News of New Zealanders via Global Media

On Set with One Beautiful Caster

On Set with One Beautiful Caster

New Zealand-born actress Alice Englert, the daughter of Academy Award-winning film director Jane Campion, stars in Warner Bros.’ supernatural thriller Beautiful Creatures, a film adapted from the first book of the Caster Chronicles series,…

Diversity Under the Gold Coast Sun

Diversity Under the Gold Coast Sun

Controversial New Zealand reality television show The GC, about young Maori living on Australia’s Gold Coast, has prompted comparisons to America’s Jersey Shore, and heated debate about whether the show was seen as a…

International Success Story

International Success Story

New Zealand filmmaker Anna Cottrell has been filming the story of Ethiopian refugee Terefe Ejigu since he was 16, when newly enrolled at Wellington College he began running. Ejigu’s talent as a runner was…

Short Sequence, Sharp Response

Short Sequence, Sharp Response

A 10-minute sequence from Peter Jackson’s forthcoming two-part Lord of the Rings prequel The Hobbit has been shown to conference goers at the annual CinemaCon in Las Vegas. The conference featured a presentation from…

New American Sci-fi Role

New American Sci-fi Role

Oscar-nominated actress Keisha Castle-Hughes, 22, who starred in Niki Caro’s smash hit film Whale Rider, takes the role of Priya in an American sci-fi pilot called Rewind. Castle-Hughes will play a “behavioral anthropologist who…

Big Screen, Big Bucks

Big Screen, Big Bucks

The local screen industry contributed $3 billion in gross revenues to the New Zealand economy in 2011, an increase of 4 per cent over 2010, fueled by a boost in feature film production, according…

Lye’s primitive symptoms

Lye’s primitive symptoms

Animation film Tuslava (1929), created by Christchurch-born artist Len Lye, is part of a an exhibition entitled ‘Animism’ on from 26 April through 28 July at Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt. The exhibition examines the…

Intense Appreciation

Intense Appreciation

New Zealand filmmaker and artist Vincent Ward’s multimedia exhibition “Breath: The Fleeting Intensity of Life” is drawing attention from China. “During the Govett-Brewster exhibition, we had a professor of art from the…

Up and Coming in Los Angeles

Up and Coming in Los Angeles

Auckland-born Celine Wallace is rapidly gaining notoriety as an up and coming actress in Los Angeles, where she performs regularly at The Ruskin Group Theatre in Santa Monica as part of the LA Café…

Benefits Of Filming On The Cheap

Benefits Of Filming On The Cheap

Director of Western Good for Nothing, New Zealander Mike Wallis, discusses the benefits of making a film with little money in The Huffington Post’s column ‘The Blog’. “With a limited amount of funds to…

Attention-Seeking TV Role

Attention-Seeking TV Role

Fourteen-year-old Porirua actress Stefania Owen will play Dorrit, Carrie Bradshaw’s younger rebellious sister in The Carrie Diaries, the prequel of the iconic television series Sex and the City. Set in the 1980s, the show will follow…

Memorable Boy Grows On You

Memorable Boy Grows On You

“Next year’s Oscars, if they were to include the just-for-fun idea of outstanding performance by a setting, should have a nominee in Boy,” The New York Times movie critic David DeWitt expounds. “This movie from New Zealand,…

Shooting Vampires In NZ

Shooting Vampires In NZ

New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi — whose 2010 film Boy was recently released in the United States — talks to Rotten Tomatoes about his five favourite films and his upcoming vampire movie plans with Flight of…

NZ Film for Manila Filmgoers

NZ Film for Manila Filmgoers

“While New Zealand may primarily be known as the setting of the Lord of the Rings franchise and having tons of sheep, one look at the lineup of the first-ever New Zealand Film Festival is enough…

Unfinished Business

Unfinished Business

Ahead of the “highly anticipated” sequel to Sione’s Wedding, actor Robbie Magasiva, 40, is in Sydney for a Q & A at the Liverpool Event Cinemas to promote Sione’s 2: Unfinished Business. The latest instalment is…

Up to No Good in the Caitlins

Up to No Good in the Caitlins

Flight of the Conchord Bret McKenzie and Australian comedian Hamish Blake star in a screwball manslaughter comedy who end up on the road trip of their lives in the feature film Two Little Boys,…

More Tintin Adventures

More Tintin Adventures

Peter Jackson will direct the second film in the planned Tintin trilogy, following the success of the first film in the series, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. Director Steven Spielberg said…

Talented Teen Enchants

Talented Teen Enchants

Director Pietra Brettkelly’s documentary Maori Boy Genius, which premiered at this month’s Berlinale, tracks 16-year-old Tuhoe prodigy Ngaa Rauuira Pumanawawhiti as he attends summer school at Yale and applies to study there full-time. “Ngaa carries…

Beats Picking Tomatoes

Beats Picking Tomatoes

Wellington-based filmmaker Tusi Tumasese, 35, director of Oscar-nominated feature The Orator, explains to The West Australian why he left Samoa at the age of 18. “My mum sent me over to New Zealand because I was getting…

It’s Gone To His Head

It’s Gone To His Head

Bret McKenzie celebrated his Oscar nomination for best song with some Vegemite and toast. McKenzie, who wrote the meta-power ballad ‘Man or Muppet’ for The Muppets, is up against ‘Real in Rio’ from Rio: The Movie,…

Lucretia Is Back For More

Lucretia Is Back For More

Auckland-born actress Lucy Lawless, 43, returns to the American small screen as Lucretia in Spartacus: Vengeance, and the writers were “really rude” to her this season she says. “They were really rude. Usually, they are…

Documenting Innocence

Documenting Innocence

Director Peter Jackson believes former Death Row inmate Damien Echols would be dead now if not for 1996 documentary, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, that cast doubt on the man’s guilt…

Good For American Cinemas

Good For American Cinemas

Dunedin director Mike Wallis’ budget western Good for Nothing will become the first self-funded New Zealand film to be released in United States cinemas from next month. Wallis used the landscapes of Central Otago…

With A Cryptic Brusqueness

With A Cryptic Brusqueness

New Zealand actor Sam Neill, 64, stars in Lost creator J. J. Abrams’ drama series Alcatraz, which premiered on American channel Fox this month. “The premise: The orderly closing of the prison on Alcatraz in 1963 was…

Lads On Film Make Festival

Lads On Film Make Festival

Duncan Sarkies’ film Two Little Boys, featuring Bret McKenzie and Australian actor Hamish Blake, will premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, screening in the Generation section, in February. The film is described as an irreverent…

Critic’s Choose McKenzie

Critic’s Choose McKenzie

Wellington-born comedian Bret McKenzie, 35, has trumped Elton John and Mary J. Blige to win the Critics’ Choice best song award for ‘Life’s a Happy Song’, which he penned for the recently-released The Muppets movie as…

Real Life Evil On Wheels

Real Life Evil On Wheels

The other half of comedy duo Flight of the Conchords Jemaine Clement’s “delightfully bizarre taste in costumes carries on,” Huffington Post correspondent Jordan Zakarin writes, describing Clement’s latest get-up for his role as the evil Boris…

Auckland’s Movie Coup

Auckland’s Movie Coup

Filming begins in Auckland on Hollywood blockbuster, WWII political-thriller Emperor this month at Henderson’s Auckland Film Studios. Lost heartthrob Matthew Fox, 45, stars. Inspired by true events, Emperor is an epic story of love and understanding set amidst the uncertainties…

Time Is Really Money

Time Is Really Money

Kapiti-born screenwriter, producer, and director Andrew Niccol’s latest blockbuster In Time, “a fiendishly clever sci-fi concept,” starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried, is reviewed in the Cyprus Mail. “The setting’s the thing, a world where time…

Memorable In Margaret

Memorable In Margaret

New Zealand-raised True Blood star Anna Paquin, 29, graced the cover of LA Weekly’s Winter Film Issue, which named Margaret — Paquin plays the lead as teenager Lisa — as the best film of the year. The film was shot…

Oddball Wins Over Director

Oddball Wins Over Director

The Peter Jackson-produced and Steven Spielberg-directed 3-D performance-capture film The Adventures of Tintin opens in the United States this week just ahead of the film’s New Zealand release. The Adventures of Tintin arrives in the US as…

Grass-Roots Campaigning

Grass-Roots Campaigning

Bret McKenzie is in Utah, where he’s “picked up some sort of Mormon cold” while filming a scene with a foal for Austenland: he delivers a foal. “We shot it in England this summer, and…

Weta Leads The Charge

Weta Leads The Charge

“Wellington: once you come, you stay,” Crave Online’s Grae Drake is told on a visit to Weta Digital. “This is both a threat and a promise, uttered by the geniuses employed at Weta. The…

Muppets Made Malevolent

Muppets Made Malevolent

Peter Jackson’s Meet the Feebles is “a hilariously offensive film,” the Muppet’s exact reverse,” writes New York Times’ blogger Lia Miller. “As I began researching this article,” Miller writes, “I was reminded of the most fantastically warped Muppet-style…

Cranking Out A Conchords Film

Cranking Out A Conchords Film

Bret McKenzie has said he has hopes for a film version of his and Jemaine Clement’s hit television show Flight of the Conchords. “We’re going to try and do a movie,” McKenzie said at The Muppets premiere…

Unique Island Perspective

Unique Island Perspective

New Zealand’s first-ever entry in the foreign-language Oscar race, Samoan-born director Tusi Tamasese’s debut feature The Orator is being hailed as a brave new voice in world cinema. Orator is pioneering in more ways than that:…

Jackson’s Effect

Jackson’s Effect

New Zealand filmmaking is at an all-time high thanks to Lord of the Rings’ director Peter Jackson who, 12 years ago, boosted the country’s Hollywood stock The Hollywood Reporter’s Pip Bulbeck writes. Jackson — who also appeared on…

Composing For Kermit

Composing For Kermit

Wellingtonian Bret McKenzie has applied “his rare talents to a sacred” and “daunting” “Muppets-related endeavour” writing three songs for the forthcoming movie The Muppets. The New York Times’ cultural editor Adam Sternbergh writes for the publication’s magazine:…

True Technie Tonic

True Technie Tonic

“Geeks will love the stereoscopic cameras and 3D methods” on Peter Jackson’s fourth video blog and “most people wouldn’t care if it was shot on a hand-held,” according to Guardian film blogger Ben Child….

Campion Directs Madmen Star

Campion Directs Madmen Star

Wellington-born film director Jane Campion has written and will direct a Sundance Channel seven-part miniseries starring Madmen actress Elisabeth Moss, called Top of the Lake. Campion wrote the script with Gerard Lee of Sweetie…

Marriage Made in LA

Marriage Made in LA

New Zealand-born actor Nico Evers-Swindell’s marriage to American actor Megan Ferguson, 28, featured in The New York Times’ ‘Weddings/ Celebrations’ column in October. The pair were married in Los Angeles. Evers-Swindell, 32, played Prince…

Capital Hobbit Premiere

Capital Hobbit Premiere

Wellington will be the site of the world premiere for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in November 2012. “I think Warner Bros. in particular were blown away by Return…

Investigation for a Pardon

Investigation for a Pardon

Movie director Peter Jackson has told media that he was working with high-profile former American death row inmate Damien Echols in hopes of getting the man a complete pardon. Echols was part of a…

Good Kids Making Bad Choices

Good Kids Making Bad Choices

A New Zealand Transport Authority advertisement, created by Clemenger BBDO Wellington, is using humour to get the drink-driving message across to its young audience. Rather than rely on the shock tactics and graphic images…

On a Whizz-Bang Thrill Ride

On a Whizz-Bang Thrill Ride

The Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg motion-capture animation The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn opens in Europe on 22 October before hitting American cinemas ahead of Christmas. “Clearly rejuvenated by his…

Making Music with Muppets

Making Music with Muppets

Former Flight of the Conchord Bret McKenzie, 35, has written four original songs for the soundtrack of the new Disney film The Muppets, which will be released on 21 November. McKenzie is also the…

Nothing of the Golden Girl

Nothing of the Golden Girl

A pre-True Blood Anna Paquin stars in the recently-released Margaret as 17-year-old Lisa Cohen, a senior at an upper West Side private school. The New Yorker’s movie editor Richard Brody writes that Paquin “brings…

Mystical Oscar Entry

Mystical Oscar Entry

Samoan-language feature The Orator (O Le Tulafale) is New Zealand’s first-ever entry into the best foreign-language film category for the 84th Academy Awards. New Zealand Film Commission CEO Graeme Mason said: “The…

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…

Masterpiece Rereleased

Masterpiece Rereleased

Peter Jackson’s “masterpiece” Heavenly Creatures has been reissued on DVD and Blu-ray and is re-reviewed by the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw who says watching Jackson’s “masterly, formally daring, and superbly acted drama” was again, a…

Time to Read the Tome

Time to Read the Tome

Hamilton Doctor Who fan and author of the ultimate guide to the time traveller’s adventures Jon Preddle began work on his two volume epic Timelink: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to the Continuity of…

Film on the Ground in LA

Film on the Ground in LA

Film New Zealand and Wellington post production outfit Park Road are joining forces to open a Los Angeles-based office. From 2012, head of marketing at Park Road Post Production Vicki Jackways will represent the…

Understanding Sporting Passion

Understanding Sporting Passion

Award-winning Wellington-born filmmaker Julian Shaw’s “emotive” 211 documentary Cup of Dreams is recommended to Australians so they may gain some insights on how the All Blacks can be beaten in the Rugby World Cup….

Creating Social Science Fiction

Creating Social Science Fiction

New Zealand-born director Andrew Niccol’s new film In Time, out in the United States on 28 October, is set in a world where everyone’s biological clock stops at age 25. Here, time is the…

Jackson Bags the Best Bilbo

Jackson Bags the Best Bilbo

Oscar-winning filmmaker Peter Jackson says there is “simply nobody else” who could star as Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit epic but British actor Martin Freeman. “He is fantastic and there is simply nobody else…

Back to the Big Screen

Back to the Big Screen

New Zealand actress Anna Paquin is to star alongside Ryan Phillipe in independent comedy Straight A’s which is set in Louisiana. Phillippe portrays a man who’s been in and out of rehab for 1…