Creepy plot wins Emmy 
The makers of Wellington-made interactive drama Reservoir Hill, KHF Media, have won New Zealand's first ever Emmy in the Digital Program: Children & Young People category. Reservoir Hill — which was shot in Porirua and produced and directed by David Stubbs and Thomas Robins — follows 16-year-old Beth Connolly as she is forced to solve a mystery when she moves to the creepy new suburb of Reservoir Hill. "We're thrilled; we had some pretty stiff competition, from some top international broadcasters like the BBC. We probably didn't think we had a chance," Stubbs said from Cannes. The concept for Reservoir Hill was created over "a few flat whites" at Cuba St's Midnight Espresso cafe, he said. Reservoir Hill allowed viewers to contact Beth through texts and messages on social networking website Bebo. These messages drove the plot, and the texts sometimes appeared on Beth's phone. Wellington musician Rhian Sheehan wrote the score. 
(13 April 2010)

Top of their game
The Kathryn Bigelow film The Hurt Locker, which earned her a best director and best film Oscars, featured Auckland Isaac Hamon, 33; the scene depicting Hamon running away from an explosion in an 80kg bomb suit is a centerpiece of the film's promotion. He describes the explosion that has garnered him the attention as "reasonable". "I felt it that's for sure. I felt the shockwave," he said. Hamon doubled for actors Ralph Fiennes, Guy Pearce in the explosion scene, and also for Jeremy Renner. Hamon worked with two other New Zealanders on Hurtlocker, Robert "Bomber" Young and Tony Marsh, part of a cadre of Kiwi stuntmen and women working on movies throughout the world. 
(9 March 2010, via Stuff)

Oscar for Kim Sinclair 
Auckland production designer Kim Sinclair won the Academy Award for Art Direction on Avatar with American colleagues Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg. "Each virtual set had trees and plants that were moveable, like real props. When director James Cameron finally signed off on the digital version, Sinclair and his team at Peter Jackson's Weta integrated real props into the virtual backgrounds. Some film sets, Sinclair said, can cost $7,000 per second of footage, but a few sets can be a staggering $50,000 per second." An architecture graduate from the University of Auckland, Sinclair film work includes The Last Samurai, The Legend of Zorro, Cast Away, and Willow; his New Zealand film credits include Under the Mountain, Black Sheep and Quiet Earth.
(9 March 2010)

Like it or loathe it 
Wellington Airport-owned land on the hills of Miramar Peninsula could soon sport a Hollywood-style sign with the word 'Wellywood' erected in 3.5m high letters, that is, if it isn't in violation of Hollywood's trademark. Director Peter Jackson told The Dominion Post that the sign was "tongue-in-cheek humour at its very best." But he added, referring to The Lord of the Rings and Avatar, "Beneath the leg-pulling is genuine pride. Within a mile of the sign is the birth place of Middle Earth and Pandora." Hollywood Chamber of Commerce president Leron Gubler yesterday said his lawyer had confirmed the proposal would violate the Hollywood sign trademark. He said he thought communities were better off creating something that symbolised their own community. "Recreating the Hollywood sign might be cute for a little while, but if you're going to leave it up there, you're better to do something that's unique." Taika Waititi, whose film Boy is due for release soon, said the idea was fine as a short-term installation for the film festival or other such event. "But the prospect that this thing could be sitting there for 30 years is probably what makes people vomit a little in the back of their throats." 
(9 March 2010)

In killer frocks 
Anna Paquin "vamps it up" on the cover of the March edition of Marie Claire UK in an exclusive grocery store shoot by photographer Frederic Pinet wearing Alexander McQueen, Prada and Chanel amongst other designers. Paquin, 27, plays the main protagonist Sookie Stackhouse in the HBO series True Blood: "I had no idea 2009 was going to be the vampire year," she laughs, referring to the recent trend for blood-sucking romance. "I just love True Blood's mix of funny, campy and weird." Paquin's career started with a bang when, aged nine, she became the second youngest person ever to win an Oscar for her role as Holly Hunter's daughter in The Piano, an experience she insists was "not particularly hard" to deal with. "There were a few weeks where it was odd," she shrugs, "but the next year someone else wins and everybody stops talking about it."
(March 2010)

East Coast boy in Utah 
Director Taika Waititi's film Boy, which premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, "marks a step up in [Waititi's] maturity" and "elaborates on a style that primarily belongs to his own unique universe, according to IndieWire reviewer Eric Kohn. Waititi, whose first feature, Eagle Versus Shark, premiered at Sundance in 2005, wrote and directed Boy, which was shot in his childhood home town of Waihau Bay on the East Coast. Kohn continues: "He expands on the deadpan characterizations of Eagle vs Shark — which encouraged comparisons to — by applying greater emotional resonance to broad comedy. The result is alternately zany, sentimental, and remarkably insightful about the quirks of a child's mind. Ultimately, Boy succeeds as both an ode to childhood and a lament about growing up." Waititi travelled as a guest of the festival to Utah for the premiere, and said before leaving that he had a long connection with the festival. "To take this sunny East Coast New Zealand film to play in the snowy mountains of Park City, Utah, is pretty awesome," Waititi said. The film will be released in New Zealand early this year. And if you have "a hard time with authority" join Waititi's gang of The Crazy Horses — an idea stemming from Boy — go to www.crazyhorses.co.nz. 
(23 January 2010)

Attention seeker 
"A little bit of [Jemaine] Clement can go a long way," writes Katey Rich for US entertainment site Cinema Blend.com. Quiet Earth is reporting that Clement, "who was so woefully underused in Gentlemen Broncos", is part of the cast of Jason Stutter-directed film Predicament, a crime comedy set in the 1930s. "No, normally, a small New Zealand movie wouldn't gather attention around these parts. But ever since Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie walked away from the Flight of the Conchords TV series I've been wondering what [Clement] would be up to next. No telling if we'll ever see [Predicament] in the States, but now you'll know to keep an eye out." Meanwhile, the official FOTC website is a collection of tour artwork, each promoting a specific show the duo played throughout the US and Canada. 
(8 January 2010)

Cowboy paramedic 
Trauma star New Zealander Cliff Curtis, who plays "the cowboy paramedic who's equal parts Tom Cruise in Top Gun and Tom Selleck in Magnum P.I in the hit NBC drama, says 'Rabbit' is "probably the most fun character I've had in my career." "The whole idea [of 'Rabbit'] was to start off with this cliché — the Raybans, the blue jumpsuit, the macho bravado — and the hope was that we get to know him a little bit better. He's such a broad spectrum of possibilities: romantic lead, hero, bad boy. It's been a really great opportunity to completely have a broad palette to play with." Curtis next appears as a fire lord in M. Night Shymalan's summer flick The Last Airbender. 
(16 April 2010)

Sprites by Leibovitz 
Director Peter Jackson and Lovely Bones star Saoirse Ronan were photographed at New York's Time Warner Center by Annie Leibovitz for the March issue of Vanity Fair, in a photographic shoot for the magazine called, 'Frame, Set and Match'. Jackson and Ronan, "The Sprites" feature alongside: "The Romantics", Pedro Almodóvar and Penélope Cruz; "The Visionary", James Cameron and his fusion 3-D camera, and "The Hellions", Quentin Tarentino and Christoph Waltz. Ronan is justly celebrated for her successful handling of the difficult lead role in The Lovely Bones. Jackson was lucky to have her, just as he was fortunate when he was able to rely on Kate Winslet as the foundation for his 1994 breakthrough hit Heavenly Creatures. Leibovitz focused on the bond between actor and director (or director and machine) which sparked 11 compelling films in 2009, including The Lovely Bones, Avatar and Inglorious Basterds. 
(March 2010)

Niccol the man 
Kapiti Coast-born director Andrew Niccol, 45, of Gattaca and Truman Show fame, has written a new sci-fi screenplay, called I'm Mortal, reportedly in negotiations for purchase. The premise of his latest being: Got too much time on your hands? How about spreading the wealth around? In the Niccol's vision of the future, aging has been thwarted and time is the new currency. The main character is a man who comes into a fortune of time, but nevertheless, finds it is too late to save his dying mother. Niccol's name has also been linked to The City That Sailed, a family film at Fox about a New York street magician separated from his young daughter, who is living in London. After the young girl discovers magic candles that can make wishes come true, she causes the island of Manhattan to separate from the continent and float toward England. Will Smith has been mentioned as a potential lead. The Truman Show was nominated for a Best Screenplay award at the Oscars in 1999. 
(14 April 2010)

Part of the corps 
Actors Temuera Morrison and Taika Waititi both star in the Martin Campbell-directed 3D film Green Lantern which began production in New Orleans in mid-March. Morrison is playing Abin Sur — a member of the interplanetary police force known as the Green Lantern Corps — who is instrumental in Hal Jordan becoming the superhero, while Waititi plays the best friend of Jordan, the test pilot who comes to wear the super-powered ring of the Corps. The movie is set for a June 17, 2011 release. Morrison, repped by Abrams Artists, recently wrapped the New Zealand-made thriller Tracker with Ray Winstone. 
(14 March 2010)

Barclay a big presence 
Auckland actress Emily Barclay, 25, "is in no danger of not being cast" and "right now is one of the hottest new talents in the business — on stage and on screen", writes The Sydney Morning Herald's Elissa Blake. Director Neil Armfield cast Barclay as 16-year-old Suzette (a politician's daughter dabbling in sex and drugs) in Sydney's Belvoir St Theatre production of David Hare's Gethsemane in 2009 after watching her performance in the film Suburban Mayhem. It was her first stage role. "There's no doubt she's an astounding film actor," Armfield says. "When I saw her in Suburban Mayhem I really, really admired how apparently reckless [her performance] was with no apparent safety margin. I thought she was incredibly focused and pure, at the same time as being right out on a limb and really bold." Barclay collected an AFI Award for Best Actress from Heath Ledger in 2006 for the role. Her next films include Lou, an Australian production directed by Belinda Chayko and starring John Hurt, and Guardians of Ga'Hoole, a 3D animated film based on the children's book series, adapted by director Zack Snyder (others in the voice cast include Helen Mirren and Geoffrey Rush). Barclay returns to Belvoir St Theatre starring in British play That Face which runs through March 14. 
(26 January 2010)

Weta woos Hollywood
Wellington-based Weta Digital, which was behind the effects work on blockbusters Avatar and District 9, has been nominated for nine Academy Awards; CNET Asia’s Daniel Terdiman says the “accolades may finally make Weta a household name”. “Beyond [Avatar director James] Cameron and his team at Lightstorm Entertainment, the people who may deserve the biggest kudos and who have to be considered the odds-on favorite to walk away on March 7 with at least one visual effects Oscar — are the folks at Sir Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital.” Nine New Zealand film industry figures are Oscar nominees, including Jackson himself for the big award of the night — Best Picture — as producer of District 9. The Weta Digital team of Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham and Andrew R Jones are collectively nominated for the best visual effects Oscar for Avatar. Visual effect supervisor Wayne Stables said 950 staff had worked long days for three years on the film. “It’s a huge body of very high quality work,” Stables said. “We’re very proud of the work that we all did on it.” Weta Digital’s Matt Aitken has been nominated for the company’s visual effects work on Neill Blomkamp’s and Jackson’s science-fiction thriller District 9. Other New Zealanders who got the Oscar nod include Avatar set director Kim Sinclair for best art direction and sound recordist Tony Johnson for best sound mixing. Both were part of team nominations. 
(1 February 2010)

Improbable classic 
Director Jane Campion's 1993 film The Piano is considered a "classic" of the cinema by the Times which examines the merits of the film starring New Zealand actress Anna Paquin, Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel. Campion, now 55, was among cinema's auteur elite because The Piano was the first directed by a woman ever to win the coveted Palme d'Or. Nine months later, Campion received a best director Oscar nomination for the film, becoming only the second woman ever put up for cinema's ultimate prize. To some, the wide international success of The Piano was improbable because, like Campion's other films, it explores the dangerous mysteries of female desire. "What preoccupies Campion," wrote Manohla Dargis in the Los Angeles Times, "is how women become decisive and take the leap, how they plunge into unknown waters, shed inhibitions (and clothes) and ... breach the citadel of their individual selves by acting on desire." What may surprise those who don't follow such things is that The Piano has become one of the most discussed and deconstructed film texts in academia, inspiring an entire academic industry, in fact. With the benefit of hindsight, there's no doubt The Piano is one of the most important and best-loved films of the past quarter-century. It seems to touch people, especially women, on extraordinarily deep emotional and psychological levels. Yet what had, at the time, seemed like a trailblazing moment for women in cinema now looks like an appallingly embarrassing anachronism. Today, it remains the only film directed by a woman in the almost 70-year history of the Cannes festival to take the top prize. 
(17 January 2010)

Spartacus debuts in US 
Former warrior princess Lucy Lawless stars as Lucretia in Spartacus: Blood and Sand, "a sword-and-sandals epic that Starz, the US premium cable network, rolls out January 22". Spartacus is a flashy, big-budget attempt to forge a brand, complete with a big-name costar (Lawless) and the heavily stylised, comic-book-like use of green-screen technology familiar from movies like 300 and Sin City. "We tried to do the western, operatic version of violence and bloodshed," said executive producer Rob Tapert, Lawless' husband. Spartacus took advantage of tax breaks in New Zealand — where Tapert and Lawless now spend much of the year — and was shot entirely on soundstages, with effects and settings filled in later by computer. 
(10 January 2010)

Tentative ten 
Wellington's Weta Digital effects house has begun pre-production on the sequel to Peter Jackson-produced District 9, the "tentatively titled" District 10. Filming is scheduled to begin in South Africa and New Zealand in October. Film site MarketSaw has stated that it is not certain whether District 10 will be shot in 3D however, with Jackson producing and directing Mortal Engines, another Weta film, in stereoscopic 3D, it is likely that District 10 will do the same. Mortal Engines, which Jackson will direct and produce, is based on a series of five books by Phillip Reeve set in a devastated post annihilation world where huge floating cities roam the skies and do battle with one another. 
(26 April 2010)

Collaborative honour 
Director Peter Jackson has been knighted by Governor-General Sir Anand Satyanand at an investiture ceremony in Wellington. Jackson's knighthood was for services to the arts in New Zealand. "The truth is, making movies is not a solo effort — it involves hundreds of people, thousands of people — so I feel as though I'm accepting it on behalf of the industry," Jackson said. Jackson has risen from a maker of small-budget schlock-horror films to the heights of Hollywood. His crowning achievement remains the three-movie adaptation of Lord of the Rings, which transformed the rugged landscape of New Zealand into the Middle Earth of J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy epic — spurring a real-life tourism industry along the way. The final movie in the trilogy won 11 Academy Awards. Jackson has gone on to remake King Kong, and his latest film is The Lovely Bones. 
(28 April 2010)

Neill the menace 
Sam Neill recently starred as the "diabolically" corrupt president of a human blood farming corporation alongside Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe in the Spierig Brothers sci-fi/horror film Daybreakers. Neill "dominates the screen" as the evil Charles Bromley, "fill[ing] the air with menace". "[Bromley] is the sort of person who is responsible for the economical times that we are laboring through at this point," Neill said. "So I had some real-life models to work with, the Corporate Vampire if you will; the kind of guy that awards himself bonuses that you and I can only dream of." Daybreakers is out now on DVD. Neill also stars as memorabilia shop owner Merritt Grieves in ABC's Happy Town, a television series from the producers of Life on Mars. The show's site explains: "Haplin, Minnesota, 'Happy Town,' has enjoyed an uneasy peace for five years, but all that is about to change. Still haunted by a number of unsolved kidnappings, the small town now faces a dark new crime that brings all its unresolved fears to the surface …" Happy Town premieres on ABC, April 28. 
(23 March 2010)

Laughter in Waihau Bay 
"With a genuine voice and a remarkable spirit, the winner [of the Best Feature Generation Film at the International Filmfestspiele Berlin] is [Taika Waititi's Boy], which is a film "with bold direction ... tackl[ing] difficult subject matter not with preaching, sentimentality or self-pity but with humour, often treating tragedy and comedy simultaneously," describes the Festival's website. "Because it's so enjoyable it is easy to underestimate the depth of this film. It is a rich mix of ideas which strike and collide to create poetic moments that speak, despite the remote location, to all of us today." In an interview with Rose Hoare of the Sunday Star Times magazine, Waititi, 34, said he wants Maori film to move away from the likes of Once Were Warriors, with its "big acting and melodramatic style", and The Whale Rider. "Brilliant films, they do help to define who we are, but there are other ways as well. Like, there are no Maori comedies — and this isn't even straight-out comedy — and I'm sure we've got a lot of room for them," Waititi said. Together with Flight of the Conchords' star Jemaine Clement collaborating as the Humourbeasts, the pair won the Billy T James award in 1999. Waititi's first film, Two Cars, One Night, was nominated for an Oscar in 2005. 
(March 2010)

Short film revolution 
"Could 2010 be the year that New Zealand short filmmakers take over the world?" asks Indie Wire's Kim Adelman. "The year began promisingly as Mark Albiston and Louis Sutherland's The Six Dollar Fifty Man took the jury prize in international short filmmaking at January's Sundance Film Festival. And now at Berlin, Katie Wolfe's Redemption and Leo Woodhead's Zero world premiere in the Berlinale Shorts and the Generation 14plus category, respectively. Wellingtonians Albiston and Sutherland directed the brash yet assured 15-minute short The Six Dollar Fifty Man. The short world premiered at Cannes last year, where it walked away with a special distinction honor. It also racked up awards at Sundance and FlickerFest, in addition to playing Clermont-Ferrand and the Generation Kplus competition category this year at Berlin." Other New Zealand directors at Berlin mentioned are Tearepa Kahi, who wrote and directed Taua — War Party; Roseanne Liang, who wrote and directed the 12-minute Take 3; Michelle Savill, who wrote/directed/produced the 14-minute Betty Banned Sweets; Jane Shearer, director of the 11-minute, no-dialogue, supernatural thriller, Nature's Way; and Jason Stutter, creator of some stomach-clenching anticipation in the 2-minute comedy Careful with that Axe. 
(19 February 2010)

Abattoirs maketh the man 
Director Martin Campbell is "one of the world's most revered action directors, twice rescuing the Bond franchise" writes the Guardian's John Patterson. Now Campbell has returned to Edge of Darkness, the 1980s TV drama that made his name and starring Mel Gibson. A relentlessly self-effacing man, he is keen, in his plainspoken New Zealander way, not to get "too up-myself". Yet Campbell is one of the world's top action movie directors, having twice rebooted the Bond franchise when it needed it most, bringing in first Pierce Brosnan (GoldenEye) and then Daniel Craig. Campbell was born in Hastings, in 1940, but looks 20 years younger than his 69 years. "I tried to get a job as a TV cameraman and they basically told me, 'You're mad, everyone wants these jobs — and if you go to England, you're doubly mad.' But I worked in abattoirs for 10 months to earn my money, then left for London. I didn't even know what a director did." Campbell is currently working on The Green Lantern, starring Canadian heart-throb Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively. 
(26 January 2010)

Togaless 
Actress Lucy Lawless "is attracting a lot of attention for her latest character — not that the New Zealand actress isn't used to recognition," writes Metro Canada's Steve Gow. As Xena: Warrior Princess, Lawless gained a surfeit of spirited sci-fi fans that adored the cult TV show for six years before following it as one of the sexy Cylons on Battlestar Galactica. Now Lawless isn't just stirring the fantasies of fanboys worldwide — she's fulfilling them as Lucretia in her provocative new gladiator series, Spartacus: Blood and Sand. Lawless is just one of many characters that spend plenty of on-screen time shedding their togas. "It's really kind of a spooky thing," laughed Lawless of the series' lack of dress. "The good news is that we have very sympathetic producers who work very hard to make us all look fantastic even in high-definition. I mean, nobody really looks good on HDTV past the age of nine." 
(22 January 2010)

McIver learns from best 
New Zealand actress Rose McIver, 22, plays the younger sister to Saoirse Ronan in Peter Jackson's thriller The Lovely Bones. Teen Hollywood talks to McIver about working with stars Ronan, 15, and Susan Sarandon. "Susan is fantastic," McIver said. "I think she pushed me to see how far it could go. She's such a professional and has a lot of experience I feel like I learned a lot from working with her." Asked what most impressed her about working on the film, McIver said: "Just working with such high calibre people; leaders in their fields; crew and cast. I loved how they really get down to work and they are actors' actors but still a very down-to-earth bunch of people." McIver plays the lusted-after Maybelle in the movie Predicament, an adaption of the book written by late Hawera author Ronald Hugh Morrieson. 
(11 January 2010)

Fame becomes them 
Tickets for The Flight of the Conchords' two May shows at Dublin's Olympia Theatre sold out in a record 12 seconds. "It's all just weird," Bret McKenzie says. But then he finds a lot of things "weird" about the Conchords' success. "It's just not something you ever expect — playing to 5000 people and having people say weird things about you." Not Cut Out For Fame And Celebrity may well be their motto. Clearly there's a relief in the Conchords camp that the TV series has come to an end and they can pursue other interests (which may include film treatments). It has also been reported the duo will make a guest appearance on The Simpsons later this year. Clement and McKenzie were understood to have rehearsed lines with Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson, over the phone from Wellington before recording in the United States. Before finishing up with a big show at Los Angeles's famed Hollywood Bowl venue there's a show at The Greek Theatre in Berkley, California. They say on their website that they added in this Berkley gig because "the last time we played in Berkeley, we forgot some of the chords and insulted the audience". 
(30 April 2010)

Gandalf's return 
The Hobbit, produced by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, will begin filming in New Zealand in July with Sir Ian McKellen once again taking the role of Gandalf the Grey. The film, and its proposed sequel, will be prequels to the Lord of the Rings trilogy directed by Oscar winner Jackson. Writing on his official website, Sir Ian reports that shooting of the two films is expected to take more than a year, with Mexican-born director Guillermo Del Toro "now living in Wellington, close to the Jacksons' and the studio in Miramar". McKellen added that the script was still being worked on, saying "the first draft is crammed with old and new friends, again on a quest in Middle Earth".  
(18 March 2010)

Making her mark in LA 
New Plymouth-born actress Melanie Lynskey, 32, talks to the Wall Street Journal about being a working actor in Hollywood, her big break in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures and about Up in the Air co-star George Clooney. Lynskey said the bulk of questions she's been asked in relation to the film were about the A-lister. She recalled one particularly bizarre interview where the questioner wouldn't let up. "He kept asking me over and over again to tell him something the public didn't already know about George, and I was like, no way you crazy old man. It was must be awful to be a famous person." We'd have to quibble a bit with Lynskey there, over her fame level. Though not in the same stardom stratosphere as Clooney, she's been making her mark in Hollywood, with solid performances in three films last year — Up in the Air, The Informant! and Away We Go — and two more — Leaves of Grass and Helena from the Wedding — playing at the South by Southwest Festival (SWSX) later this week. Lynskey was 15 when she landed her first professional acting role as murderer Pauline Parker opposite British actress Kate Winslet.
(10 March 2010)

Campbell's big gun 
Hastings-born director Martin Campbell, 66, best known for the 2006 Bond film Casino Royale, has told the Los Angeles Times that "there was nobody else" but Mel Gibson for the role of Boston cop Thomas Craven in Campbell's latest thriller Edge of Darkness. He said the script called for an actor old enough to have a 24-year-old daughter (gunned down in the film) who also possessed a ferocity. The list of big stars that fit the bill was exactly one name long. There was nobody else," the New Zealand-born filmmaker said. "I liken Mel to the old Hollywood stars like Robert Mitchum, Lee Marvin, William Holden, people like that, and we've got none of them now, do we? Everyone now is so lightweight. Even George Clooney, who is a terrific actor, he's too polished. Mel has this masculine kind of emotional weight that others don't. Possibly Russell Crowe, but he's too young for this role. Eastwood is gone [from acting] and Harrison Ford, he's got the grit, but he doesn't have the menace or the power." 
(24 January 2010)

Memories of plasma 
The Lovely Bones director Peter Jackson "should forswear sugar next time and reintroduce himself to plasma, brain matter, puke, shit and intestines; all the elements that gave his earlier, sicker, funnier films their kick", writes John Patterson of the Guardian, who includes Jackson's films Bad Taste and Brain Dead as examples of "vomit-eating aliens" and "rabid grannies". "He could use a return to those economies of scale today: as with all great directors, they prompted greater inventiveness and creativity from him in his early works. Jackson has now spent a decade making gargantuan movies but, sadly, The Lovely Bones does not mark his return to modesty and control." Patterson once wondered "how the near-decade he spent on The Lord of the Rings cycle would change Jackson's work, whether it would impart megalomania or wisdom to his work. After all, their creation did also involve Jackson almost singlehandedly reinventing the national film industry of New Zealand, which is the kind of thing that might go to a guy's head." 
(13 February 2010)

Way of life applauded 
Hawkes Bay couple Tom and Barbara Burstyn's documentary This Way of Life about a Maori family living a subsistence lifestyle has screened at the Berlin Film Festival to full houses and a Jury award. This Way of Life tells the story of Peter and Colleen Karena who moved from Omahu two years ago when their home was destroyed by fire. The couple, both in their early 30s, moved their homeless family and horses to a small homestead near the Tukituki River on the Havelock North-Waimarama Road. Shot over four years against a background of the Ruahine Range and Waimarama beach, the film is about a family of six children and 50 horses living on the thin edge between freedom and economic disaster. During the four years of filming, the family's home burnt down, horses were stolen and they lost a baby. The Berlin Festival programme describes the independent film as a story of family life in New Zealand. "Except that this is no ordinary family," the festival publicity blurb reads. "It's almost as if the word 'risk' does not exist for them: barefoot, bareback and without reins or riding hat is for instance the way the family's daughter (Aurora) gallops across the New Zealand prairie. "Some people may think that the Karenas live a life of poverty. But this isn't true. This Way of Life is a film about freedom." The Burstyns are now working on a new collaboration at their Cloud South Films shingle, Yolanda's Last Portrait. A theatrical docu feature, Portrait focuses on an aging artist in her crumbling mansion in St John's Wood in London. This Way of Life opens nationwide on March 11. 
(13 February 2010)

Fast friends 
Rose McIver arrives at New York's Griffith Observatory "fashionably on time" to meet fellow Lovely Bones actress Saoirse Ronan for a tour and an interview with The New York Times. That evening McIver, 22, would fly to New Zealand. She hoped it would be easier than entering the United States. "My fingerprints didn't read on the machine because I'd used some really intense bleach at home," she said. "At least I got the blood out of my carpet." The pair, who play sisters in the film, have developed a fast friendship. Moving into the Cafi at the End of the Universe for fruit salad and chips, the two talked about their childhoods. "When I was younger, I used to collect rocks," Ronan said. "What a nerdy thing to do." "I used to try to sell rocks," McIver said. "I was a poor 7-year-old." 
(15 January 2010)

Knighthood for Jackson 
Director Peter Jackson was among five New Zealanders to become knights or dames after a return to New Year's honours. Former Prime Minister Helen Clark — who axed British honours while in office — received the country's highest accolade, becoming a member of the Order of New Zealand. Jackson, whose career started with the 1987 horror movie Bad Taste, was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2002. "I didn't think anything would surpass the 2004 Academy Awards, but I was wrong," Jackson said. His Lord of the Rings trilogy won a total of 17 Academy Awards. It is understood Jackson is now working to adapt the Mortal Engines fantasy novels for the screen, as well as producing The Adventures of Tintin and The Hobbit.
(31 December 2009)