Tag Archives: IndieWIRE

Jane Campion Casts Cumberbatch and Moss

Jane Campion Casts Cumberbatch and Moss

After a decade of being absent from the big screen, Academy Award-winner New Zealander Jane Campion is readying her first feature since 2009’s Bright Star. Campion will next direct her own adaptation of Thomas…

What We Do in the Shadows on TV and Note-Perfect

What We Do in the Shadows on TV and Note-Perfect

Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s TV reboot of their vampiric comedy, What We Do in the Shadows is “wonderfully, absurdly over-the-top and hilarious”, according to Hollywood Reporter reviewer Tim Goodman. “There is a point early…

Peter Jackson Brings to Life WWI on The Big Screen

Peter Jackson Brings to Life WWI on The Big Screen

Peter Jackson “is up to his usual ambitious tricks in his latest project, the World War I documentary They Shall Not Grow Old,” writes Zack Sharf in an article for…

Taika Waititi to Play Version of Imaginary Hitler

Taika Waititi to Play Version of Imaginary Hitler

Whenever Fox Searchlight Pictures ends up releasing New Zealander Taika Waititi’s satire Jojo Rabbit, it will give viewers the chance to see a version of Adolf Hitler they most likely never have before. IndieWire…

Jane Campion’s China Girl is Unforgettable

Jane Campion’s China Girl is Unforgettable

“Is it a movie? Is it a TV show? Whatever you call it, Jane Campion’s latest is as beautiful and soul-stirring as anything you’ll see this year,” David Ehrlich writes in a “grade A”…

Frankie Adams the Unfindable Expanse Actress

Frankie Adams the Unfindable Expanse Actress

The men behind adapting the popular Expanse novels to the screen faced a massive challenge in season two – finding the perfect actor to play beloved favourite, Bobbie Draper. And they found her, in…

Top of the Lake – Series With Star Location

Top of the Lake – Series With Star Location

“Across the globe and across generations”, there are stories with “settings as important as any character with dialogue,” according to an article in IndieWire. New Zealand’s Top of the Lake is one…

The Rehearsal Adaptation a Team Effort

The Rehearsal Adaptation a Team Effort

The spirit of collaboration runs deep in Alison Maclean’s The Rehearsal, the Canadian filmmaker’s often ambitious and hearteningly daring big screen adaptation of Man Booker Prize-winning author New Zealander Eleanor Catton’s first novel of…

Rhys Darby Gets Wrecked

Rhys Darby Gets Wrecked

Rhys Darby is keeping busy. When IndieWire got the Aucklander on the phone, he was in Vancouver filming an unspecified role in the upcoming series adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events. It was…

TIFF Exclusive: Bust a Move With This Clip From ‘Born To Dance’

TIFF Exclusive: Bust a Move With This Clip From ‘Born To Dance’

“While Hollywood has got the dance formula down cold, New Zealand actor/filmmaker Tammy Davisis bring(s) his own unique flavor to the genre”, writes Edward Davis for Indiewire. The New Zealand feature film Born To…

Terrific Top of the Lake Returns to Screens

Terrific Top of the Lake Returns to Screens

“Last year came the exciting news that Top Of The Lake, Jane Campion’s terrific TV series, wouldn’t just be a one-off, but would return for a new round of episodes,” Indiewire reports. “Details were…

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….

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…

Season’s Greetings from the Sundance Film Festival

Season’s Greetings from the Sundance Film Festival

New Zealand actress Melanie Lynskey and Up in the Air award-winner Anna Kendrick star in Joe Swanberg’s latest low-budget feature, Happy Christmas, which made its premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival on in…

Talent Embedded in Genes

Talent Embedded in Genes

Up-and-coming actress Alice Englert, 17, the daughter of New Zealand film director Jane Campion (“similar talents seem to be embedded in her genes”), stars in Ginger & Rosa, “an evocative and beautifully shot portrait…

Niccol Adapts Meyer Novel

Niccol Adapts Meyer Novel

New Zealand-born director Andrew Niccol, 48, has adapted Twilight author Stephenie Meyer’s The Host, which stars The Lovely Bones’ actress Saoirse Ronan as Melanie Stryder, one of the last people fighting against an invading…

Caro to Direct Callas

Caro to Direct Callas

Wellington-born film-director Niki Caro will assume writing and directorial duties for Callas, a film about the life of legendary opera star Maria Callas based on Alfonso Signorini’s book Too Proud, Too Fragile, according to…

Blue takes best short in Cannes

Blue takes best short in Cannes

New Zealand short film Blue, made by Aucklander Stephen Kang, has won the Canal Plus’ Grand Prix and Du Meilleur Court Metrage Best Short Film award at the Cannes Film…

Oscar for Kim Sinclair

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…

Short film revolution

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…

East Coast boy in Utah

East Coast boy in Utah

Director Taika Waititi’s film Boy, which premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, “marks a step up in maturity” and “elaborates on a style that primarily belongs to his own unique universe, according…

The world hears our stories

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…

Ludic love

Ludic love

Harry Sinclair film Toy Love applauded in Indiewire: “I love how deftly it hides surprisingly dark themes beneath its very sexy and funny depiction of love and lust. It’s a screwball comedy that’s quite…

Milk magic

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…

Alison Maclean gives

Alison Maclean gives

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…