In Over His Depth
Sam Neill stars as the ingenious and courageous Lt. Commander Charles “Swede” Momsen in New England submarine drama Submerged.
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Goodbye Xena
Xena, shown in 120 countries, focus of fan-mania and Star Trek-like devotion, comes to an end. “We tried to take people on journeys that you won’t go through in your real life,” says Lucy…
Campion cuts Kidman
New Zealand director Jane Campion nabs red-hot Nicole Kidman for upcoming In the Cut.
Buzz From Cannes
“This will be the biggest movie of all time” – John Rhys-Davis in National Post preview and cast interviews; Rings “hottest show at Cannes” in The Age; BBC reports “gargantuan bash”;…
Lording it at Cannes
Which was hotter – the Rings preview or the bash after? Twenty minutes of Rings footage had seasoned critics standing to applaud; the party, complete with sets shipped from New Zealand, was the one ticket…
Shrek at Cannes
Kiwi Andrew Adamson is co-director of Dreamworks’ hit Shrek, the first animated movie to make competition at Cannes since Dumbo 50 years ago. Guardian picks it as a Cannes top ten. Shrek “deliciously…
Phil’s Crazy Club on Oprah
Kiwi Phil Keoghan chats with the first lady of US TV about how “passion became his purpose” after a near-death experience as a 20-yr old. Talking Oprah through a group bungee, dinner atop a…
Donovan puts a hit on Roger
Inflation may have lowered the stocks of ex-Six Million Dollar Man Lee Majors, but his new lease on life as an aging hit-man in NYC Kiwi director Brendan Donovan’s “Here” has helped the film…
Crowe’s Anzac
Stan Wemyss, Russell Crowe’s Grandfather, was a soldier and cinematographer – a key influence on the star.
Curtain falls for Nyree Dawn Porter
“Forsyte sex symbol who conquered the world”, Kiwi-born and raised star of the 60’s TV show The Forsyte Saga (watched by 100 milllion people in 26 countries) remembered in The Telegraph, The Guardian and…
Actress Remembered
International tributes continue for “cucumber-cool” New Zealand-born Forsyte star Nyree Dawn Porter.
Billion dollar Bevan
Bridget Jones producer Kiwi Tim Bevan nudges the billion dollar mark with Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and now Bridget Jones, due to be Britain’s biggest hit this year.
Creamy romance
“In New Zealand we mostly make quite brutal social-realist films. I think American audience are stunned to see something that romanticizes New Zealand…I want to make films that no one else is making.” Harry…
Serve Up Sam
Sam Neill, currently showing in The Dish, is major star material: “Like Harrison Ford, he’s an Everyman with gravitas. Like Tom Hanks, he engages our sympathy innately. He’s masculine without being macho, handsome without…
Along came Lee
Along Came a Spider, edge-director Lee Tamahori’s Kiss the Girls follow-up “skillfully builds the action” and “gives sequels a good name”.
Must do Today: Production, Script, Light
Wellington-born Richard Curtis penned the Bridget screen adaptation: one of Britain’s “cleverest screenwriters” in LA Times and “a virtuoso at devising horrific embarrassments for his protagonists,” in Slate. Rounding out the kiwi trio, Stuart…
Kiwi batter?
Will Russell Crowe step up to the crease for Somerset this season, or is it just that funny time of year?
Russell’s leg up
Russell’s main rival for the little naked gold man was “Tom Hanks, who wears very little for much of Castaway. To the Academy this shameless overexposure smacked of desperation, an all-shorts-off attempt to counter…
Edge in the heart of Tinseltown
Russell Crowe and Crouching Tiger herald a takeover of Hollywood by the rest of the world.
Destiny
“From the beginning he was destined to be a star,” says Martin Bedford, Russell Crowe’s agent of 17 years.
Graniator
“No, no leave him alone, don’t hurt him,” yelled Joy Wemyss, Crowe family matriarch at a private screening in Auckland. Also, Audrey Crowe touched by mention of her husband.
Russell: Our Man
Winning the world from the edge, Russell Crowe walks away with Hollywood’s biggest award. It was the day the boy from the west Auckland suburbs achieved the dream that once seemed “kind of ludicrous…
Fresh milk
“The gorgeous landscapes of New Zealand provide the backdrop for this peculiarity, which is like nothing else that’s played in months”
Milk free
The Price of Milk is nothing at promotional showings of the New Zealand movie with a “cult-like” following.
Crowe 007
Will it be “Crowe, Russell Crowe” next time 007 hits the big screen? “To play Bond, you need a man who has great screen presence and is believable in the part. Looking at him,…
Fairy tale ending
Xena meets her doom in the finale of the wrapped series that turned Lucy Lawless stellar.
Best Oscar Hunter
The greatest winners of all time. For best actress: Vivien Leigh, Joan Crawford, Audrey Hepburn, Simone Signoret and Holly Hunter in The Piano.
Kidnappers couldn’t take me
Russell Crowe laughs off kidnap threat: “Quite frankly, if they had to spend that much time in a small room with me… one of them might end up saying, ‘Look, pass the hat around,…
Dishy
Sam Neill transmits tension in The Dish, the story of how Neill Armstrong came to be broadcast from a giant dish in the middle of the Australian desert.
Reel Pianos
The Piano, Jane Campion’s “hard to ignore” and “genuinely strange” masterpiece is the star in Jerusalem’s Festival of piano-films – celebrating the filmic attraction of tormented pianists.
“I Will Herd Sheep”
“Never doubt you can accomplish the task given to you,” says Canadian film-maker Sean Buckley. “I had barely been on a horse before, but there I was in New Zealand, needing a job. I…
History revised?
Controversy and acclaim for edge-director Roger Donaldson’s nuke-spook Kennedy paean 13 Days.“Yet, despite these difficulties, the film works and ought to be essential viewing for those too young to have been around in October 1962,…
Russ of the jungle
Russell: Charismatic, attractive and talented, but also fearless, said Sharon Stone years back. He proves her right on the screen and in the jungles of Ecuador.
Victory: The Aftermath
More stories from across the globe: “this moment is directly connected to those childhood imaginings” quotes The Advertiser; Crowe “shocked and emotional” in the LA Times; “I was thinking this is one of those bad…
Here with Lee Majors
NYNZer Brendan Donovan scores Best Cinematography award for his short film Here at the Angelciti Film Festival LA and his star Lee Majors wins Best Actor at the Santa Monica International Film Festival. Majors…
Crowe’s Upward Flight
Future films Flora Plum and John Nash biopic will “stretch Crowe to show the extent of his capability and range”.
Intimacy and success
New Zealander Kerry Fox wins Silver Bear (best actress) at the Berlin Film Festival for her “searing and explicit” performance in Intimacy, winner of the Golden Bear for best film. Fox was unable to…
Tolkien Talk
‘I’ve never met or worked with a director with a more comprehensive artillery of qualities for a big project like this than Peter Jackson. Someone should give him a medal pretty damn quickly” -…
Hollywood outgrows itself
Gladiator, filmed in Morocco, Malta and the UK, directed by a Brit, scored by a German and “sexed up by the hottest New Zealander on the planet” is a new breed of block-buster, a…
No talk, just sex
Intimacy is a smouldering film about a man who is living in a basement in south London who has a sex affair with a woman at his place every Wednesday afternoon. They don’t talk,…
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…
Star of the year
Russell Crowe named “Male Star of the Year” at ShoWest 2001, the largest motion picture industry convention.
Go Russell, go!
“What we do in life/echoes in eternity.” Russell “Maximus” Crowe gets a second Best Actor nomination (last year was for The Insider), continuing a fine run of Wellington actors and filmmakers who have been…
Mad world of Milk
“In the real world, Lucinda probably would be in court-ordered psychotherapy, with a restraining order or two thrown in to boot. In the fanciful world of The Price of Milk, however, Cormack’s Lucinda is…
Lost in Te Anau
New Zealand-filmed BBC production of sci-fi dino classic The Lost World set to be “a ripping yarn with some of the most exotic locations we’ve seen in television drama”.
Hunter is home from the (Beverly) hills
Rachel Hunter features in a movie about a furry antipodean who gets lost and ends up in LA…
In the can
“I can shut my eyes and imagine the movie playing in my head,” says Peter Jackson, spilling the exhaustion and elation of moving from filming to post-production.
Political Thrills
“I felt that this picture was made for me, because I love politics and I love making thrillers,” says Kiwi-spawned director Roger Donaldson of missile-drama Thirteen Days, reviewed as “a sleek, fast and…
Acting love
British actor Toby Stephens “sips cranberry and soda in restaurants with his girlfriend, the New Zealand actress Anna-Louise Plowman (Flick, The Adulterer)”, and enjoys “choosing colour schemes for his new north London flat.” …
Dinosaur amore
Sam Neill confesses to feeling something for his Jurassic co-stars: “There was one little female velociraptor who had a cute haircut, but it was never anything more than holding hands… holding claws.”
Cultural resonance
”Everything I saw in this film I see in my own country,” says Maori Jillian White, speaking of Native Canadian films screened at Canada’s Sundance festival.
Lang may his lum reek
New Zealand’s now home for Scottish actor John Cairney but he makes a yearly return to Scotland for Burns night.
