Film & TV | Atlantic (The) | Huffington Post (The)
21 May 2015
John Maclean’s “compelling” directorial debut Slow West set in Colorado in 1870 was shot in New Zealand and stars Michael Fassbender. South African-born New Zealander Caren Pistorius plays crofter’s daughter, Rose Ross “who even…
Film & TV | NZIFF
18 May 2015
The first five titles of the New Zealand International Film Festival Line-up have been released, which include “a whole raft” of “films emerging from Sundance”.
Umrika, written and directed by Prashant Nair won…
Film & TV | New York Daily News
16 May 2015
Michael Fassbender channels his favourite cowboy Clint Eastwood in his performance in the newly released action western thriller Slow West, which was filmed in New Zealand’s South Island.
While filming in New Zealand Fassbender took…
Film & TV | King5
15 May 2015
“Mad Max Fury Road spends two hours denying audiences the chance to catch their breath. Much of that is thanks to the work of star Tom Hardy and his stunt double, Jacob Tomuri”, proclaims Kim…
Film & TV | Wall Street Journal (The)
14 May 2015
New Zealand director and screenwriter Andrew Niccol’s new film Good Kill explores the post-traumatic stress experienced by drone operating military pilots.
The movie, which is set in 2010, stars Ethan Hawke as Tom Egan, a…
Film & TV | Comic Book Resources | The Hollywood Reporter
9 May 2015
DC Comics/Vertigo-based series iZombie has been renewed by the CW for a second season.
“Scheduling and an episode count have yet to be determined”, according to an article in The Hollywood Reporter.
iZombie stars…
Film & TV | New York Times (The)
9 May 2015
New Zealand actress Keisha Castle-Hughes “made a memorable debut on Sunday’s episode of Game of Thrones – The Sons of the Harpy, according to the New York Times blog ArtsBeat.
Castle-Hughes’ character Obara Sand and…
Film & TV | Toronto Star
6 May 2015
New Zealand-born filmmaker Heath Cozens, 41, saw his first Japanese disabled pro wrestling match in 2010. At the time, he didn’t know what to think.
Cozens, who spent 18 years in Japan as a video…
Film & TV | SBS Australia
1 May 2015
Peter Jackson has taken to Facebook to celebrate the life of Andrew Lesnie – his friend, ‘brother’ and frequent collaborator, who suffered a fatal heart attack this week.
“I grew up wondering what…
Film & TV | Huffington Post (The) | Washington Times (The)
28 April 2015
Growing up a New Zealander-Australian, Russell Crowe, 51, was intimately familiar with the Dardanelles Campaign, a veritable slaughterhouse battle over a tiny Turkish peninsula also known as Gallipoli. In his latest film, The Water…
Film & TV | Mashable
26 April 2015
Sundance TV’s acclaimed drama The Red Road, starring New Zealander Martin Henderson “has gotten off to quite the intense start” in its newly released second season according to tvovermind.com.
In season two “Harold…
Film & TV | Al Arabiya
26 April 2015
WETA Digital has helped to finish current box office hit Fast and Furious 7 after movie star Paul Walker passed away in a car accident halfway through the filming.
Walker’s accident left the directors with…
Film & TV | Woman's Day
23 April 2015
New Zealand actress Keisha Castle-Hughes has joined the Game of Thrones cast in the series’ fifth season, which has just kicked off in the US and New Zealand.
Castle-Hughes is starring as Obara Sand, one…
Film & TV | Guardian (The) | Independent (The)
21 April 2015
Like many of the cast of BBC3’s new supernatural thriller Tatau, Shushila Takao is a New Zealander. She stars alongside British newcomers Joe Layton and Theo Barklem-Biggs as Aumea in the television…
Film & TV | Wall Street Journal (The)
21 April 2015
A documentary about a small troupe of Tokyo wrestlers with disabilities made by New Zealander Heath Cozens will premiere at the Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto on 27 April.
Five years in the making,…
Film & TV | Empire Magazine
17 April 2015
Jemaine Clement is set to star in Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The BFG alongside Penelope Wilton and Rebecca Hall.
“In more than 40 years of making movies, I have been on the producing…
Film & TV | Financial Times
11 April 2015
Nobody wanted to back a film on the subject of drone warfare, according to New Zealand-born director Andrew Niccol, whose drama Good Kill, about that very subject, is on now in UK cinemas.
“We had…
Film & TV | Daily Mail
10 April 2015
True Blood star New Zealander Anna Paquin, 32, is set to return to HBO as Madame X in a new miniseries she is developing with husband Stephen Moyer and Jack Black.
TheWrap reports…
Film & TV | New York Times (The)
9 April 2015
Television channel WGN America has upped the ante by recruiting New Zealander Lucy Lawless, “one of television’s most cult-inspiring actresses”, to join the cast of witchy tale Salem.
The season premiere introduces a character played…
Film & TV | Comic Book Resources
8 April 2015
Hollywood star Dwayne Johnson has officially signed on with Disney to play the male lead in their newest film Moana.
The actor will lend his voice to Maui, the lead male protagonist in the upcoming…
Film & TV | New York Times (The)
2 April 2015
New Zealander Rose McIver, 26, looks awfully alive for someone playing undead, New York Times correspondent Kathryn Shattuck writes. “In iZombie, her new series, she’s a vision of iron deficiency – ghostly pallor,…
Film & TV | LA Times
1 April 2015
AMC has released the first trailer for the upcoming Walking Dead spin-off series Fear the Walking Dead during the 90-minute fifth season finale “Conquer”.
Starring New Zealand actor Cliff Curtis alongside Kim Dickens…
Film & TV | Sydney Morning Herald (The)
31 March 2015
For 30 years, Rotorua-born Ken Rea has been a tutor in London at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, one of the oldest and most sought-after acting schools in the world. Rea’s students…
Film & TV | ScreenCrush | Sundance Film Festival
30 March 2015
Slow West’ first trailer has been released – an indie western which was filmed in New Zealand, which doubled for the wilderness of Colorado, and which premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film…
Film & TV | We Got This Covered
26 March 2015
New Zealand is once again making a name for itself in the horror genre with Deathgasm thanks to Kiwi producer Ant Timpson.
“With a title like Deathgasm, filmmaker Jason Lei Howden could have…
Film & TV | Inside Film
23 March 2015
Actor Simone Kessell is off to Capetown in April to play the first Queen of Egypt in biblical television epic Of Kings and Prophets.
Of Kings and Prophets is the pilot for the US ABC…
Film & TV | New York Post
22 March 2015
The kiwi actress newest project iZombie had a solid debut on The CW Tuesday night, averaging 2.3 million viewers for its 9 p.m. series premiere.
Rose Mc Iver stars in the DC Comics-inspired…
Film & TV | Entertainment Weekly
21 March 2015
Cliff Curtis will star as one of the main characters in The Walking Dead spin-off Cobalt, which will premiere on AMC in late summer.
The New Zealand actor stars as Sean…
Film & TV | Deadline Hollywood
17 March 2015
Kiwi actress Kimberley Crossman has landed a role in U.S. pilot ‘Fantasy Life’ on Fox, which is based on the memoir by one of U.S.’ top fantasy experts, ESPN’s Matthew Berry.
When a hard-working guy,…
Film & TV | Guardian (The)
16 March 2015
From Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures to HBO’s new television show Togetherness, actor Melanie Lynskey reflects on what 20 years – and Charlie Sheen – have taught her about showbusiness.
Jackson’s film introduced not only future…
Film & TV | Moviehole
15 March 2015
Rob Thomas new series ‘iZombie’, starring Kiwi actress Rose McIver, will air in New Zealand on TVNZ on Demand from Thursday, March 19.
The New Zealand native stars as Olivia (Liv), an over-achieving medical resident…
Film & TV | The Record
14 March 2015
“What We Do In the Shadows” is so good, it wouldn’t be so creepy to have these lads rise from the crypt for a sequel”, proclaims Peter Howell, from The Record.com.
Even…
Film & TV | Comic Book Resources
11 March 2015
Lucy Lawless will reunite with her “Xena: Warrior Princess” co-star Bruce Campbell on Starz’s “Ash Vs. Evil Dead”, which begins filming in Lawless’ native New Zealand in April.
She will play Ruby, a…
Film & TV | All Africa
10 March 2015
Hayden Chisolm’s documentary, Sound of Heimat, which follows the New Zealand-born musician as he traverses Germany exploring the country’s folk music, screened in Rwanda at a recent film, photography and dance festival organised by…
Film & TV | San Francisco Chronicle | Variety Magazine
9 March 2015
New Zealander Niki Caro is the director of McFarland, USA, a Disney film based on the true story of a 1987 cross country team from a predominantly Mexican-American high school starring Kevin Costner. McFarland,…
Film & TV | Vancouver Sun (The)
8 March 2015
“New Zealand might be best known for its breathtaking scenery, excellent wines and friendly locals; however, the land of the long white cloud has also earned a stellar reputation as a popular film location”…
Film & TV | Daily Beast | Guardian (The)
3 March 2015
Christchurch-raised James Lucas has won an Oscar in the category Best Live Action Short Film, for his “moving” and “well-deserved” The Phone Call, a star-studded film he co-wrote with friend, Briton Mat Kirkby.
“Previous nominee…
Film & TV | Wall Street Journal (The)
25 February 2015
Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s What We Do in the Shadows, in which vampires mix with a mockumentary crew, is rapturously reviewed by the Wall St Journal’s Joe Morgenstern.
The film, writes Morgenstern, is “a…
Film & TV | Toronto Star
19 February 2015
Being a vampire wasn’t entirely new to Jemaine Clement, co-director and star of What We Do In The Shadows. His first credited role was playing one in a 1995 horror short film called Blood…
Film & TV | Forbes
18 February 2015
“The Hobbit trilogy has been incredibly successful on a domestic and worldwide stage,” Forbes contributor Scott Mendelson writes. “The three-film trilogy cost around US$765m to produce and made US$2.916b worldwide thus far. Yet no…
Film & TV | Hollywood Reporter
16 February 2015
New Line Cinema has picked up the remake rights of New Zealand horror-comedy Housebound, which earned praise from Lord of the Rings filmmaker Peter Jackson.
Gerard Johnstone, who wrote and directed the movie, will produce the remake but…
Film & TV | Deadline Hollywood
13 February 2015
After The Theory Of Everything garnered five Oscar nominations including Best Picture, writer-producer Anthony McCarten has signed a deal to work alongside producer Lisa Bruce and Working Title partners Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan…
Film & TV | EchoNetDaily
12 February 2015
The feature-length Sunday, which has its Australian premiere at the 9th Byron Bay Film Festival, is set in Christchurch a year after the 2011 earthquake, where scenes of damage, poignancy and hope provide a…
Film & TV | Australian (The)
11 February 2015
Auckland-born actor Logie-nominated Danielle Cormack, 44, came to the attention of Australian audiences playing a feisty and imperious solicitor in the ABC drama Rake. The character that followed in Underbelly: Razor was no shrinking…
Film & TV | Canberra Times (The)
10 February 2015
You might not recognise New Zealand actor Stephen Hunter, 46, from one of his biggest film roles without a bushy red beard, a huge, ring-shaped plait of red hair and a lot of bulky…
Film & TV | Salt Lake Tribune (The) | Sundance Film Festival | Variety Magazine
9 February 2015
The Utah filmmakers who begat Napoleon Dynamite made a triumphant return to the Sundance Film Festival with New Zealand actor Jemaine Clement playing opposite American funnyman Sam Rockwell in Don Verdean, a movie about…
Film & TV | Hollywood Reporter
6 February 2015
Jemaine Clement plays the lead role in indie romantic comedy People, Places, Things as penny-pinched New York graphic novelist Will Henry who is struggling upstream with life and the numerous females in his orbit,…
Film & TV | Film Comment
2 February 2015
Film Comment, the magazine of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, has its January/February cover boy a blood-drenched Jemaine Clement from What We Do in the Shadows. Co-written, co-directed and co-starring Clement…
Film & TV | CNTV.com
30 January 2015
Oscar-winning director Peter Jackson was joined by Weta Workshop’s Richard Taylor (pictured far left) in Beijing for the Chinese premiere of the final Hobbit installment on 19 January.
This was Jackson’s final stop on his…
Film & TV | Guardian (The)
24 January 2015
Writer-director Jane Campion’s “mysterious visual style was showcased” in her 1989 film debut Sweetie, a “left field story about the love-hate relationship between two sisters,” the Guardian’s Luke Buckmaster writes.
“Campion has made a career…
Film & TV | Huffington Post (The)
23 January 2015
Among the five Oscar nominations announced for the Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory Of Everything came a nod for New Plymouth-born producer and screenwriter Anthony McCarten. McCarten has been nominated twice as co-producer and…
Film & TV | Screen Daily
19 January 2015
New Zealand-born Marten Rabarts, currently head of development and training at the National Film Development Corporation in India, has been appointed head of EYE International (formerly Holland Film) and will take up…
Film & TV | Salon.com | Slate | Variety Magazine
17 January 2015
It’s hard to pinpoint what is brilliant about new comedy series Togetherness, but a good place to start is its casting of Melanie Lynskey, according to Salon television critic Sonia Saraiya.
“Lynskey is a New…
Film & TV | Esquire Magazine
7 January 2015
The new Hobbit film made US$90 million in its opening weekend, but in an interview with Esquire magazine director Peter Jackson confesses he doesn’t really like the “Hollywood blockbuster bandwagon.”
The third and final installment…
Film & TV | Vulture Hound
5 January 2015
History has always proved a success topic for film, acting as a means of celebration of those lost and those who have made a difference. The new documentary-film Erebus: Into the Unknown does both…
Film & TV | Republic (The)
2 January 2015
New Zealand actor Marton Csokas plays General Thomas Gage in the History Channel miniseries Sons of Liberty, which premieres on 25 January.
Sons of Liberty, a three-part, six-hour series, which was filmed in Romania, tells…