Return To Middle Earth
“In New Zealand, there is a peculiar clarity to the sunlight,” Lonely Plant traveller Alex Von Tunzelmann writes for the BBC. “Highlights blaze; shadows are cast very, very dark. The effect makes the grass…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Bevan’s Gold Win
Queenstown-born film producer Tim Bevan (standing left in picture) took the stage with fellow cast and crew at the 70th Golden Globes Awards for Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy for Les Misérables. The…
Tackling Teen Angst
New Zealand director Andrew Niccol’s film The Host is one of several films to be released over the next three months targeting “voracious” teen movie goers. In his quest to adapt Stephenie…
On The Run And Insanely Hot
Taking a page from Strike Back, the new series Banshee also stars an insanely hot foreigner who sounds more American than she does, according to New York Post television critic Linda Stasi, who writes…
Fun-Loving MP Lit Our Screens
As New Zealanders gathered around their black and white sets to experience the miracle of television for the first time the face many of them will have seen staring back at them was that…
Fresh HBO Role For Starr
New Zealand actor Antony Starr, 37, who played twins Van and Jethro West in Outrageous Fortune, has a role in the new HBO/Cinemax action-drama series Banshee, produced by Alan Ball of True…
Our Dark Side
Jane Campion’s seven-part miniseries Top of the Lake, which was shot in and around Queenstown, premieres on the Sundance Channel in the United States on 18 March. “It’s the most comprehensive documentation of modern…
Role Of The Year
New Zealand actress Melanie Lynskey’s role as depressed twentysomething divorcée in Hello I Must Be Going is one of Paste magazine’s ‘25 Best Movie Performances of 2012’. “Most recognizable for her recurring role on…
Surprise Involvement
When the premiere of West of Memphis was first announced for the Sundance Film Festival this year, the participation of Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings filmmaker Peter Jackson was something of a surprise, not…
Look At That
Auckland-born Academy Award-nominated director Andrew Adamson – of Shrek and The Chronicles of Narnia fame – returns to the realm of the fantastic with Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away, a film that captures eye-popping…
Bond Gets Nastier
Researchers from the University of Otago have analysed 22 James Bond films and discovered that violent acts in the films have more than doubled since Dr No in 1962. In the first 007 film,…
Lord of the Rings was Perfect
“The Lord of the Rings was the work of a filmmaker perfectly in tune with his source material. Its too-muchness — the encyclopedic detail, the pseudoscholarly exposition, the soaring allegory, the punishing length —…
Discerning Types
Melanie Lynskey, 35, is one of ten Indie actors on the verge of mainstream, according to Loren DiBlasi writing for Highbrow Magazine. “In 1994, the New Zealand native won raves for her performance alongside…
Improvising Love In NY
New Zealand filmmaker Florian Habicht, 30, lets the people direct his tale of romance in the Big Apple. In New York he fell in love every few minutes, Habicht says. “Like with life, with…
Boyens’ Cinematic Adventure
Asked one day in 1997 if, as a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien, she might have any interest in helping out friends and fellow New Zealanders Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh adapt The Lord of…
Jackson Our Resident Wonka
“With his first of three Hobbit films, An Unexpected Journey, Peter Jackson daringly attempts the same manoeuvre , aspiring to capture the essence of his…
Banking on Dancing Colours
Christchurch-born Len Lye’s “deliriously jazzy 1930s animation for the Post Office Savings Bank shows public information films needn’t be dull,” Judith Mackrell writes for the Guardian. “The colours might look late-60s-psychedelic; some of the…
Fans Flock to Spot the Stars
One hundred thousand Hobbit fans descended on Wellington’s Courtenay Place to catch a glimpse of their favourite Tolkien character strutting the 500m-long red carpet ahead of the world premiere first installment of the trilogy,…
New Zealand: ‘It really is Paradise’ Says Bollywood’s Vidya Balan
Vidya Balan, one of Bollywood’s biggest superstars, rates New Zealand as her favourite place. She spoke to Filmfare, India’s leading film magazine, about her trip and shared some of her New Zealand photos with…
We, Family
New Zealand-born director Barnaby Southcombe, 40, has cast his mother, English actress Charlotte Rampling, 66, in the title role of his latest film, I, Anna. The adapted screenplay was written by Southcombe based on…
Directing the Big Guns
Wellington-born director Andrew Dominik, 45, who has lived in Australia most of his life, said it took 45 minutes via text message to hammer out a deal with Brad Pitt to produce their latest…
Filmmakers Galore
When it comes to supporting fledgling filmmakers, part of New Zealand’s challenge is the sheer number of them. Inspired by Peter Jackson’s success, young people are swarming film schools here. Weta Digital itself is…
Doctor Turned Astronaut
New Zealand actor Martin Henderson, 38, has been cast as the lead in a new NBC soap thriller from executive producer Jerry Bruckheimer, The Secret Lives of Husbands and Wives. “Henderson will play Kyle…
Universal Appeal
New Zealand children’s film Kiwi Flyer has won the Audience Award at the Schlingel – 18th International Film Festival for Children and Young Audience held in in Chemnitz, Germany. Tony Simpson, director…
Unexpected Welcome
Over the next few months at Wellington Airport, a giant 13m Gollum diving for 4m fish, will welcome visitors to ‘the middle of Middle Earth’. Designed by Weta Workshop, and built by Japanese artist…
Jackson’s Empire Five
“There’s a new Jackson Five in town,” Empire magazine says. “The December issue of Empire five gorgeous 3D lenticular covers to celebrate The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.” “Your choices are; Galadriel (Cate Blanchett),…
What’s Not to Like
Raised in the North Island town of Ruawai, Sydney-based actor Roy Billing, 65, lives with his New Zealand wife Linda Tizard, a former entertainment industry executive, in the suburb of Coogee. Coogee, Billing says,…
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…
Back to His Roots Playing Cop
Sam Neill plays Belfast police chief C.I. Campbell in new BBC gangster drama, Peaky Blinders, which is currently shooting in Birmingham, Leeds and Liverpool. While Neill is one of the more well-known New Zealand…
Master of All Surveyed
“Watching on a monitor, tucked out of sight , is Peter Jackson, the magician of Middle Earth,” Kim Masters writes for The Hollywood Reporter. “He had to overcome many…
Middle Earth Mania
The country’s national tourism slogan “100% Pure New Zealand” has become “100% Middle-earth”, and in the days leading up to the premiere of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Wellington will be…
Discovering Sounds of Home
New Plymouth-born saxophonist and composer Hayden Chisholm, 37, toured Germany to learn about its rich folk music tradition – and why the Germans have a problem with it. His back-to-the-roots journey was captured in…
Inside His Head
New Zealand-raised filmmaker and host of online show Inside Horror Elric Kane, who currently lives in Los Angeles, talks to Werewolf editor Gordon Campbell about the show and all things horror-fic. “The first…
Minting Hobbits
New Zealand Post is minting coins and printing stamps featuring characters from Middle-earth to commemorate the upcoming film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The coins feature Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf the Grey, dwarf king Thorin…
Big and Small Comparisons
In an appearance at the Mipcom conference in Cannes, New Zealand director Jane Campion explained that she was attracted by the creative freedom in television, in comparison to film. Campion was at Mipcom to…
Is This Place for Real?
“The hill is perfect – steep, shaggy and as green as a radioactive shamrock, like the matching hills around it,” The New York Times describes. “The sheep seem pretty idyllic themselves: polite little nibblers who only…
Jackson a Digital Mandarin
Director Peter Jackson, 50, features at No. 22 on Vanity Fair’s 2012 ‘The Powers that Be’ List, which names the “top 25 mandarins” in the digital world. “A decade removed from his $3 billion Lord…
Call It an Evocative Scowl
Joe Dredd, played by New Zealand actor Karl Urban, 40, “is meant to be the most fearsome judge – but we don’t get to see many more of his kind around,” USA Today’s Claudia Puig writes…
Talking of The Small Screen
Palme d’Or and Oscar-winning New Zealand director Jane Campion will attend the international television market MIPCOM next month in Cannes, France to talk about her first small-screen foray, the new series Top of the Lake….
Work in Progress
West of Memphis was produced by the Oscar-winning team of Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, who enlisted filmmaker Amy Berg, herself an Oscar nominee for the documentary Deliver Us From Evil, to make their own film…
Mister Pip Premieres
New Zealand-born writer-director Adam Adamson’s film adaption of Lloyd Jones’ prize-winning novel Mister Pip, starring Hugh Laurie, has premiered at the Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto as part of the city’s annual film festival. Laurie…
How Good an Actress She Is
New Zealand actress Melanie Lynskey is the “highlight” of Hello I Must Be Going writes Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan, who says she “shines as the film’s focus.” “If you…
Now at Centre Stage
The other half of the Heavenly Creatures duo, Melanie Lynskey, 35, has been working consistently in Los Angeles for a decade. Lynskey is perhaps most well-known in America for having appeared in more than…
Snapping Up the Roles
Former Wellingtonian actress Chelsie Preston Crayford, 25, says her career move to Sydney was not about culture or leaving for a bigger city. In fact, given the choice, she would live back in the…
Settling the Score
“Jane locked me in a hotel room with a piano and said she wouldn’t let me out until I’d finished,” British composer Michael Nyman, explains to the Guardian about his task to complete…
New Zealand a Place of Healing
West of Memphis, produced by Peter Jackson and directed by American filmmaker Amy Berg, has had its premiere in Wellington as part of the New Zealand International Film Festival. The…
Pounui Cameron’s New Pandora
“It was ultimately New Zealand’s contemporary film culture that persuaded James Cameron to shift his work life, in stages, toward the Southern Hemisphere,” Pete Nikolaison writes for The New York Times. “New…
Raising the Frame Rate
“Peter Jackson raised the bar for fantasy popularity 11 years ago with the first of three Lord of the Rings films,” Brian Truitt reports for USA Today. “With his latest J.R.R Tolkien adaptation, he…
Now to the Cutting Room
Two of Hollywood’s most anticipated — and most expensive — forthcoming movies have wrapped production in New Zealand. Shot together, a pair of films based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic fantasy book The Hobbit have…
This Brother to Memorialise
Former champion rower Rob Hamill’s film Brother Number One, which tells the story of his brother Kerry Hamill and two friends killed in Cambodia after accidentally sailing there in 1978, was among…
Saving the Arctic at all Costs
New Zealand-born actress Lucy Lawless, who was recently in Rio de Janeiro to launch Greenpeace’s Save the Arctic campaign alongside Sir Richard Branson, talks to the Guardian’s Susanna Rustin about her latest…
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…
On Shortlist for Dream Win
Outrageous Fortune actor Tammy Davis’ short film Ebony Society has been picked as a semi-finalist for the first international Your Film Festival. The competition is described as a global hunt to find…
Wellington Hosts Hobbit
The world premiere of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will take place at Wellington’s Embassy Theatre on 28 November two weeks ahead of the film’s release on 14 December. Based…
Hall’s Racy Debut Feature
New Zealander Regan Hall is the director and producer of Fast Girls, a new film about the UK athletics team. Directing his first feature film, Hall was determined to find young actresses…
Shakespeare Goes Camping
New Zealand-shot film Romeo and Juliet: A Love Song, directed by Tim van Dammen, is showing at Cannes, “asking buyers ‘where art thou?’ in the Marche du Film.” Van Dammen’s version promises trashy trailer…
