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…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Realm of the Karearea
The documentary Karearea: The Pine Falcon, an audience favourite at the 29 Tallahassee Film Festival, is screening as part of the Tallahassee Film Society’s annual “bird movie” Saturday at the All Saints Cinema this…
Unique appeal
The Topp Twins continue their tour of the United States with a performance at Portland’s Mission Theatre, where producer of the Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls Arani Cuthbert will also be in attendance. The documentary…
Saving the Hobbits
Sir Peter Jackson will take up the role of director for the film adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit if it meant he was able to protect Warner Bros’ investment, he has…
Industry Icon
Bay of Plenty-born director Merata Mita has died in Auckland. Broadcaster Joanna Paul told The New Zealand Herald that Mita was an icon and her death, a massive loss. Paul said she met her…
Hollywood Bowled
“In an age of bloated, self-importance and out-of-control celebrity worship, songs of parody and general mirth served as a lively and engaging antidote,” writes Martin Miller for the Los…
Loveable Dame
Dunedin-born actress Dame Pat Evison, who was best known for her Australian roles as Jessie Windom in Prisoner and Violet Carnegie in The Flying Doctors, has died aged 85. She also played Mrs Telford…
Top of the box office
Director Taika Waititi’s second feature Boy has become the top grossing local film ever at the New Zealand box office, passing the $7.5 million-mark and overtaking 25’s The World’s Fastest Indian, according to distributors…
Keisha stars in Vampire
Keisha Castle-Hughes, 20, is following in the bloody footsteps of fellow New Zealander Anna Paquin, starring in the film Vampire, the first English-language film of Japanese cult director Shunji Iwai. According to Empire, the…
Nothing but exuberant
Linda and Jules Topp’s award-winning documentary The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls screened as part of the Inside Out LGBT film festival at the Royal Ontario Museum in May. The film is part documentary and…
Clement’s new dimension
Wellington actor Jemaine Clement, 36, is in the final stages of talks to play the part of the villain Boris in Men in Black 3 alongside Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. Clement’s character…
Fame becomes them
Tickets for The Flight of the Conchords’ two May shows at Dublin’s Olympia Theatre sold out in a record 12 seconds. “It’s all just weird,” Bret McKenzie says. But then he finds a lot…
Collaborative honour
Director, Peter Jackson, has been knighted by Governor-General, Sir Anand Satyanand, at an investiture ceremony in Wellington. Jackson’s knighthood was for services to the arts in New Zealand. “The truth is, making movies is…
Tentative ten
Wellington’s Weta Digital effects house has begun pre-production on the sequel to Peter Jackson-produced District 9, the “tentatively titled” District 10. Filming is scheduled to begin in South Africa and New Zealand in October….
Cowboy paramedic
Trauma star New Zealander Cliff Curtis, who plays “the cowboy paramedic who’s equal parts Tom Cruise in Top Gun and Tom Selleck in Magnum P.I in the hit NBC drama, says ‘Rabbit’ is “probably…
Niccol the man
Kapiti Coast-born director Andrew Niccol, 45, of Gattaca and Truman Show fame, has written a new sci-fi screenplay, called I’m Mortal, reportedly in negotiations for purchase. The premise of his latest being: Got too…
Creepy plot wins Emmy
The makers of Wellington-made interactive drama Reservoir Hill, KHF Media, have won New Zealand’s first ever Emmy in the Digital Program: Children & Young People category. Reservoir Hill – which was shot in Porirua…
Sprites by Leibovitz
Director Peter Jackson and Lovely Bones star Saoirse Ronan were photographed at New York’s Time Warner Center by Annie Leibovitz for the March issue of Vanity Fair, in a photographic shoot for the magazine…
Laughter in Waihau Bay
Taika Waititi’s Boy recently won the Best Feature Generation Film award at the International Filmfestspiele in Berlin. The festival’s website describes it by saying – ” difficult…
In killer frocks
Anna Paquin “vamps it up” on the cover of the March edition of Marie Claire UK in an exclusive grocery store shoot by photographer Frederic Pinet wearing Alexander McQueen, Prada and Chanel amongst other…
Neill the Menace
Sam Neill recently starred as the “diabolically” corrupt president of a human blood farming corporation alongside Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe in the Spierig Brothers sci-fi/horror film Daybreakers. Neill “dominates the screen”…
Gandalf’s Return
The Hobbit, produced by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, will begin filming in New Zealand in July with Sir Ian McKellen once again taking the role of Gandalf the Grey. The film, and its…
Part of the corps
Actors Temuera Morrison and Taika Waititi both star in the Martin Campbell-directed 3D film Green Lantern which began production in New Orleans in mid-March. Morrison is playing Abin Sur – a member of the interplanetary…
Making her mark in LA
New Plymouth-born actress Melanie Lynskey, 32, talks to the Wall Street Journal about being a working actor in Hollywood, her big break in Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures and about Up in the Air co-star…
Top of their game
The Kathryn Bigelow film The Hurt Locker, which earned her a best director and best film Oscars, featured Auckland Isaac Hamon, 33; the scene depicting Hamon running away from an…
Like it or loathe it
Wellington Airport-owned land on the hills of Miramar Peninsula could soon sport a Hollywood-style sign with the word ‘Wellywood’ erected in 3.5m high letters, that is, if it isn’t in violation of Hollywood’s trademark….
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
“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…
Way of life applauded
Hawkes Bay couple Tom and Barbara Burstyn’s documentary This Way of Life about a Maori family living a subsistence lifestyle has screened at the Berlin Film Festival to full houses and a Jury…
Memories of plasma
The Lovely Bones director Peter Jackson “should forswear sugar next time and reintroduce himself to plasma, brain matter, puke, shit and intestines; all the elements that gave his earlier, sicker, funnier films their kick”,…
McAlpine Stylish By Design
The international career of Waiuku-born, Elam-educated film designer Andrew McAlpine continues to unfurl in ever-larger circles. McAlpine’s most recently-designed film, An Education (produced by Wellington-born Finola Dwyer) is nominated for Best Picture at…
Weta woos Hollywood
Wellington-based Weta Digital, which was behind the effects work on blockbusters Avatar and District 9, has been nominated for nine Academy Awards; CNET Asia’s Daniel Terdiman says the “accolades may finally make Weta a…
Abattoirs maketh the man
Director Martin Campbell is “one of the world’s most revered action directors, twice rescuing the Bond franchise” writes the Guardian’s John Patterson. Now Campbell has returned to Edge of Darkness, the 1980s TV drama…
Barclay a big presence
Auckland actress Emily Barclay, 25, “is in no danger of not being cast” and “right now is one of the hottest new talents in the business — on stage and on screen”, writes The…
Campbell’s Big Gun
Hastings-born director Martin Campbell, 66, best known for the 2006 Bond film Casino Royale, has told the Los Angeles Times that “there was nobody else” but Mel Gibson for the role of Boston cop…
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…
Togaless
Actress Lucy Lawless “is attracting a lot of attention for her latest character — not that the New Zealand actress isn’t used to recognition,”…
Improbable classic
Director Jane Campion’s 1993 film The Piano is considered a “classic” of the cinema by the Times which examines the merits of the film starring New Zealand actress Anna Paquin, Holly Hunter and Harvey…
Fast friends
Rose McIver arrives at New York’s Griffith Observatory “fashionably on time” to meet fellow Lovely Bones actress Saoirse Ronan for a tour …
McIver learns from best
New Zealand actress Rose McIver, 22, plays the younger sister to Saoirse Ronan in Peter Jackson’s thriller The Lovely Bones. Teen Hollywood talks to McIver about working with stars Ronan, 15, and Susan Sarandon….
Spartacus Debuts in US
Former warrior princess Lucy Lawless stars as Lucretia in Spartacus: Blood and Sand, “a sword-and-sandals epic that Starz, the US premium cable network, rolls out January 22”. Spartacus is a flashy, big-budget attempt to…
Attention seeker
“A little bit of Clement can go a long way,” writes Katey Rich for US entertainment site Cinema Blend.com. Quiet Earth is reporting that Clement, “who was so woefully underused in Gentlemen Broncos”,…
Knighthood for Jackson
Director Peter Jackson was among five New Zealanders to become knights or dames after a return to New Year’s honours. Former Prime Minister Helen Clark — who axed British honours while in office —…
Two Globe Nominations
New Zealand-raised actress Anna Paquin has been nominated for two best actress Golden Globes in her roles as Sookie Stackhouse in True Blood and playing the lead in made-for-TV movie The Courageous Heart of…
Return to self
Flight of the Conchords duo Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement have ended their HBO series after two seasons. On their website, the pair said: “We’re very proud of the two seasons we made, and…
Meeting of minds
New Zealanders director Jane Campion, 55, and actress Kerry Fox, 43, tell The Independent on Sunday how they both came to meet. Fox recalls: “I walked into the audition for An Angel at My…
Bevan Honoured in NY
Queenstown-born, London-based Academy Award-nominated film producer Tim Bevan will be presented with a career tribute at the 19th annual Gotham Independent Film Awards in New York on November 30. Bevan has worked as producer…
Armed with laughter
“Going to a Topp Twins gig in New Zealand is a bit like going to a thousand-strong family reunion,” writes Stephanie Bunbury for The Age. “Up front are Jools and Lynda Topp, 51-year-old identical…
Televised Aliens
Wellington-based Weta Workshop is working with Disney XD on a television movie called Skyrunners creating, what the star of the show American Kelly Blatz describes as, a “unique and frightening … transparent” alien “with…
Saving grace
New Zealand-raised cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh is praised for his work on the Mira Nair-directed film Amelia, about pioneering American aviatrix Amelia Earhart. The Observer’s Philip French writes that the film is “beautifully photographed” by…
Auckland’s Happy Herd
In January 2010, the California Department of Food and Agriculture will film a new series of 10 California “Happy Cows” commercials in Auckland, taking advantage of New Zealand’s low production costs, but much to…
Not taking punches
New Zealand-born Charlotte Dawson, 43, co-host of Australian reality boxing show The Contender, talks candidly to The Age about the programme and what she knows about the opposite sex. “Women want to be open…
On the Conchord cult
Actor and Conchord Jemaine Clement talks about his latest film Gentleman Broncos and the future of ‘Hiphopopotamus’ and ‘Rhymenoceros’ with Paul Fischer in an exclusive Moviehole interview. Fischer asks Clement about his reaction to…
Traits of an auteur
Ahead of this month’s release of Peter Jackson’s latest cinematic offering The Lovely Bones, The New York Times’ Terrence Rafferty takes a look at Jackson’s body of work over his 20-year career as a…
Poetic challenges
Bright Star director Jane Campion, 55, says she was always terrified of poetry. “It wasn’t poetry that brought me towards this story; it was my ignorance about the subject. I hit 50 and decided…
Tracking Morrison
Actor Temuera Morrison stars in the Ian Sharp film Tracker, set in New Zealand in 1903. Tracker also stars Ray Winstone (The Departed, Nil by Mouth) who plays Arjan, an ex-Boer War guerilla sent…
