News of New Zealanders via Global Media

FBI role for Curtis

FBI role for Curtis

Actor Cliff Curtis, 42, takes on the role of a top forensic consultant for the FBI in the ABC Dana Delany-led midseason drama Body of Proof. Rotorua-born Curtis — who also appeared as flight…

In the whanau

In the whanau

Producers of smash hit film Boy Ainsley Gardiner and Cliff Curtis took the independent producers of the year kudo at the New Zealand’s Screen Production and Development Agency conference in November. The cousins…

Conchord revival

Conchord revival

The Flight of the Conchords are in discussion to bring a live version of the cult television series to Australia and New Zealand next year. US comedian Arj Barker, who plays the philosophising stoner…

There is such a thing

There is such a thing

New Zealand dairy company Fonterra has created a new yoghurt tailored for men, filled with fruit, seeds, grains and barley, under the brand name Mammoth Supply Co. Its marketing plays on social stereotypes of…

And How Beautiful

And How Beautiful

“One stunning image outdoes another in the hurtling, circling, swooping cinematography of Ben Seresin, a New Zealander whose palette is restrained but never suppressed,” the Wall Street Journal’s Joe Morgenstern writes in a review…

Leading the race

Leading the race

Actor Grant Bowler, 42, has been named host of the globetrotting reality television show, The Amazing Race Australia. Auckland-born Bowler has had a big year in film and television, working on projects such as…

For the working man

For the working man

DB Breweries is celebrating its 5th anniversary of beer DB Export launching a 9-second black-and-white commercial, developed by Feedthewalrus editor Adam Jenkins via Colenso BBDO. “ tells the true story: in the…

Tasmanian tiger hunt

Tasmanian tiger hunt

Actor Sam Neill stars alongside Willem Dafoe and Frances O’Connor in the Australian psychological thriller The Hunter which began production in Tasmania in late October. The Daniel Nettheim-directed film, based on the book by…

Hobbit gets greenlighted

Hobbit gets greenlighted

Film industry labour issues between actors and producers were among the elements that triggered a month long crisis in Peter Jackson’s production of The Hobbit, solved only by the intervention of the Government which…

Urban takes lessons

Urban takes lessons

“Like it or not, I’ve become a global citizen,” Auckland actor Karl Urban tells The Kansas City Star. “The challenge is to maintain your cultural identity, especially back in your home country, where it’s…

Seeing some girls

Seeing some girls

Lord of the Rings stars Sean Astin, Dominic Monaghan, and Elijah Wood discuss their time spent in New Zealand working on the trilogy 11 years ago with Entertainment Weekly. Here they are, in a…

Unmistakable humour

Unmistakable humour

Comedian Rhys Darby, 36, has an “unmistakable” voice, retaining his “thick New Zealand accent despite increasingly frequent roles in Hollywood films,” The Sydney Morning Herald’s Kylie Northover writes in a profile headed, ‘Darby acts…

Urban takes on Willis

Urban takes on Willis

Actor Karl Urban, 38, plays the role of a CIA agent in the movie Red, which is based on the comic book limited series of the same name and which was released this month…

Edgy roots an asset

Edgy roots an asset

Actor Karl Urban, 38, is happy to commute between Auckland and Los Angeles saying that his New Zealand roots are proving to be an asset to his craft. Unlike Hollywood-based actors, those from Australia…

Apprentice Acumen

Apprentice Acumen

Paloma Vivanco-Coutts, 29, is the first New Zealander to appear on reality television show The Apprentice UK. Peruvian-born Vivanco-Coutts has been living in London since 2006. She recently married a New Zealander and is…

On the Small Screen

On the Small Screen

Filmmaker Jane Campion has been commissioned by the BBC to work on a television series thriller set in New Zealand called Top of the Lake. The series will follow the disappearance of a five…

Cool but not too cool

Cool but not too cool

The Flight of the Conchords appeared as camp counsellors in the premiere episode of season 22 of The Simpsons which went to air in the US in September. In the episode, titled…

Calling All Hobbits

Calling All Hobbits

An advertisement in Wellington’s Dominion Post has called for diminutive actors to audition for the parts of Middle Earth hobbits in Peter Jackson’s prequel to the Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy. Roles for…

Talk like a vampire

Talk like a vampire

New Zealand-raised actress Anna Paquin and British husband Stephen Moyer worked with Los Angeles dialect coach Liz Himelstein to get their accents right for True Blood. Their speech is nothing like wide-eyed Southern waitress…

Special mention

Special mention

Actress Melanie Lynskey, 33, gets a special mention in a Tulsa World review of director Tim Blake Nelson’s black comedy Leaves of Grass. New Plymouth-born Lynskey plays Colleen opposite star Edward Norton, who plays…

Not quite themselves

Not quite themselves

Flight of the Conchords’ stars Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie will make a guest appearance on hit show The Simpsons in the first episode of the new season, Elementary School Musical, to be broadcast…

Homecoming King

Homecoming King

2,500 fans took part in a “low-key” ceremony to honour Peter Jackson and fellow Oscar winners at the Wellington Events Centre. Jackson and co each received a glass goblet to add to their already…

“Urban Cowboy”

“Urban Cowboy”

Leading NZ actor Karl Urban makes Nylon‘s list of “those most likely to succeed.” The interview reveals a lifelong passion for film and theatre, from amateur play-writing (at age 8) to a string of…

Weta Puts Out Feelers

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…

In the footsteps of Frodo

In the footsteps of Frodo

The inevitable spate of Rings-related travel articles continues, with major features in the Scotsman and New York Times. The Scotsman writer – who walked the Tongariro Crossing and Routeburn Track, and sailed Milford …

Good Morning USA From NZ

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….

Kiwis of tomorrow

Kiwis of tomorrow

The prestigious Locarno Film Festival (Switzerland) dedicated its short film section – “Leopards of Tomorrow” – to NZ  and Australian film-makers. 8 NZ short films were accepted for competition; Cow, The French…

“I’m from New Zealand, I only know about rugby.”

“I’m from New Zealand, I only know about rugby.”

Andrew Adamson, NZ co-creative behind hit movie Shrek, is reportedly confused by the green ogre’s latest claim to fame – as unofficial mascot of the New York Jets. Adamson: “are the Jets baseball or…

Angela Dotchin is the boss-fox

Angela Dotchin is the boss-fox

British secret agent / scientist with whom he’s partnered — did someone say “prickly”? Review of Sam Raimi (Evil Dead, Hercules) produced new TV show Jack of All Trades.

Alison Maclean In Time Out New York’s “We Told You So” List

Alison Maclean In Time Out New York’s “We Told You So” List

20 to watch in 2000: “Film’s drug-subculture genre has been pretty played out lately – really, how many times can you watch an artfully mussed stud or starlet shoot up on screen? But director Alison…

Sam Neill Brings Thomas Jefferson to Life

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.” (5February 2)

Urban shark attack

Urban shark attack

New Zealand filmmakers Andrew Todd and Johnny Hall are making a horror film inspired by a road trip which took them through the town of Oamaru. They describe the moment: “We passed through…

Clement’s Double Life

Clement’s Double Life

“One of the reasons I went into comedy and acting was that I was sick of being shy,” Flight of the Conchords star Jemaine Clement tells the Guardian’s Killian Fox. “I guess I have…

Gore filled retribution

Gore filled retribution

A supernatural horror film made by New Zealand director David Blyth made its European premiere at this year’s Fright Fest in London. “A controversial cult film in the making, Wound, explores the wicked…

Reassuring the fans

Reassuring the fans

Academy Award-winning director Peter Jackson is optimistic The Hobbit will still go ahead “sometime soon” and that Warners was “making progress untangling the MGM situation”. In an interview with the Dominion Post, Jackson…

Ever the cameraman

Ever the cameraman

Christchurch-raised film instructor Ian McIver, currently an adjunct instructor at Solano Community College and Napa Valley College in California, is leading a 12-class film discussion series at the Cameo Cinema in St Helena. The…

Celebrating clumsiness

Celebrating clumsiness

“Maori get pigeonholed into the idea they’re spiritual and telling stories like Whale Rider and Once were Warriors, quite serious stuff, but we’re pretty funny people and we never really have had an opportunity…

Fascinating portrait

Fascinating portrait

South Auckland-set film Matariki, directed by Reefton-born Michael Bennett, has been selected to screen at the opening weekend of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in the Contemporary World Cinema section on September 11….

Laughing at the edge

Laughing at the edge

Director Taika Waititi says the humour in Boy is both colonial-outpost and self-deprecating Maori humour. “You’ve just got to laugh at awkward, crazy, painful stuff when you’ve been banished to the nether regions of…

Undead and on cover

Undead and on cover

True Blood star New Zealand-born actress Anna Paquin, 28, who plays waitress Sookie Stackhouse in the hit show, features on the latest issue of Rolling Stone, bloodied and naked in the arms of co-stars,…

Woolly takeover

Woolly takeover

Sheep have replaced hobbits at The Shire in Matamata. The rolling green pastures and hobbit houses that provided the backdrop for director Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy were originally going to be…

Young star shines

Young star shines

With director Taika Waititi’s film Boy opening throughout Australia on August 26, The Age talks to 11-year-old lead James Rolleston about his first ever acting gig. Waititi had already chosen a lead for Boy,…

Recalling Rousseau

Recalling Rousseau

New Zealand-made documentary This Way of Life is a “gloriously photographed film” — “a story of a Maori family catapulted beyond mere portraiture and into a realm of metaphysics, melancholia and cosmic doubt”, writes…

Fighting the Demons

Fighting the Demons

Principal photography has begun in Wellington on World War II horror film, The Devil’s Rock, award-winning director Paul Campion’s debut feature film. Academy Award-winning Weta Workshop (Avatar, District 9, Lord of the Rings, King…

Following Frodo

Following Frodo

Fiordland’s Routeburn track may attract significantly fewer visitors to it than the Milford Sounds, but the “majestic, snowcapped peaks in every direction, along with waterfalls and hidden tarns” are well worth the hike says…

First-rate funny man

First-rate funny man

Wellington actor Jemaine Clement, 36, “steals every scene he’s in” in the Steve Carrell comedy Dinner for Schmucks, according to Peninsula Clarion reviewer Chris Jenness. Clement, who plays a narcissistic artist with an animal…

Wartimes’ yarns touching

Wartimes’ yarns touching

The Gaylene Preston-directed film Home by Christmas is a “touching memoir” based on interviews which Preston “conducted with her now-deceased father” and “not only re-creates those conversations and their evocation of wartime yarns, but…

Judgement day

Judgement day

Wellington-born actor Karl Urban, 38, who played Dr Leonard “Bones” McCoy in last year’s Star Trek, will soon play the sci-fi law enforcer Judge Dredd. “Yes, there is a lot of truth to that…

Zest for News

Zest for News

BBC current affairs TV producer and executive New Zealand-born Janine Thomason has died aged 63. She was born to Lesley and Jack, her father being director of marketing and technical support at the New…

Fortune Offshore

Fortune Offshore

With local favourite Outrageous Fortune beginning its sixth and final season of 18 episodes this month, its popularity has spread offshore, with the show sold to networks in England, Ireland, Italy, Canada, Australia, Slovenia…

Gong for West trailer

Gong for West trailer

The New Zealand Book Council’s two-minute stop-motion animated trailer for Whakatane-born Maurice Gee’s 1993 novel Going West has won the Best Big Budget/Big Book House Trailer in the inaugural Moby Awards held by…

Geared-up for Top Show

Geared-up for Top Show

The story of Hulme Supercars, the company behind the Hulme Can-Am, will feature on cult UK motoring show Top Gear, with the show expected to screen in August or September. Hulme managing director Jock…

Formidable Kicks

Formidable Kicks

Two surfing legends are taking on New Zealand’s most rugged waves off the coast of Fiordland for an episode of the Discovery Channel series Storm Surfers. The Storm Surfers’ — Australians Tom Carroll and…

America’s teen idol

America’s teen idol

True Blood star New Zealander Anna Paquin, 27, has been nominated for a Teen Choice award. The competition is run by American TV network Fox and recognises teen idols across the high-profile fields of…

Boy it’s popular

Boy it’s popular

The hit film Boy, directed by Taika Waititi, is reviewed by Hao Ying for the Chinese publication Global Times who writes that the “laughs are frequent and uncontrived”. The film, which has now earned…

Developing film ties

Developing film ties

New Zealand and China have further strengthened their relations with a film agreement to host more Chinese-produced films in New Zealand. The agreement, made between the two nations in Shanghai and led by a…