Film & TV | Los Angeles Times
10 March 2016
Quentin Tarantino’s “favourite stunt double,” New Zealander Zoë Bell, 37, “sturdily stands in for herself” in Camino, a survival-thriller set in the jungles of Colombia circa 1985.
The Los Angeles Times reviews the film:
“Bell plays…
Film & TV | Hollywood Reporter
1 March 2016
Eighteen-year-old New Zealand-born KJ Apa, best known for his Shortland Street role as Kane Jenkins, has been cast as Archie Andrews in US television network series Riverdale.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Riverdale had difficulty…
Film & TV | Guardian (The)
26 February 2016
“Films about mute piano players embroiled in erotic love triangles never did become a burgeoning genre. Perhaps that’s because it’s virtually impossible to imagine another equalling writer/director Jane Campion’s 1993 magnum opus: an extraordinarily…
Film & TV | Los Angeles Times
24 February 2016
Actor Melanie Lynskey, the “genial” New Zealand-born star of HBO’s comedy-drama series Togetherness, is profiled in the Los Angeles Times.
Lynskey’s expressions are somehow familiar, a visage seen in her countless television and film roles…
Film & TV | Berlinale | Hollywood Reporter
24 February 2016
Tammy Davis’ hip-hop drama Born to Dance, a “hidden gem” at this year’s Berlinale, has become the most unlikely of box-office hits Down Under.
Born to Dance brought in more than $1 million in theatres…
Film & TV | Guardian (The)
23 February 2016
“Dave Grohl is only the latest to have revealed his rejection by David Bowie.” The Guardian also includes New Zealand’s very own Flight of the Conchords in its list of “10 of Bowie’s very…
Film & TV | Straits Times (The)
17 February 2016
Rose McIver, the New Zealand actress who plays crime-solving zombie, Liv Moore, says the character has become an unlikely role model for many fans, which may explain why iZombie has been ratings gold for…
Film & TV | New York Times (The)
17 February 2016
Irish emigrant saga Brooklyn, which was produced by New Zealander Finola Dwyer, was named best British picture on Sunday at the British Academy Film Awards.
“The British awards, known as BAFTAs, are considered a portent…
Film & TV | Guardian (The)
15 February 2016
The New Zealand movie Mahana/The Patriarch is one of the ten movies at the 66th Berlin Film Festival The Guardian is most looking forward to.
The Patriarch, set in the 1960s, was shot…
Film & TV | Northwest Boomer & Senior News
13 February 2016
“To the unaware, movie titles like Whale Rider and Once Were Warriors are well-made, entertaining yarns about Maoris. But to Charles Eggen, 78, they rank among his favorites — not just because they’re good…
Film & TV | Screen Daily
11 February 2016
Celebrating six BAFTA nominations and three Oscar nominations, Wildgaze Films duo Wellington-born Finola Dwyer and Briton Amanda Posey look back at Brooklyn’s journey and ahead to their future slate and ambitions.
Brooklyn was launched at…
Film & TV | Hollywood Reporter | Sundance Film Festival | Variety Magazine
5 February 2016
New investigative documentary, the “engrossing” Tickled, co-directed by New Zealanders David Farrier and Dylan Reeve, has received rave reviews from critics and punters after its premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Farrier and Dylan Reeve’s…
Film & TV | Wired
3 February 2016
“As a director, got an impeccable ability to balance painful earnestness with biting humour,” Angela Watercutter writes for WIRED. “And as a comedy writer and actor, he produces jokes that land…
Film & TV | Guardian (The) | Hollywood Reporter | Sundance Film Festival
2 February 2016
Taika Waititi’s film adaptation of Barry Crump’s Wild Pork and Watercress, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which made its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, is a “deliciously good time at the movies,” according to…
Film & TV | Independent (The)
31 January 2016
“It’s been almost three years since Top of the Lake first aired and it’s still hard to shake the series’ sense of creeping dread”, writes Jacob Stolworthy in an article on The Independent.
Lead actress…
Film & TV | Independent (The) | Sundance Film Festival
26 January 2016
Taika Waititi’s new film Hunt for the Wilderpeople, a dramatisation of Barry Crump’s 1986 novel, Wild Pork and Watercress, has premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Boy director Waititi returns with the road comedy…
Film & TV | Guardian (The)
22 January 2016
Disabled athletes fight the non-disabled in New Zealand director Heath Cozens’ award-winning documentary Doglegs which provides an outlet for five determined wrestlers to escape the prejudice they face in everyday life, the Guardian reports.
It…
Film & TV | Los Angeles Times
15 January 2016
If the hair and makeup from the post-apocalyptic science-fiction film Mad Max: Fury Road looks out of this world, it very well might be, according to the Los Angeles Times. That’s because hair and…
Film & TV | MTV
14 January 2016
In a Shannara Chronicles “Behind the Scenes” MTV video, New Zealanders Manu Bennett, who plays the druid Allanon, and Jed Brophy, demon king Dagda Mor, reveal their thoughts about the made-up language entitled Noalath…
Film & TV | National Post
22 December 2015
New Zealand actor Jemaine Clement’s performance in the “not quite rom-com” People Places Things “is understated, often characterised by the type of deadpan wit familiar to fans of his breakout HBO series Flight of…
Film & TV | LA Confidential | Los Angeles Times
16 December 2015
New Zealander Rose McIver, star of iZombie, one of the Los Angeles Times’ best new television shows of 2015, is “incognito as a coroner’s assistant, find the space between Veronica Mars and Buffy the…
Film & TV | Deadline | Deadline Hollywood
14 December 2015
“Hobbits, Orcs, Ents and maybe even some Na’vi are getting their own museum in New Zealand’s capital city,” writes Nancy Tartaglione in an article for Deadline.
The project – a combined movie museum…
Film & TV | Crawford County Avalanche
9 December 2015
New Zealander Rachel Hunter, once one of the world’s most-photographed supermodels, is now on a quest to discover the secrets of lasting beauty, great health and extraordinary longevity in diverse cultures around the world,…
Film & TV | New York Times (The)
8 December 2015
MTV’s new fantasy series The Shannara Chronicles is set in the future but features elves and gnomes and promises plenty of old-fashioned adventure all filmed in the town of Kumeu, in New Zealand’s scenic…
Film & TV | The Republic
4 December 2015
“MTV’s new fantasy series “The Shannara Chronicles” is set in the future but features elves and gnomes and promises plenty of old-fashioned adventure,” writes Nick Perry for The Republic.
The show is based…
Film & TV | UPI.com
26 November 2015
New Zealand-born actor Marton Csokas, 49, told reporters at the recent New York Comic-Con he is happy to star in the martial-arts drama Into the Badlands because it is unlike anything else on American…
Film & TV | Guardian (The)
25 November 2015
Oscar-winning director Peter Jackson, 54, admits he was “winging it” and “was making it up as I went along” for much of the Hobbit trilogy’s chaotic shoot.
Jackson has revealed he began filming the blockbuster…
Film & TV | Westword
23 November 2015
“To actually do an action film without Zoë Bell is foolhardy,” director Quentin Tarantino says, but according to Denver news site Westword, based on the current slate on the Waiheke Island-born stunt double turned actor’s…
Film & TV | Variety Magazine
18 November 2015
Even after the end of Peter Jackson’s ‘Lord of The Rings’ movies, the New Zealand film and TV business is thriving and “turning the land that once served as Middle-Earth into a host of…
Film & TV | Variety Magazine
17 November 2015
New Zealand actor Cliff Curtis says that returning to New Zealand to tell local stories keeps him sane.
“It sort of grounds me and gives me a sense of purpose,” said Curtis.
His next project alongside…
Film & TV | Los Angeles Times
11 November 2015
When Aucklander Dean O’Gorman, 38, was cast in the plum role of Kirk Douglas in Trumbo, the new biopic about blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, he decided to ask the legendary actor if he wouldn’t…
Film & TV | Brooklyn Daily Eagle
5 November 2015
New Zealand-born, London-based producer Finola Dwyer has “impeccable taste,” according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Her latest collaboration with author Nick Hornby is Brooklyn, the film version of Colm Toibin’s 2009 novel.
Dwyer has made…
Film & TV | TechTimes
1 November 2015
Kiwi comedy duo Jono and Ben have recreated the highlights of the New Zealand vs. France Rugby World Cup match in a video with a twist – their clip features kittens rather…
Film & TV | South China Morning Post
25 October 2015
Guillermo Del Toro’s newest movie Crimson Peak reportedly is inspired by nights he spent in haunted hotels – one of them a New Zealand hotel, where he stayed while scouting locations for The Hobbit films.
When he…
Film & TV | West Australian (The)
23 October 2015
Now in its 27th season, The Amazing Race continues to push people to do extraordinary things at all ends of the earth and New Zealand-born host Phil Keoghan, 48, loves to see people out…
Film & TV | Hollywood Reporter | New York Times (The)
21 October 2015
“Making his feature directing debut after several years on the FX teams of such films as The Avengers and The Hobbit, New Zealander Jason Lei Howden delivers a pic that will play very well…
Film & TV | Telegraph (The)
21 October 2015
“From Golden Age trailblazers to modern-day ass-kickers,” the Telegraph introduces its readers to Hollywood’s 34 “most influential, inventive and important women,” including our very own Jane Campion.
A director, writer and producer, Campion is best…
Film & TV | Los Angeles Times
20 October 2015
Roger Murray, on the phone to the Los Angeles Times from the Auckland set of Ash vs. Evil Dead, has one simple way to describe his job as the show’s prosthetics designer and props…
Film & TV | News.com.au
19 October 2015
With 24-year-old New Zealand singer Marlon Williams making his Australian television debut – in ABC’s seductive new miniseries, The Beautiful Lie – both his vocal ability and screen charisma should convince viewers of this…
Film & TV | WOW
18 October 2015
Kiwis “certainly seem to have a killer knack for comedy horror – gleefully creating tongue-in-cheek shockers that have the ability to make us both giggle and scream”, writes Mark Butler for WOW.
Below…
Film & TV | People Magazine
17 October 2015
14-year old Hawaiian Auli’i Cravalho has been selected to voice the lead in Disney’s new princess movie Moana.
“From baby time to now, I wanted to be a Disney princess and then I wanted to…
Film & TV | Variety Magazine
16 October 2015
The trailer for the fourth and final season of small-town crime drama Banshee has been released. January 29 has been set as the show’s premiere date.
New Zealand actor Antony Starr is starring as Lucas…
Film & TV | Deadline Hollywood
16 October 2015
A new trailer for fantasy series The Shannara Chronicles, which will debut on January 5, has been released at New York’s Comic Con. The show has been filmed in New Zealand.
The series produced by…
Film & TV | IGN
15 October 2015
The audience at the Ash Vs. Evil Dead panel at New York’s Comic Con was surprised with a surprise premiere of the entire first episode, which according to Eric Goldman in an article on…
Film & TV | Comic Book Movie
9 October 2015
Joe Naufahu has been cast to star on the sixth season of HBO’s Game Of Thrones. Details on which character the Kiwi will be playing have not yet been released.
“He could be the next…
Film & TV | Belfast Telegraph
8 October 2015
Hollywood star Sam Neill may originally hail from Northern Ireland, but he has just confessed to having a little difficulty mastering an Ulster accent for television drama series Peaky Blinders – despite help from…
Film & TV | Sight & Sound
8 October 2015
Jane Campion contributes to a Sight & Sound magazine special issue, which aims “to write women back into film history by championing 100 female-directed hidden gems that have been forgotten or unfairly overlooked.”
“Just because…
Film & TV | Variety Magazine
1 October 2015
New Zealander Cliff Curtis, 47, who portrayed speed chess genius Genesis Potini in The Dark Horse, will be honoured by the American Cinematheque at a ceremony on 11 October at the Aero Theatre in…
Film & TV | Atlantic (The)
29 September 2015
The Rocky Horror Picture Show, co-written by New Zealand-based Richard O’Brien, has risen “from a shelved failure to a cult hit to a beloved cultural staple is thanks to its dedicated groups of fans,”…
Film & TV | Variety Magazine
23 September 2015
Golden Globe and Academy Award winner Anna Paquin has been cast in a new role opposite Forest Whitaker in the epic television miniseries, Roots, which is based on Alex Haley’s 1976 novel as well…
Film & TV | Los Angeles Times
21 September 2015
New Zealand native Lucy Lawless didn’t appear in the original Evil Dead movies, but she brings her own cult following to the television revival of that classic horror franchise.
Lawless stars as the mysterious and…
Film & TV | US Magazine
20 September 2015
“Stuck atop the highest peak in the world, nobody can hear you scream. That’s what makes this white-knuckler, about an ill-fated ascent to Mount Everest, such a harrowing and haunting force of nature”, writes…
Film & TV | TIFF | Variety Magazine
19 September 2015
“Auckland, New Zealand may seem a world away from the heart of hip-hop culture in the US, but the local dance crews featured in Born to Dance totally own it”, writes Justin Lowe for
Film & TV | Variety Magazine
18 September 2015
Special effects maestro New Zealander Richard Taylor will direct the design of characters in the upcoming American film version of The Monkey King, a Chinese blockbuster.
“There has been a rush to bring Western-originated movies to…
Film & TV | Indie Wire | Variety Magazine
16 September 2015
Jake Mahaffy’s evocation of a borderline unbearable true-life tragedy, Free In Deed is a bracing, bruising corrective to the “faith-based filmmaking” movement, according to Indiewire. The New Zealand-raised director’s third film, set in and…
Film & TV | Bloomberg | Bloomberg Businessweek
13 September 2015
Walt Disney’s new Star Wars toys have been released in New Zealand – the first place in the universe for the toys to go on sale in “Disney’s Apple-like round-the-globe rollout of new toys”.
“It’s…