News of New Zealanders via Global Media

Andrew McCarten on How to Make a Film about a Living Person

Andrew McCarten on How to Make a Film about a Living Person

New Zealand producer and screenwriter Anthony McCarten discusses the difficulties in making a film about a person who is still alive. McCarten’s latest feature is a biopic about theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, The Theory…

‘Housebound’ a Satisfying Horror-Comedy Spookfest

‘Housebound’ a Satisfying Horror-Comedy Spookfest

The horror-comedy film Housebound, the writing-directing feature debut from New Zealand filmmaker Gerard Johnstone, is described as “creepy, silly, inventive, darkly funny and, at one point, mind blowingly bloody,” by Gary Goldstein for the…

Hospitality Guru Shane Green to the Rescue

Hospitality Guru Shane Green to the Rescue

Las Vegas hospitality guru New Zealander Shane Green is the host of new Travel Chanel reality show, Resort Rescue. Green shows owners his unbelievable hidden camera discoveries and why their resort is in bad…

US Indie Film Role for Former Vampire Jemaine Clement

US Indie Film Role for Former Vampire Jemaine Clement

New Zealand comedian Jemaine Clement, who played 862-year-old Vladislav in What We Do in the Shadows, will next star in the indie drama People Places Things directed by James Strouse. Following appearances in Hollywood films…

The Dead Lands Provoking Londoners to Travel South

The Dead Lands Provoking Londoners to Travel South

Director Toa Fraser’s latest film The Dead Lands (Hautoa) is one of 10 films from the 2014 London Film Festival “that are sure to see you planning trips to New Zealand, Borneo…

BBC Announces Cop Drama “Bay of Plenty”

BBC Announces Cop Drama “Bay of Plenty”

Two female detectives will be the lead characters in a new BBC drama set in Rotorua. Luther creator Neil Cross will return to BBC as the creator of the drama, provisionally titled Bay of Plenty. The show will focus on…

Marton Csokas Menacing in The Equalizer Opposite Denzel Washington

Marton Csokas Menacing in The Equalizer Opposite Denzel Washington

Invercargill-born film and theatre actor Marton Csokas – who plays Russian bad guy Teddy opposite Denzel Washington in The Equalizer – chats with entertainment industry magazine Backstage about his approach to his craft, his…

Sam Neill Says We Can All Identify with Working Class Crims

Sam Neill Says We Can All Identify with Working Class Crims

Ask Peaky Blinders star New Zealander Sam Neill to account for the success of the BBC’s six-parter about Birmingham razor gangs – an odd but winning mix of industrial grime, street violence, catwalk-friendly fashion…

Andrew McCarten’s Stephen Hawking Biopic a Comprehendible Hit

Andrew McCarten’s Stephen Hawking Biopic a Comprehendible Hit

New Zealand screenwriter Anthony McCarten’s latest The Theory of Everything, which hits American cinemas on November 7, is “a sensitively directed inspirational biopic centred around the great British physicist Stephen Hawking and his mind-over-body…

Martin Henderson Busy Thrilling on the Small Screen

Martin Henderson Busy Thrilling on the Small Screen

Star of Australian thriller Secrets and Lies Auckland-born Martin Henderson, 39, talks to DIY magazine about his part in the critically acclaimed series The Red Road opposite Game of Thrones star Jason Momoa and…

Filmmaker Taika Waititi Flourishing out of the Mainstream

Filmmaker Taika Waititi Flourishing out of the Mainstream

He’s best known as the Oscar-nominated filmmaker behind hits like Flight Of The Conchords and New Zealand’s highest-ever grossing film Boy. But Taika Waititi had a brush with mainstream Hollywood fame when he starred alongside…

Lucy Lawless Plays a Teacher in New Outback Thriller

Lucy Lawless Plays a Teacher in New Outback Thriller

Lucy Lawless stars in ABC political thriller The Code as Alex Wisham, a teacher in a remote indigenous school who protects an Aboriginal boy blamed for the death of a teenage girl. She gets…

Cliff Curtis Gives Career-Making Performance as Genesis Potini

Cliff Curtis Gives Career-Making Performance as Genesis Potini

New Zealand actor Cliff Curtis, 46, who gives a career-making performance in fellow New Zealand director James Napier Robertson’s The Dark Horse (now playing the Toronto International Film Festival) is serious about his craft….

Wellington Vampire Movie Wins People’s Choice at Toronto Film Festival

Wellington Vampire Movie Wins People’s Choice at Toronto Film Festival

‘What We Do In the Shadows’ was a big hit at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, winning the Grolsch Midnight Madness People’s Choice Award.  Its co-creator, ‘Flight of the Conchords’ star Jemaine Clement,…

Good Kill Andrew Niccol’s Sobering 21st Century Riposte to Top Gun

Good Kill Andrew Niccol’s Sobering 21st Century Riposte to Top Gun

In Good Kill, which has its world premiere this month at the Venice Film Festival, New Zealand writer-director Andrew Niccol explores the implications of waging war while staying home, a development that – for…

Jemaine Clement Talks Conchords and Vampires

Jemaine Clement Talks Conchords and Vampires

Conchord and vampire Jemaine Clement is interviewed by The Guardian’s Alexander Bisley on his new film What We Do in the Shadows, share homes, and his Maori heritage. Clement is one of the most noted…

Black Ranger Power Given to Local Actor James Davies

Black Ranger Power Given to Local Actor James Davies

New Zealand actor James Davies will co-star as Black Ranger (pictured, far left) in Power Rangers Dino Charge, with the television show confirmed to return to the country for filming of the latest series. Davies…

Hobbit Trilogy Beating the Odds to Hit Screens

Hobbit Trilogy Beating the Odds to Hit Screens

“In one of the most epic feats in recent cinema history, New Zealander director Peter Jackson brought to life Tolkien’s fantastical universe with The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Almost a decade later, the…

Lee Tamahori Teams up with Adrien Brody on Emperor

Lee Tamahori Teams up with Adrien Brody on Emperor

Director Lee Tamahori is in the Czech Republic filming Emperor, a movie based on 16th century Roman ruler Charles V and starring A-lister Adrien Brody. The 64-year-old director of cult 90s film Once Were Warriors…

Fassbender to Film in New Zealand

Fassbender to Film in New Zealand

Michael Fassbender is to shoot his new film, The Light Between Oceans, in New Zealand. Despite being set off the Australian coast, Derek Cianfrance’s big-screen adaptation of ML Stedman’s 2012 novel is to be filmed…

Lucy Lawless to Star in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D

Lucy Lawless to Star in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D

Former Xena: Warrior Princess Lucy Lawless, 46, will join the cast of American television series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D in an unspecified role later this year. According to TV Line, the show is looking to fill…

Kiwi Directs New Katy Perry Video

Kiwi Directs New Katy Perry Video

Joel Kefali has directed music videos for Lorde, The Naked and Famous and David Dallas – but he’s just released his biggest one yet. The Kiwi director is the man behind Katy Perry’s latest video, This…

Revisiting Jane Campion’s Haunting Classic The Piano

Revisiting Jane Campion’s Haunting Classic The Piano

The New Zealand-born director Jane Campion won the 1986 short film Palme d’Or at Cannes with her nine-minute Peel, shared the Palme d’Or for The Piano (with Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine) in 1993,…

Keisha Castle-Hughes Picked for Game of Thrones

Keisha Castle-Hughes Picked for Game of Thrones

Oscar nominee Keisha Castle-Hughes will join the cast of hit HBO fantasy drama Game of Thrones, starring as Obara Sand, Oberyn’s eldest daughter and a fearsome warrior in her own right. In a video of…

Melanie Lynskey Revising Cinematic Female Archetypes

Melanie Lynskey Revising Cinematic Female Archetypes

Melanie Lynskey has built a career on genuine, naturalistic portrayals of women in films like Up in the Air, Win Win, Hello, I Must Be Going, and, at age 16, in the Peter Jackson-directed…

Photographer David Melcalf Travelling Home with Borneo Tribe

Photographer David Melcalf Travelling Home with Borneo Tribe

In the face of threats to Borneo’s cultural history, New Zealand-born photographer David Metcalf is seeking to help reunite the North Kalimantan Kenya Dayak tribe with their ancestral homelands. Environmentalists estimate that over 52 per…

Planet of the Apes Sequel Motion Rapture by Cinematographer Michael Seresin

Planet of the Apes Sequel Motion Rapture by Cinematographer Michael Seresin

Cinematographer Michael Seresin’s recent work on Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes is “stunning, especially when we are following the apes swinging through the trees and across girders,” the Birmingham Mail declares in…

Comic-Con Kicks Off Featuring Strong Kiwi Contingent

Comic-Con Kicks Off Featuring Strong Kiwi Contingent

Comic-Con begins in San Diego today, with the New Zealand representatives ranging from Peter Jackson and the Hobbit producers to a small movie made by an Auckland animation school. The Hobbit will be a major…

Antipodean Superheroes Cross the Bridge onto US Screens

Antipodean Superheroes Cross the Bridge onto US Screens

New Zealand-made television series The Almighty Johnsons, which made its American network premiere this month, is reviewed in the Los Angeles Times and stands out according to Robert Lloyd, for its scenery, its 100…

Luther Creator up for an Emmy

Luther Creator up for an Emmy

Neil Cross, the Wellington-based English screenwriter and novelist figures among the Emmy nominations announced in the United States, up for Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special for the third season of…

From Scotland with Love Narrates a Country’s Heritage

From Scotland with Love Narrates a Country’s Heritage

Compiled from hundreds of hours of archive material, director Virginia Heath’s From Scotland With Love narrates Scottish history and heritage through the lives of everyday people, to a soundtrack by native Kenny Anderson…

Daughter’s Homage to Father Makes US Premiere

Daughter’s Homage to Father Makes US Premiere

Filmmaker Alyx Duncan’s conservationist father is the inspiration for her latest work, a short film mixing puppetry with live action called, The Tide Keeper. The film makes its premiere at the 2014 Palm Springs…

Jackson to Be Honoured with Walk of Fame Star

Jackson to Be Honoured with Walk of Fame Star

Sir Peter Jackson will be immortalised in brass as one of the movie world’s greats with the director set to get his name on a Hollywood Boulevard Walk of Fame star. “Being honoured with a…

Crossing over Entertainment Mediums at Paris Market

Crossing over Entertainment Mediums at Paris Market

Actress and screenwriter Emily Corcoran, the New Zealand-born founder of London-based Cork Film Ltd., is one of a number of film professionals crossing over to the web, and presented transmedia projects at Cross…

Long May the Embassy Theatre Prosper

Long May the Embassy Theatre Prosper

Wellington’s “architecturally indulgent” Embassy Theatre, which was built in 1924 and restored “to its former glories” in 2003, is included in the Guardian’s Cine-files series. Thomas Page of The Guardian describes the Embassy Theatre is the perfect shop…

Neill and Brown Bring Wonderful Wit to Crime Caper

Neill and Brown Bring Wonderful Wit to Crime Caper

Sam Neill, the Irish born New Zealand actor, joins Australian Bryan Brown on television in “classy new crime caper” Old School. The TV drama is described as “a kind of buddy series crossed with hard-nosed…

Must-See for Those after Palpable Taste of Unique Adventure

Must-See for Those after Palpable Taste of Unique Adventure

What sets docudrama Beyond The Edge apart from hundreds of other accounts of Edmund Hillary and Norgay Tenzing’s Mount Everest ascent is the intimate footage of the small group that set off from base…

Star of Petals on the Wind Captivating

Star of Petals on the Wind Captivating

Star of television’s steamy Petals on the Wind, New Zealand actor Rose McIver, who plays Cathy Sheffield, “emerges as a captivating and surprisingly shrewd leading lady”, Variety reviewer Geoff Berkshire writes. “ up 10…

Director Firmly Back in the Game

Director Firmly Back in the Game

As Jane Campion returns to the Riviera chairing the jury at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the Palm d’Or-winning filmmaker tells the Guardian’s Andrew Pulver about surviving as a woman director. Campion was the first…

What It’s Like to Play Every Ethnicity Hollywood Throws Your Way

What It’s Like to Play Every Ethnicity Hollywood Throws Your Way

Over the course of his career, Cliff Curtis, “a Maori from New Zealand”, has played just about every non-white ethnicity: African-American, Arab, Latino, Indian – anything from Pablo Escobar to a lord of the…

Pulp a Fascinating Piece of Work on All Levels

Pulp a Fascinating Piece of Work on All Levels

New Zealand director Florian Habicht’s documentary on British rock band Pulp screens at the Docaviv International Documentary Film Festival in Tel Aviv on from 8-17 May. “Habicht’s portrayal of British rock band Pulp is a…

Cannes Is a Mythical and Exciting Place, Says Campion

Cannes Is a Mythical and Exciting Place, Says Campion

Head of this year’s Cannes jury, Wellington-born director Jane Campion made her name portraying complex, strong-willed female protagonists and knows from first-hand experience that the festival is a place where careers are made. Campion, the…

Julie Rafter Part of the Australian Conscience

Julie Rafter Part of the Australian Conscience

“Vivacious, unpretentious, warm and chatty, Gibney could easily be mistaken for the down-to-earth, caring and protective mother and wife she played on Seven’s popular picket-fence drama Packed to the Rafters, Paul…

Short Western to Screen in Cannes

Short Western to Screen in Cannes

A 15-minute film by Aucklanders Luke Thornborough and Lisa Fothergill, called Jess, will screen at Cannes International Film Festival in the Short Film Corner of the event, in May. Its makers are trying…

Saville and De Lautour Star in Only in HelLA

Saville and De Lautour Star in Only in HelLA

Hit American web series Only in HelLA’s most recent episode, “LA Coffee Shops”, which captured moments in a Los Angeles café, featured New Zealand actors Fleur Saville and David de Lautour. Ironically, the setting…

Lynskey Honoured for Early Mastery of Her Craft

Lynskey Honoured for Early Mastery of Her Craft

New Zealand actress Melanie Lynskey has earned herself an Emerging Master award from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) School of Filmmaking in Winston-Salem, one of the major events of the…

Cooking up a Supervillain in TV Series Arrow

Cooking up a Supervillain in TV Series Arrow

New Zealand-born actor Manu Bennett, 44, has become an overnight sensation starring as Slade Wilson – and his DC Comics’ alter ego Deathstroke – in recently renewed superhero series Arrow. Bennett, who played the Gallic…

Darby’s Sexy Leg Confuses Variety

Darby’s Sexy Leg Confuses Variety

Rhys Darby’s new eight-episode mockumentary Short Poppies is being praised for its “whimsical and winsome” charms ahead of its debut on American screens on Netflix. The LA Times’ Robert Lloyd describes the series as…

Crowe Impressively Grounded as Enigmatic Noah

Crowe Impressively Grounded as Enigmatic Noah

Russell Crowe’s performance in Noah alongside Jennifer Connelly in Darren Aronofsky’s “audacious adaptation of one of the Bible’s best-known but still enigmatic chapters,” is “impressively grounded” and “powerful,” according to Washington Post reviewer Ann…

Star-Studded Everest Film Re-Treks Fatal Expedition

Star-Studded Everest Film Re-Treks Fatal Expedition

The story of Christchurch mountaineer Rob Hall’s tragic 1996 Everest expedition in which he, a fellow guide, and two clients perished, is being made into a film by director Baltasar Kormakur, and will star…

Music Man Reunites with the Muppets

Music Man Reunites with the Muppets

Having worked on the 2011 film The Muppets (winning an Oscar for his soul-searching power ballad Man or Muppet), 37-year-old New Zealander Bret McKenzie was signed up for the follow-up, a crime caper called…

On the Hippie Trail with Lonely Planet’s Founders

On the Hippie Trail with Lonely Planet’s Founders

The journey that spawned publishing empire, Lonely Planet founders Tony and Maureen Wheeler’s trek from London to Australia via the hippy trail in 1972, has taken the first step on a new odyssey –…

Teen Environmental Animation Premiers at US Festival

Teen Environmental Animation Premiers at US Festival

A short film by 16-year-old Nastasha Bishop has had its US premier at the prestigious Environmental Film Festival in Washington DC at the weekend. As the Washington Post notes, the festival is misnamed. These…

Tinkerbell Now Brain-Eating Med Student in Zombie Series

Tinkerbell Now Brain-Eating Med Student in Zombie Series

24 March 2014 – Star of American series Once Upon A Time New Zealander Rose McIver, who played Tinkerbell in the show, has been cast in the lead role of medical student Liv in…

Pulp a Handsome Cinematic Homage to Unique Band

Pulp a Handsome Cinematic Homage to Unique Band

A documentary about Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker directed by New Zealander Florian Habicht (pictured) is a “witty, warmhearted, imaginative documentary about the British farewell hometown show”, says a review in the Hollywood Reporter. “Though…

‘Housebound’ Debuts at SXSW

‘Housebound’ Debuts at SXSW

Is the New Zealand horror-comedy back? At the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, Jermaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s vampire mock doc ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ was one of the strongest in…