at work."
(22 June 2001)

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Foxing the censors
"Marvel at the ever-brilliant Kerry Fox" in style bible i-D mag's guide to the 'future of cinema'. Fox's raw performance in Intimacy won her best actress at the Berlin Film; i-D suggests that the explicit scenes mean "notoriety of a different kind lurks just around the corner".
Pdf Copy
(June 2001)
 

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Shrek at Cannes
Kiwi Andrew Adamson is co-director of Dreamworks' hit Shrek, the first animated movie to make competition at Cannes since Dumbo 50 years ago. Guardian picks it as a Cannes top ten. Shrek "deliciously yucky" and "most unanimously loved film among the critics". Plot synopsis and cast and crew round-up.
(May-June 2001)

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A piece of Martin
Ex-Shortland Streeter Martin Henderson toplines indie A Piece of My Heart and plays opposite Nicolas Cage in Windtalkers, currently in production.
Register and search under Archives
(25 May 2001)

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Phil's Crazy Club on Oprah
Kiwi Phil Keoghan chats with the first lady of US TV about how "passion became his purpose" after a near-death experience as a 20-yr old. Talking Oprah through a group bungee, dinner atop a volcano, and hand-feeding wild sharks, he confirmed NZ's place as the adventure capital of the world. Phil's new show, "Amazing Race" is to screen an CBS in the northern summer.
(26 April 2001)

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Billion dollar Bevan
Bridget Jones producer Kiwi Tim Bevan nudges the billion dollar mark with Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and now Bridget Jones, due to be Britain's biggest hit this year.
(8 April 2001)

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Creamy romance
"In New Zealand we mostly make quite brutal social-realist films. I think American audience are stunned to see something that romanticizes New Zealand...I want to make films that no one else is making." Harry Sinclair, milking his cinematic success.
(8 April 2001)
 

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Donovan puts a hit on Roger
Inflation may have lowered the stocks of ex-Six Million Dollar Man Lee Majors, but his new lease on life as an aging hit-man in NYC Kiwi director Brendan Donovan's "Here" has helped the film win the Roger for best-short at the Avignon-New York Film Festival.
(23 April 2001)

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Here with Lee Majors
NYNZer Brendan Donovan scores Best Cinematography award for his short film Here at the Angelciti Film Festival LA and his star Lee Majors wins Best Actor at the Santa Monica International Film Festival. Majors plays an aging hit man stranded in Niagara searching for a reason to change. Donovan is credited with reclaiming the actor’s career. He also features in Oyster’s spread of Kiwis and Aussies making it big in NY (survey also includes uber-make-up artist Aaron de May ex-Tauranga).
(March 2001)

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Best Oscar Hunter 
The greatest winners of all time. For best actress: Vivien Leigh, Joan Crawford, Audrey Hepburn, Simone Signoret and Holly Hunter in The Piano.
(18 March 2001)  
               

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Reel Pianos
The Piano, Jane Campion's "hard to ignore" and "genuinely strange" masterpiece is the star in Jerusalem's Festival of piano-films - celebrating the filmic attraction of tormented pianists.
(14 March 2001)
 

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No talk, just sex
Intimacy is a smouldering film about a man who is living in a basement in south London who has a sex affair with a woman at his place every Wednesday afternoon. They don't talk, they only have sex. Based on the semi autobiographical novel by Hanif Kureishi, directed by Patrice Chereau, starring Peter Cullen and former Wellington actress Kerry Fox (Shallow Grave, Welcome to Sarajevo). Critics say Intimacy has the best sex on screen since Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie met in Don't Look Now in 1973.
(16 February 2001)
 

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NZ film in NY
"2001: A New Zealand Film Odyssey" currently running in  New York festures "new, rediscovered and undiscovered" New Zealand films, including hot-now Price of Milk and classics Utu and War Stories Our Mothers Never Told Us.
(17 January 2001)
 

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Lang may his lum reek
New Zealand's now home for Scottish actor John Cairney but he makes a yearly return to Scotland for Burns night.
(25 January 2001)

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Going Vertical
Kiwi filmed/helmed Vertical Limit gave star Chris O'Donnell a few moments of terror: "my next thought was, somebody better show me a copy of my paycheck again, so I can remember why I'm doing this movie".
(4 January 2001)
 

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Finding Forrester
"I knew that if Gus Van Sant was wanting to make the movie, then it definitely meant there was something special about it," says Anna Paquin. She plays opposite co-Oscarites Sean Connery and F. Murray Abraham in Finding Forrester.
(13 December 2000)
 

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Neill at home
"It's good to get back to New Zealand and Australia to make a film because I feel more at home in that part of the world," says Sam Neill, now on screen in Aussie indie My Mother Frank.
(8 December 2000)
  

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Xena kills jiggle TV
"Is it the end of the Baywatch phenomenon? In place of the silicon- enhanced charms of David Hasselhof's babes is the well-toned New Zealander who yells yi-yi-yi-yi when vanquishing an opponent, leaps through the air, backflips like a pro and generally strides about like Hercules."
(19 November 2000)
 

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Hrithik era
Indian tourists are awarding New Zealand an Oscar. Visitor numbers have shot up on the back of a high-profile film starring mega-hunk Hrithik Roshan and New Zealand as the backdrop. 
(17 November 2000)
 

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Guy Pearce's Kiwi Dad
Yes, Guy is an Australian (he spent fours years on Neighbours to prove it), but his father was a New Zealander who tested planes for the Royal Air Force. Pearce, also Russell Crowe's side-kick from LA Confidential, talks about fame, his father and his love of animals.
(7 October 2000)
 

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Shorts and sweet
Four NZ films feature in NY's Shorts International Film Festival, including Felicity Morgan-Rhind's Donuts for Breakfast. Top shorts will be considered for Oscar noms.
(1 November 2000)
 

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Rena Owen on jury at Montreal Film Festival
Feisty Kiwi actress Rena Owen (Once Were Warriors, What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted), sat on the jury of the of the Montreal Film Festival. The jury awarded the festival’s major award, the Grand Prix of the Americas, jointly to Paul Cox’s Innocence and Agnes Jaoui’s The Taste of Others.
(06 September 2000)

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Anna's new rhythm
Vanity Fair profiles the maturing of Kiwi actress Anna Paquin, from precocious Oscar winner in Jane Campion's The Piano, to upcoming roles in Bryan Singer's blockbusting sci-fi flick X-Men and Cameron Crowe's 70's rock movie Untitled. Between premieres Paquin plans to study for a different role: freshman at Columbia University.
(August 2000)

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Sam Neill: vintage celebrity
The Telegraph investigates the latest celebrity trend: the wine-making lifestyle: accessorise with vines, winery and bottling linel. Kiwi Sam Neill makes the star vigneron along with Aussie golfer Greg Norman, French actor Gerrard Depardieu, and American Filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola.
(3 August 2000)
 

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John Clarke throws a gumboot at Australian PM
New Zealand comedian John Clarke has demonstrated "speechwriting at its finest" in the ABC TV spoof about the Sydney Olympics, The Games. Penning the words for John Howard, actor, Clarke showed John Howard, Prime Minister, how a genuine leadership speech should be written and offered an apology to the aboriginal people. Says John Howard, actor, "For the first time I'm not afraid to share the same name as the PM."
(8 July 2000)
 

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The outsider: Huck Finn on heroin
Alison Maclean brings verge vision to the story of an American outsider. Jesus' Son, an adaptation of a story by cult American author Dennis Johnson, is about a 70's junkie who finds redemption. The National Post writes that Maclean's deadpan surrealism makes her "an ideal translator of Johnson's stories."
(7 July 2000)  
 

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New Zealand: Hottest destination of movie makers
It's official: Bollywood star Hritihik Roshan has been made a singing-dancing- fighting icon in the Bollywood smash hit Kaho Naa ... Pyar Hai (Say you Love me), a romantic musical thriller shot in the lens-loving wilderness of New Zealand.
(1 June 2000)

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Bonding bungee brings together father and son film-makers
Award-winning doco "Pop & Me" charts father/son relationships around the world as the father/son makers work out their own. The film's defining moment comes when Chris persuades his Dad join him in a tandem bungee jump in New Zealand, when the two were barely speaking at the time
(14 June 2000)

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Starlet with an edge 
Rising NZ star Emily Barclay has been named Best Actress at Australia's Inside Film Awards for her role as an amoral teenage single mother in the black comedy Suburban Mayhem. In what are referred to as the people's choice awards, the Australian public voted via the internet and SMS to give Barclay the accolade, over more established nominees including Hollywood actress Laura Linney. Barclay has also been nominated for Best Lead Actress in the prestigious Australian Film Institute Awards, announced on 7 December. A Sydney Morning Herald profile calls Barclay "New Zealand's hottest acting export since Keisha Castle-Hughes and Anna Paquin" and includes glowing tributes from those who have worked with her so far. "Em is pretty special," says Suburban Mayhem director Paul Goldman. "She's going to go off and have an amazing career." Next up for the 22-year-old is Bronte, in which she stars along with Michelle Williams and Nathalie Press as the Bronte sisters. Filming begins in England in March. 
(18 November 2006)

Lonely no more 
A young NZ actress has been outed as global internet sensation LonelyGirl15. Otherwise known as Bree - a naive home-schooled 16-year-old - LonelyGirl15 has captured the hearts of teenage boys the world over with her quirky online video diaries on YouTube and MySpace. After months of conspiracy theories and online sleuthing, the San Francisco Chronicle revealed the girl behind LonelyGirl to be Mount Maunganui-raised Jessica Rose, a 19-year-old graduate of Auckland's Studio 111 and the New York Film Academy. The online phenomenon - likened to the Blair Witch Project - was the brainchild of Californian filmmakers Ramesh Flinders and Miles Beckett, and software engineer Grant Steinfield. After the relentless press interest since her outing, it remains to be seen whether Rose is Hollywood's next big thing or its latest and greatest hoax. 
(13 September 2006)

Once the Muss, always the Muss
Temuera Morrison talks to Japan's CrissCross News about the NZ film industry, his plans for the future, and his now legendary portrayal of Jake Heke in Once Were Warriors. "I was in Sweden signing autographs for Star Wars at a convention and just about everyone brought in a poster of Once Were Warriors for me to sign," he says. "It was a groundbreaking film." Morrison's latest film is Vincent Ward's River Queen. 
(17 July 2006)

Kiwi thesps impress 
Sam Neill charmed the British film press while promoting his latest UK release, Little Fish. Guardian: "In the Q&A session that followed [the premiere], his performance as Sam Neill was as compelling as his performance in the movie. He was dry, languid, meticulous." Neill's next role is Cardinal Wolsley in Henry VIII, now filming in Ireland. Also making the UK promotional rounds for Little Fish is Martin Henderson, dubbed a rising star in the Observer. Henderson is currently "the toast of London's West End" after his compelling performance alongside Juliet Lewis in the play Fool for Love. "I just want to keep challenging myself," he says. "Keep moving the goalposts and raising my game. Little Fish has reminded me why I fell in love with acting in the first place." 
(24 July 2006)

When Denzel met Peter 
Oscar winning actor Denzel Washington made a fleeting visit to Wellington in June to discuss a possible film project with Peter Jackson. According to Wellington's Dominion Post, Washington wants Jackson's Weta Workshop and Weta Digital to provide special effects for a film he is directing. Jackson and team are currently working on a film adaptation of Alice Sebold's book The Lovely Bones, as well as executive producing a film version of the video game Halo. 
(30 June 2006)

Impeccable balancing act 
Anna Paquin is back in the news with a spate of new film projects nearing release. A Times profile, reprinted in The Australian, charts her "impeccably navigated career path," from The Piano to her present day status as comic fan's sex symbol, courtesy of her recurring role as Rogue in the X-Men series. As well as the third X-Men instalment, Paquin features in the critically acclaimed comedy/drama The Squid and the Whale, directed by rising star Noah Baumbach, and upcoming indie flick You Can Count on Me, by playwright/director Kenneth Lonergan. Next on the cards is Blue State, a romantic comedy produced by Paquin's brother Andrew under the Paquin Films name. Anna will both star in and executive produce the film. 
(12 April 2006)

Grey Lynn on the silver screen 
South Pacific Pictures' feature Sione's Wedding has received rave reviews in NZ and Samoa following its February premiere. Written by Oscar Kightley and James Griffin, the comedy revolves around a group of first and second generation Pacific Islanders living in Grey Lynn, Auckland. In acknowledgement of the film's central Polynesian themes, the cast and crew decided to hold an official premiere in Samoa at Apia's Magik Cinema, with stars such as Kightley, Robbie Magasiva and Teuila Blakely in attendance. Griffin describes Sione's Wedding as "a contemporary, urban story set in the Polynesian world … a kind of romantic comedy for guys. It's about universal themes of love and respect and friendship, told from a Polynesian perspective." 
(29 March 2006)

A master of confrontational cinema 
The March issue of Inside Film includes a lengthy feature on the latest project by edge writer/director Andrew Niccol - Lord of War. Starring Nicolas Cage and Ethan Hawke, Lords of War is a morally confronting black comedy about the international arms trade. Given the nature of the film Hollywood refused to back it, despite the success of Niccol's previous (and in their way equally subversive) films The Truman Show, Gattaca and S1M0NE. Niccol himself raised the required $50 million to film Lords of War overseas and then sold it back to the studios. "In France it was the number one film, which seemed to say something about the national attitude," says Niccol. "A lot of the reviews in the States were really quite good - but they went on to say that the problem was that nobody should be allowed to make it!" 
(March 2006)

Spotlight on Niki Caro 
North Country director Niki Caro was interviewed before a live studio audience by the Guardian's Sandra Hebron, alongside the star of her film (and new best mate) Charlize Theron. "[North Country] was a script that really shocked me, because it's real and it's recent," says Caro of the gruelling dramatisation of America's first major successful sexual discrimination lawsuit. "This case wasn't settled until 1998. So, for somebody from NZ, which is socially pretty progressive, and who's been fortunate enough to grow up as I have, it was a very good project to do." Theron admitted to "secretly stalking" Caro: "I'd gone to see Whale Rider, like everybody else, and really fell in love with Niki through that film. And so I stalked her - I was trying to see what she was doing next … For me, we had instant chemistry. We started finishing each other's sentences and I was just ecstatic to start with her. She was really the person who catapulted me into really wanting to do this." 
(3 February 2006)

The people’s Campion
Jane Campion has been lured out of self-imposed retirement for a very worthy cause. She joins fellow directing luminaries Robert Altman, Jodie Foster and Gaspar Noe in contributing to an 8-part feature film outlining the United Nations's Millennium Development Goals, which include eradicating extreme hunger and poverty and reducing child mortality by 2015. Campion’s piece, The Water Diary, addresses environmental stability. The AU$6.4 million project is helmed by French producer Marc Obéron, who hopes to have it completed in time for UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to launch at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.
(19 October 2005)

Richard Curtis: Love is the edge
The BBC screened the latest work by screenwriter and director Richard Curtis, The Girl in the Café, on the eve of the 2005 G8 meeting at Gleneagles. Curtis’s script faces the most important issue of 2005: will this be the year when world powers seriously address the issue of world poverty - once and for all? Born in Wellington New Zealand in 1956, Richard Curtis is the son of Australian parents, his father was a Unilever executive who went onto postings in Manila, Stockholm, Folkestone and Warrington UK. He is the writer of some of the most successful romantic comedies ever made - Four Weddings And A Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones's Diary, Love Actually – produced by Working Title, the London film studio co-founded by Queenstown’s Tim Bevan. Curtis wrote Blackadder and Rowan Atkinson’s stage shows. He is co-founder and vice-chairman of Comic Relief, and a member of the Make Poverty History campaign. The Girl in the Café follows the story of a hard-working civil servant and his life-changing relationship with a mysterious girl whom he meets in a café opposite Downing Street. The Guardian’s 2003 feature on Curtis called him “a global power in cinema…Curtis's trick in his films has been to make the parochial global. He's a Big Englander: someone who, like Richard Branson, gambled that his personal values might be more widely shared.” CNN said “No doubt about it: "The Girl in the Cafe" is the best romantic comedy set at a G-8 summit you're ever likely to see… besides packing a weighty message -- significant reduction in global poverty and infant mortality is now within the grasp of world leaders -- this lovely film can hold its own against any love story as it depicts a mismatched couple struggling to connect.” Socialist Unity called The Girl in the Café: “a jingoistic political broadcast on behalf of New Labour…Curtis could have weaved into the script the beginnings of colonialism and the slave trade, through to the decades following independence when the ex-colonial powers reasserted their control through creating the debt slavery system, and to the present day with G8 countries and their corporations queuing up to benefit from has been called "the new scramble for Africa".” (14 July 2005)

Teaser goes down a treat
The global screening of the inaugural trailer for the Chronicles of Narnia caused hysteria amongst fans eager for a glimpse of Kiwi Andrew Adamson’s creation. “The snow-globe fantasyland of the most popular book in C.S. Lewis' treasured literary collection comes to swirling life with mythic beasts, snarling wolves and white vistas punctuated by a thunderous roar. No cutesy creatures. No anachronistic wisecracks. What rushes by is like flipping through a picture book full of rich images.”
(6 May 2005)

Miramar the seat of power
The June issue of Premiere magazine (US) named Peter Jackson the most powerful person in Hollywood, ahead of Steven Spielberg, Pixar animations duo Steve Jobs and John Lasseter, Tom Cruise, and Tom Hanks. According to the article, Jackson is “one of the few one man band productions that are changing the grid of the power structure in Tinseltown.” In other Jackson news, the director is suing New Line Cinema for its handling of revenues generated by Fellowship of the Ring (2001). According to the New York Times, "the claim strikes at the heart of the modern vertically integrated media company," and is subsequently being followed intently in Hollywood. Jackson's lawyers believe he has been left more than US$100 million out of pocket.
(6 May 2005)
    

The real super heroes
Kiwi stuntwoman Zoe Bell (Xena, Kill Bill, Catwoman) is the joint subject of an American documentary on women in her profession, entitled Double Dare. The film charts the very different careers of Bell and Wonder Woman stuntwoman Jeannie Epper. “The real women behind these two world-famous icons are at drastically different crossroads in their lives. One, a grandmother, struggles with the aging process and Hollywood's dearth of older female roles; the other, a young woman, is brash and unaware of the feminist history that has paved her way in this notoriously macho field. When Jeannie becomes a mentor for Zoë, these two women from opposite sides of the world and opposite ends of their careers find a way to survive in the industry together.”
(May 2005)
   

Crowe’s Cinderella
Russell Crowe stirs the first Oscar-talk of the season: “An exquisite ode to a working-class hero, "Cinderella Man" takes the almost impossibly perfect elements of the saga of underdog boxer James J. Braddock and fills it with emotional gravitas, wrenching danger and a panoramic sense of American life during the Great Depression. Oscar winner "A Beautiful Mind" seems a warmup to this main event, in which helmer Ron Howard grasps the full measure of artistry he's often reached for, and gifted thesp Russell Crowe limns a role he seems born to play. Universal's summer release strategy seems riskier than Braddock's final bout, but solid, sustained B.O. boosted by glowing critical response -- with a late-round re-release during awards season -- could deliver winning results.”
(19 May 2005)

Boy oh boy
Welby Ing’s Boy won the Best Short Narrative Film award at the 2005 Cinequest Festival in San Jose, which qualifies it for consideration for next year's Oscars. The film tells the story of a young male prostitute in small-town NZ, who tries to reveal the truth behind a fatal hit-and-run accident. New York’s Filmmaker Magazine describes Boy as "a haunting, visually inventive tale about coming of age and into sexuality.”
(22 April 2005)
    

2 films, much praise
Taika Waititi’s acclaimed short film Two Cars, One Night was nominated for an Oscar at this year’s awards. It is now touring the US alongside fellow nominees as part of an Oscar 2005 shorts package distributed by Apollo Films. The Boston Globe picks 2 Cars as one of the best of the bunch, praising Waititi’s ability to “[humorously capture] a universe of preadolescent attraction, in which boy and girl go from vulgar to sweet.” Waititi’s second film, Tama Tu, received an honourable mention at this year’s Sundance Festival. Read the Listener’s interview with Waititi here.
(25 March 2005)
   

Kiwis on both sides of the camera
Fresh on the heels of her international success with Whale Rider, Niki Caro is to direct an as yet untitled feature for Warner Bros. Starring Charlize Theron, Woody Harrelson, Sissy Spacek and Sean Bean, the film is based on the true story of a sexual discrimination case at a US mining company. Other Kiwis making waves in the international film industry include Melanie Lynskey - pictured above (in Heart of Gold), Truman Show screenwriter Andrew Niccol (wrote and directed Lord of War starring Nicholas Cage), Marton Csokas (appearing in The Great Raid, Aeon Flux and Ridely Scott's Kingdom of Heaven), Geoff Murphy (directing big budget fantasy The Last Unicorn), Ellory Elkayem (directing Return of the Dead 4 & 5 and The Ninth Passenger), Anna Paquin (in Darkness and the upcoming The Squid and the Whale), Daniel Gillies (stars in Western miniseries Into the West), Kerry Fox (in British tabloid expose Rag Tale), Lee Tamahori (directing The Guide with Halle Berry and Next with Julianne Moore), Lloyd Phillips (produced Racing Stripes and The Legend of Zorro), Tim Bevan (producing Everest) and Gavin Scott (has written the screenplay for Hollywood film about the Krakatoa eruption).
(1 February 2005)

Return of the cast
If Peter Jackson ever decides (and has the time) to make a film version of The Hobbit, he has the backing and blessing of his LotR cast. “People want it so much,” says actor Billy Boyd (Pippin). “There was talk of us playing our characters' relatives. I'm sure we'd all make ourselves free for that.” Cast members including Elijah Wood (Frodo) have expressed interest in buying communal property in NZ to help Jackson cut down on-set costs.
(11 December 2004)
 

 
Worthy mentor for worthy cause
NZ filmmaker Christine Rogers helped a group of Broadmeadows Secondary School (Melbourne) students make the short film By the Light of the Moon. The film tells the stories of two refugees who have settled in Australia, and was written, produced, acted, and filmed entirely by the students. “The school has a lot of children from the Middle East, Iran and Iraq,” says Rogers, a sessional teacher in media at Victoria’s RMIT. “I think telling these stories verifies them and makes them important. When you come to a strange place and none of the stories on TV reflect your reality, I imagine that's very strange.” On her role as a NZ filmmaker she is equally eloquent: “When you're in NZ you feel like you're falling off the end of the world. There's this incredible sense of cultural isolation. And I think that that's made NZ artists strive harder to find their own voice - you see it with novelists, painters, poets, artists of all sorts.”
(6 December 2004)
 

Next stop Oscar?
Taika Waititi’s Two Cars, One Night won the Grand Jury Prize for best international short at the AFI Los Angeles Film Festival. The story of a relationship which develops between two children in the car park of a rural NZ pub beat 50 other contenders in the international short category. Two Cars has already won a slew of international awards, including best drama at the Aspen Shortsfest, best short film at Berlin’s Panorama Film Festival and best fiction short at the Melbourne International Film Festival, and is now eligible for Oscar contention.
(18 November 2004) 

Wellywood in the spotlight
The world’s eyes are on Wellington once again as production steps up on Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake. Jackson promises to make a “wonderful, mysterious adventure film” worthy of the iconic 1933 original, which he claims “inspired [him] to want to become a film-maker” when he first saw it as an 8-year-old.
(3 September 2004)
 

The money or the bag?
Scott Smith of Auckland became the 7th contestant to face the million dollar question on hit Australian quiz show, Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The aspiring minister ended up taking $500,000 as opposed to a gamble. The million dollars has yet to be won.
(4 October 2004)
 

On top of the Down Under world
Is It?, a co-production by Emily Ansell (NZ) and Leonie Blignaut (SAF), won first prize at the UpOverDownUnder film festival in London. The annual event promotes independent film making in Britain's Antipodean and South African community. The festival website describes Is It? as "a dream-like journey through London that explores the question every visitor has to ask: is the grass really greener on the other side?" Ansell and Blignaut won £500 and a 4-week 16mm film course at the New York Film Academy.
(4 October 2004)

All-conquering Conchords
US network giant NBC (home to Seinfeld and Friends) has signed Kiwi comics Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, better known as Flight of the Conchords. Casting executive Marc Hirschfeld was won over by the duo's recent show in Montreal, which he described as "hilarious songs accompanied by hilarious stage banter." Although music will play a major role in the upcoming series, Hirschfeld insists "it will be all based in character comedy, [as] that's what we love about them."
(8 October 2004)

Jolly green giant
It’s official: Shrek 2 is the third highest-grossing film of all time, behind Titanic and the first Star Wars. Directed by Kiwi Andrew Adamson, Shrek 2 was the surprise hit of the US summer, beating out heavyweight competition from Spiderman 2 and Troy.
(5 September 2004)

Kiwi scoops top Australian award
Slow Water by Annamarie Jagose won the prestigious AU$30,000 fiction prize at the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards in October. Jagose has lived in Australia for 12 years and is currently on leave from the University of Melbourne to teach film, TV, and media studies at Auckland University. Slow Water is a fictional account of the trial William Yate; an English missionary charged with the capital crime of homosexuality in colonial Australia. The novel has also been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin award.
(19 October 2004)
 

Stopping traffic
Cliff Curtis earns praise across the Tasman for his gritty performance in Traffic: The Miniseries. Australian: “By far the best performance is from Maori actor Cliff Curtis. His dark complexion means he is slated for the ethnic roles in Hollywood – so far he has been Hispanic in Training Day, Colombian in Blow and Arab in Three Kings. Here he's an unhappy, illegal Chechen cab driver, Adam Kadyrov, whose dogged search for his missing wife and child induces a high level of sympathy and anxiety.”
(3 August 2004)    

Miramar Mentor
Peter Jackson was ranked 20th in pay and 12th overall in Forbes' annual Celebrity 100 List. The accompanying feature was full of praise for NZ's newest national hero. "Filmmaker Peter Jackson - assiduously disheveled, frequently barefoot and barely 5-and-a-half feet tall - is a giant in Hollywood [...] Now NZ's favorite native son is betting it all on his homeland. He is ploughing upwards of $50 million of his own money into building a studio empire here ... "I could go to Hollywood and I wouldn't have to build any of this," says Jackson. "I value being a New Zealander who is able to make films in his own country. So we've had to spend our own money to increase the infrastructure."
(5 July 2004)

Short & sweet
Two NZ short films have been selected to compete at both the Montreal World Film Festival in August and the Valladolid International Film Festival in Spain in October; Boy, a silent film about a teenage male prostitute by AUT professor Welby Ings, and Fleeting Beauty, a dialogue between an Indian immigrant and her Pakeha lover written by Auckland University film lecturer Shuchi Kothari.
(21 June 2004)

Greenbacks for green ogre
Shrek 2 (directed by Kiwi Andrew Adamson) confounded US box office analysts by taking an incredible US$104.3 million on its first weekend of release - $20 million more than predicted. This makes it the second largest film debut in history, behind Spider Man in 2002. In addition, 70% of moviegoers planned to see Shrek 2 a second time, according to a Dream Works survey. The film repeated its success across the Atlantic, debuting at No.1 in UK box office rankings and taking £16.2 million in it opening weekend.
(24 May 2004)

Aotearoa in demand
New York Times article asks ‘what’s next?’ of the post-Rings NZ film industry. Insiders predict a slew of big budget international projects, thanks to the government’s recent promise that it would reimburse 12.5% of the production costs of films with budgets exceeding $10 million. First to benefit from the grant is The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, directed by New Zealander Andrew Adamson (Shrek) and co-financed by Walt Disney Studios and Walden Media.
(12 February 2004)

Addicted to Jackson
Empire offers hope to fans experiencing panic attacks at "the thought of a year without a Peter Jackson film." Shooting on the next Jackson-helmed epic - King Kong - begins in August of this year, with a projected December 2005 release date. Jackson plans to treat the film "as a drama ... not as a fantasy ... It has to have a sense of reality – an island with dinosaurs and a gorilla, set a little bit in the past to try and make people believe it."
(2004)

Uggly in pink
LA Times profiles that old Kiwi staple, the Ugg Boot, which – thanks to appearances on Sex & the City and Oprah – has been elevated from surfer’s necessity to fashion accessory. “They're selling at marked-up prices on EBay. They are seriously hard to find, especially in pinks and blues and beiges.”
(25 December 2003)

The price is right
New York Times feature addresses Peter Jackson’s record-breaking US$20 million salary for Universal’s King Kong remake, deciding he is more than worth the dollars. Jackson, with his collaborative team of Fran Walsh and Phillippa Boyens, provides the perfect package for today’s special effects laden blockbusters; by signing him to a project, a studio receives a tight-knit director/writer/producer unit, as well as one of the world’s leading effects houses (Weta Digital). “There aren't that many directors to whom studios would pay that kind of money. There aren't that many directors whose movies have stratospheric box office of $800 million to $900 million worldwide.” Jackson’s high-rolling stable-mates, as listed by the NYT, include Steven Spielberg, the Wachowski brothers (Matrix trilogy), Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump), and George Lucas. An Observer feature identifies him as leader of the high-end Hollywood pack: "No director has masterminded three movies back to back like this, still less done so with such a giant commercial splash. The Wachowski brothers' Matrix trilogy - or rather hit Matrix movie with two sequels - did well financially but disappointed critically. And the jury is out on George Lucas's Star Wars prequels."
(28 October 2003)
   

Hard-edged cinema
Empire magazine applauds Christine Jeff’s Sylvia – the biopic of American poet Sylvia Plath starring Gwyneth Paltrow - calling it “a moving and supremely acted account of the writer's life, her volatile relationship and the difficulties she faced as a woman in the late fifties and early sixties […] the film treads reverently around its literary origins and displays an enthusiastic affection for its subjects.” Further praise is found in the Feb '04 edition of Australian Vogue: "This much anticipated film is well told and beautifully designed, with 60s domesticity meticulously depicted as a backdrop to Plath's personal despair."
(6 November 2003)

"Kiwi directors dominate 47th London Film Festival"
Guardian film critic Xan Brooks: "There is a distinct Kiwi flavour to this year's London Film Festival, which will open and close with films by New Zealand directors." NZ directors Jane Campion and Christine Jeffs are to provide the bookends with Campion's erotic journey into an underworld NYC, In the Cut, and Jeffs' Sylvia Plath biopic, Sylvia. 
(4 September 2003)

Littler fish to fry
Fresh from US horror flick The Ring and Bollywood musical Bride and Prejudice, Kiwi actor Martin Henderson is to star alongside Cate Blanchett in the Australian film, Little Fish. Set in Sydney’s ‘Little Saigon’ district, Little Fish tells the story of Tracy Heart (Blanchett); “a woman swimming against the pull of the past.” Rowan Woods (The Boys) directs.
(8 October 2003)
  

Gracious in their success
As their compatriots continue to climb the ranks in Hollywood – think Nicole Kidman, Geoffrey Rush, Naomi Watts, and Hugh Jackman – the Australian public has decided to toss a few honorary countrymen back our way. SMH: “One advantage of this surplus of success Over There is that Australia can now give up its claim to Mel Gibson, and allow him to be the New Yorker he always was. We should also feel free to let Sam Neill be a New Zealander. But we'll hang onto Russell Crowe for the time being, at least until we see the box office figures for the naval epic Master and Commander (directed by our own Peter Weir). If it flops, Russell is from Wellington.”
(22 October 2003)
   

Behind every great woman…
NZ-born producer, Linda McDougall, interviewed in the Sunday Times about her Channel 4 documentary, Married to Maggie: Denis Thatcher's Story. McDougall collated interviews with the former British PM and her late husband - many of which were conducted by their daughter Carol - to produce an alternative view of the one-time power couple.
(11 August 2003)

Ka-Pai
Keisha Castle-Hughes continues to win over critics with her star-turn as Pai in Whale Rider. USA Today calls her "the discovery of the summer," and the Miami Herald hails her performance as "the best … of the year - man, woman, adult, kid, virtual, you name it." Another Miami Herald feature cites Whale Rider as an example of the emerging post-feminist aesthetic in film, and a welcome relief from such high-gloss girl-power flicks as Tomb Raider and Charlie's Angels: "Lara Croft can have the shark. Pai gets to ride the whale, and it actually means something."
(2 August 2003)

International bright young thing
Anna Paquin talks dogs, dorm-living, Degas and "living long distance" with the Independent. Currently studying art history - between films - at Columbia University, Paquin will next be seen alongside Joaquin Phoenix and Ed Harris in the barbed US army satire, Buffalo Soldiers (helmed by Australia's Gregor Two Hands Jordan and described as "Bilko with drugs"). In an interview with the Miami Herald, she talks about her international upbringing. "Culturally, all my reference points are from my years in New Zealand," says the Canadian-born actress, before conceding that, "I've travelled so much I don't really know where I'm from anymore."
(27- 30 July 2003)
   

Return of the Native?
As Whale Rider premieres in the UK, the Guardian ponders its impact as NZ and Maori cinema, and the cultural factors at play. "[A]longside the celebration in New Zealand's film industry, there has also been a measure of soul-searching: why, many wonder, has it taken so long to put Maori stories back on international screens after the early 1990s successes of Once Were Warriors ...? [...] Maori represent one of the most vigorous and assertive indigenous cultures in the English-speaking world, but their impact on film has been relatively small." 
(11 July 2003)

The many faces of Cliff Curtis
Tribune feature on Cliff Curtis tracks his career trajectory from Once Were Warriors to Whale Rider. While the two movies appear vastly different in subject and style, Curtis is quick to point out a crucial shared message: "[Both films celebrate] the strength of our women, specifically Maori women, to hold our families together, our communities together, often in cases where our men are failing." Curtis has also made a name for himself in Hollywood as an ethnic chameleon, playing everything from an Iraqi resistance leader in Three Kings to a tattooed Chicano  in Training Day. His next role is in The Runaway Jury - a John Grisham adaptation starring John Cusack, Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman. Curtis plays a Cuban-American ex-marine.
(22 June 2003)
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Celebrating Kiwi-ness
Countless international critics have praised the universal themes explored in Niki Caro's Whale Rider; what a reviewer for the Age finds most impressive is its quintessential Kiwi-ness. "Whale Rider sounds like it could be Disney Down Under, The Lion King set to the thump of the haka. In fact it is not a bit like that. Telling the bare bones of the story … leaves out the absolutely crucial New Zealandness of Whale Rider's world. Realism enfolds the mythic story so completely that neither the search for a chief nor the myth of the first whale rider seems at all arcane. They are just Kiwi things, like a Steiny after a game of cricket."
(3 May 2003)
   

Jeffs with best
Christine Jeffs' acclaimed feature, Rain, was included in the second series of the Zahir Raihan Film Society's Best Films of 2002, joining Philip Noyce's The Quiet American and Mike Leigh's All or Nothing. The retrospective series was held to mark the 18th anniversary of the Society's founding.
(20 May 2003)
  

Tom cruises off
Actor Tom Cruise has bid farewell to Taranaki, the place he called home for the past 4 months. The Hollywood A-lister was on location filming The Last Samurai; an epic-scale production which has proved an economic boon to the region. Said Cruise, widely adopted as the Naki's favourite son; "I'm going to miss the fish and chips … [and] the beach at night."
(9 May 2003)
 

Lately I've been lost it seems ... Jane Austen spiced-up
Gurinda Chadha - director of international hit Bend it Like Beckham - has cast Kiwi actor Martin Henderson as Mr Darcy in her musical version of Pride and Prejudice. Henderson, most recently seen in US horror The Ring, will star opposite Bollywood actress and former Miss World, Aishwarya Rai. The two actors will accompany Chadha to the Cannes Film Festival in May to finalise a deal.
(14 April 2003)

My brilliant career 
Jurassic action hero and "rugged individualist" Sam Neill gets the NY Daily News career review: "tall, handsome, fiftyish, New Zealand accent". And Neill wonders at the anonymity despite the star turns: "people will come up to me and say things like, 'Are you from New Haven?'" says Neill. "They're not sure how they know me. Someone once accused me of working for his bank." Also: vintage movies, vintage wine, vintage Neill in ctnow. Jurassic stomps on the competition and Neill's "Grant appears to be giving adventurer Indiana Jones a run for his money."
(July 2001)

Island export
Treasure Island, Survivor - love them or loathe them "reality" means ratings. With a patent on the format Treasure Island is a New Zealand export success for Touchstone Productions.
(15 July 2001)
               

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The green-eyed monster
How does it feel when your pregnant girlfriend takes an acting role that breaks all the boundaries about sex on screen in serious, mainstream films? Kerry Fox's boyfriend answers that question.
(22 June 2001)

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Intimacy and anguish
New Zealand actress Kerry Fox's award-winning work in Intimacy continues to generate curiosity, awe and pursed lips: Getting Intimate in the Sunday Times; Truly, madly, explicitly in The Observer and Hanif Kureishi talks about the book that inspired the movie in The Age.
(June 2001)
 

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Cutting Edge Commercials
Saatchi & Saatchi's "Bugger" ad shows the creativity that will save TV advertising says Jim Aitchinson's Cutting Edge Commercials.
(13 June 2001)

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Docu prize
New Zealand co-production Wild Asia: Creatures of the Thaw wins Canada's Banff Television Festival President's Prize, worth C$25 000.
(12 June 2001)
 

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At home on the edge
Sam Neill talks acting, wine and why New Zealand is home: "I just love going back - I feel comfortable there, I am entirely relaxed there and I feel I do much my best work there, because the best acting comes out of relaxation at the end of the day." Plus, Neill on being "vaguely celebrated".
(22 May 2001)

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Campion cuts Kidman
New Zealand director Jane Campion nabs red-hot Nicole Kidman for upcoming In the Cut.
(15 May 2001)

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In over his depth
Sam Neill stars as the ingenious and courageous Lt. Commander Charles "Swede" Momsen in New England submarine drama Submerged.
(18 May 2001)
 

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Must do today: production, script, light
Wellington-born Richard Curtis penned the Bridget screen adaptation: one of Britain's "cleverest screenwriters" in LA Times and "a virtuoso at devising horrific embarrassments for his protagonists," in Slate. Rounding out the kiwi trio, Stuart Dryburgh, nzedged oscar nominated cinematographer(The Piano, Once Were Warriors) is charged with lighting Miss Jones's famous curves.
(April 2001)
 

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Serve up Sam
Sam Neill, currently showing in The Dish, is major star material: "Like Harrison Ford, he's an Everyman with gravitas. Like Tom Hanks, he engages our sympathy innately. He's masculine without being macho, handsome without being pretty, decent without being a scold, and he's a fine, versatile actor."
(6 April 2001)

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Fresh milk
"The gorgeous landscapes of New Zealand provide the backdrop for this peculiarity, which is like nothing else that's played in months"
(23 March 2001)

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Dishy
Sam Neill transmits tension in The Dish, the story of how Neill Armstrong came to be broadcast from a giant dish in the middle of the Australian desert.
(15 March 2001)

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Milk free
The Price of Milk is nothing at promotional showings of the New Zealand movie with a "cult-like" following.
(22 March 2001)

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Mad world of Milk
"In the real world, Lucinda probably would be in court-ordered psychotherapy, with a restraining order or two thrown in to boot. In the fanciful world of The Price of Milk, however, Cormack's Lucinda is a treasure of a princess-hero who makes this little film a gem."
(13 February 2001)

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Milk magic
Director Harry Sinclair explains the magic behind The Price of Milk:
"We put a window frame on a dolly and sat Danielle Coramck and the camera on the dolly. And they were moving along Karl as he walks across the field." Also, Milk makes a great shake and gets bottled by soured critic.
(15 February 2001)

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Intimacy and success
New Zealander Kerry Fox wins Silver Bear (best actress) at the Berlin Film Festival for her "searing and explicit" performance in Intimacy, winner of the Golden Bear for best film. Fox was unable to collect her prize personally - she was in a hot bath preparing to give birth. 
(20 February 2001)

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Acting love
British actor Toby Stephens "sips cranberry and soda in restaurants with his girlfriend, the New Zealand actress Anna-Louise Plowman (Flick, The Adulterer)", and enjoys "choosing colour schemes for his new north London flat."
(28 January 2001)
 

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Vertical exhilaration
NZ-filmed and directed Vertical Limit goes public. The scenery scores universal acclaim: Ottawa Citizen, 
Chicago Sun-Times, USA Today, ctnow, entertainmentnewsdaily, National Post, Chicago Tribune, the Star, Washington Post. Scott Glen battled Mt Cook, the entire crew battled the weather. The Chicago Sun-Times says VL is "the closest viewers will get" to the disastrous 1996 expedition that killed kiwi Rob Hall.
(2001)
 

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Moko on film
Jillian White's Moko, a short documentary featuring the first contemporary man to wear moko, included in Sundance 2001. Felicity Morgan-Rhino's short Donuts for Breakfast, is also on the programme
(5 December 2000)

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Punitive Damage
New Zealander Helen Todd's documentary inditing the Indonesian military for the Dili massacre screens at the Las Vegas CineVegas festival.
(27 November 2000)

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Whitewash
Maori cut from crowd scenes in Her Majesty, US-funded feature film set in New Zealand c.1953-54. Producer Walter Coblenz (All the President's Men), said historical accuracy motivated the cutting. 
(16 November 2000)  

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The purloined piano? 
The Piano secured Jane Campion as a major director and catapulted her from the art-house to the multiplex, but the Oxford Companion to Australian Film recently cast doubt over the originality of the screenplay for which she received an Oscar. The resulting investigation into the links between the "strange and mesmerising film" and the novel The Story of a New Zealand River, by Jane Mander, resulted in Oxford University Press Australia issuing a full apology to Campion over the claims.
(September 2000)

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Flaming Fox
"It's difficult to pin down Kerry Fox. For every film-goer who knows her as the murderous medical student in Shallow Grave, there's another who remembers her as the dumpy author Janet Frame in An Angel at My Table, or the hardbitten journalist in Welcome to Sarajavo." Kerry Fox is currently playing in Charlotte Jones's new work In Flame at the New Ambassadors as Alex, a thirtysomething, childless career woman with a married boyfriend and a mother in a home.
(31 August 2000)
 

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Natural History New Zealand double Emmy nomination
Natural History New Zealand writers Ian McGee (who won NZ's first Emmy last year) and Quinn Berentson were nominated for their for an episode "The Rat" in the 13 part series Twisted Tales co-produced by Animal Planet and the acclaimed Kiwi production company. Cinematographer Mike Single was also nominated for television's most prestigious prize for his innovative timelapse work in Antarctica. 
(27 July 2000)
 

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More *Aussies* to join Star Wars
Putting more Kiwis in Kangeroo skins and calling them Aussies, news.com.au reports that four more 'Australian' actors have been added to the cast of George Lucas next Star Wars movie, including Martin Coskas, formerly of Shortland Street fame. The cast already includes Kiwis Temuera Morrison, Jay Laga'aia and Rena Owen.
(21 July 2000)  
 

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"All you sweet girls with your sweet talk": New York Times interview with Alison Maclean
Known for her willingness to thematically peer over the edge 'to the centre in her head', Maclean is attracting attention for Jesus' Son (starring Billy Cudrup and Samantha Morton). The film, about alienation, ennui and drugs in 70s America, has received outstanding reviews at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals and at NY's Museum of Modern Art .
(11 June 2000)

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Sam Neill: walking with the dinosaurs ... again
Kiwi Neill has become the first major actor to sign on for more encounters with a blue screed/rampaging dinosaurs in Jurassic Park 3. He will reprise his role as Dr. Alan Grant from the 1993 original.
(28 June 2000) 

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When love comes to Boston
New Zealand film When Love Comes about a "group of free spirits and sexual stripes" chosen to show at Boston gay and lesbian film and video Festival at Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The festival is known for playing a major role in outing gay culture to a wider audience.
(3 May 2000)
 

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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 more international film companies have been travelling south, including 1999's most expensive film The Vertical Limit, and the US$180million trilogy The Lord of the Rings.
(7 April 2000)
 

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`Kaho Na Pyar Hai, New Zealand se'
Indian actor sends hearts fluttering and viewers travelling: "His cool, clean looks not only sent his heroine (Ameesha Patel) into a tizzy, it had the entire nation echoing Haan Tumse Pyaar Hai. More importantly, the success of the film has unleashed a brand new love affair - between India and New Zealand, where a large part of the film was shot".
(15 April 2000)

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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 Munich Olympic Games.
(10 March 2000)
Postscript: Wright won the Oscar for her contribution to the film.
 

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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 …
(9 March 2000)

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Tragic death of activist remembered in Punitive Damage.
The Kiwi-made documentary traces the life and tragic death of Kamal Badmadhaj, slaughtered in the 1991 Dili Cemetery Massacre by the Indonesian military.  The film won the Audience Award at the 1999 Sydney International Film Festival and the Medianet Award at the Munich film Festival, 1999, and was shown around the globe at numerous other festivals to critical acclaim.
(9 May 2000)
 

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Sam Neill brings Thomas Jefferson to Life
Growing up in New Zealand, Sam Neill was aware of Thomas Jefferson merely as "writer of the Declaration of Independence, architect, politician, two-time U.S. president and big cheese on Mount Rushmore."
(5 February 2000)

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