Tag Archives: Oscar

“Favorite Weirdo” Taika Waititi Wins Oscar Glory for Jojo Rabbit

“Favorite Weirdo” Taika Waititi Wins Oscar Glory for Jojo Rabbit

The multi-talented Taika Waititi – writer, director, lead actor – took out the Academy Award for best adapted screenplay at the 2020 Oscars on Sunday evening in Los Angeles. Adapted from Christine Leunens book “

Lesley Vanderwalt’s Post-Apocalyptic Beauty Tips

Lesley Vanderwalt’s Post-Apocalyptic Beauty Tips

New Zealand-born Lesley Vanderwalt, who won both an Oscar for hairstyling and make-up at this year’s Academy Awards and the equivalent at the 2016 BAFTAs, talks to Vogue about bringing Mad Max: Fury Road’s…

Music Man Reunites with the Muppets

Music Man Reunites with the Muppets

Having worked on the 2011 film The Muppets (winning an Oscar for his soul-searching power ballad Man or Muppet), 37-year-old New Zealander Bret McKenzie was signed up for the follow-up, a crime caper called…

Jackson a Digital Mandarin

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…

Talking of The Small Screen

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

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…

Bret McKenzie Nominated for Oscar

Bret McKenzie Nominated for Oscar

Bret McKenzie speaks to Conan about his Oscar nomination and acting in Lord of the Rings.

Piece Of Hollywood In Wairarapa

Piece Of Hollywood In Wairarapa

Titanic and Avatar director James Cameron has spent $20 million buying more than 1000ha of farmland in South Wairarapa. According to application documents, Cameron and his family “intend to reside indefinitely in New Zealand and are acquiring the…

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,…

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…

Peter Jackson in action

Peter Jackson in action

Six of Peter Jackson’s Oscars quietly share desk space with a grasshopper model from James and the Giant Peach, a Lancaster Bomber, a cardboard replica of Thunderbird One, and piles of toy soldiers. “I…

On-screen explosion

On-screen explosion

Wellington director Taika Waititi’s film The Volcano, a follow-up to his 2007 feature Eagle vs Shark, will be distributed by Australian company Transmission Films. The Volcano is inspired by Waititi’s Oscar-nominated short film…

Truly Awesome Victory

Truly Awesome Victory

Lower Hutt-raised Hollywood starlet Anna Paquin, 26, has won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Television Drama, awarded for her performance as Sookie Starkhouse in HBO’s vampire series True Blood, beating A-list…

Changeably Crowe

Changeably Crowe

This is New Zealand actor Russell Crowe on the cover of the June issue of PhotoIcon in “typical mercurial and irreverent mood”. Taken by British portrait photographer Michael Birt in February 2000 at a…

Royal Interlude

Royal Interlude

Filmmaker Andrew Adamson’s Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, shot in New Zealand, Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia, has been released worldwide. The release comes just before Adamson takes a break from what has been…

Oscar front-runner

Oscar front-runner

“Oscar is no great fan of fantasy. But the Lord of the Rings, with such Oscar heavyweights as Ian McKellen and Ian Holm, may carry enough high-class baggage to over come that prejudice”.

Gladiator to Genius

Gladiator to Genius

Russell Crowe is tipped for repeat Oscar honours following his fantastic performance as mathematical genius John Forbes Nash Jr in Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind.

Go Russell, go!

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…

Shorts and sweet

Shorts and sweet

Four NZ films feature in NY’s Shorts International Film Festival, including Felicity Morgan-Rhind’s Donuts for Breakfast. Top shorts will be considered for Oscar noms.