Imagination live 
Auckland comedian Rhys Darby — who plays Jim Carrey's boss Norman in Yes Man, which will be released in the US in December — has launched his first live stand-up DVD, entitled Imagine That. This is the first world-wide release of a stand-up DVD for a New Zealand comedian. Darby talks technology, and about sharing his iPod Touch with his 2-year-old, in the Guardian. "Get one, and make sure to get a cover for it to protect the screen," Darby recommends. "And if you really want it for yourself and you have 2-year-old kids, don't show it to them." Darby next appears in ensemble comedy The Boat That Rocked, which stars Emma Thompson and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The Boat That Rocked is out in April 2009. 
(10 October 2008)

Edwardian assortment
Sam Neill stars in Toa Fraser's second feature Dean Spanley  which Variety reviews, describing the film as "immaculately cast". "Based on an obscure novel by late Anglo-Irish fantasy writer Lord Dunsany, Alan Sharp's screenplay is deft; ditto Fraser's helming." The Toronto International Film Festival website writes of the period comedy: "a magical mélange of fine wine, canines and eccentric behaviour, Dean Spanley is a rare pleasure ... the film transports us to Edwardian England, with its elegant rooms, lavish costumes and surprising tolerance for the outlandish. It takes the finest comedic actors to pull off this material, and director Toa Fraser has assembled a cast of the first rank. Neill treads with grace between comic fantasy and real pathos." 
(9 September 2008)

Fraser's film premiere
New Zealand film director Toa Fraser's latest feature, Dean Spanley, is to have its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival on September 6. The film is part of the 'gala programme' which is described by the Festival as a "high profile showcase of films with major impact." Dean Spanley, a comedy period piece set in Edwardian England, stars Sam Neill in the title role and Oscar winner Peter O'Toole. "The gala screening represents a spectacular launching pad for Dean Spanley," Fraser said. "We put our hearts and souls into making the movie and I can't wait to see it up there on the big screen at one of the world's most prestigious festivals." The movie is Fraser's second feature; his first, No. 2, won the audience prize at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. Apron Strings - directed by Sima Urale and set in Auckland suburb, Otahuhu - has also been selected for screening at the Toronto Film Festival. 
(19 August 2008)

NZ Cinema in Beijing 
The 2008 New Zealand Film Festival opens in Beijing and includes screenings of Eagle vs Shark, No. 2 and Out of the Blue. The Festival is a means of offering Chinese audiences an opportunity to learn more about New Zealand through cinema. A delegate from the New Zealand Film Commission said the festival would act as a bridge between Chinese and Kiwi people, and also allow New Zealand to promote its movie industry worldwide. The commission is also discussing joint film ventures with Chinese producers, the official said. 
(5 June 2008)

Paquin in beautiful 100
Academy-Award winner Anna Paquin, 25, features on US Men's magazine Maxim's 2008 Hot 100, the "ultimate list of the world's most beautiful women." At number 50, Paquin is described as the: "sexy, troubled, and underutilized Rogue in the X-Men movies." Now she leads a heavyweight cast, including Matt Damon and Matthew Broderick, in the upcoming film, Margaret. In Margaret, Paquin plays Lisa Cohen, a 17-year-old New York City high-school student who feels certain she inadvertently played a role in a traffic accident that has claimed a woman's life. The film will be released later this year. 
(May 2008)

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 an all-consuming but lucrative multi-billion dollar movie ride. Adamson had the same sort of challenge working on both Narnia series: meshing special effects, animated images and real actors' performances into seamless sequences. "What I did last time was shoot a lot onstage using blue screen creating an environment," the writer-director says. "This time, we have a lot more foreground, more location footage, but we ended up with more visual effects because we had more creature shots to blend." In 2001, Adamson's Shrek won an Oscar for best Animated Feature Film. 
(9 May 2008)

Two hobbits of a kind 
Peter Jackson is joining forces with Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro to make the two back-to-back film adaptations of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit. Jackson will co-produce the film with fellow director Fran Walsh. Del Toro, who directed Pan's Labyrinth and Hell Boy, said the appointment was a dream come true. "This is a great honour, and I am indeed blessed to become a part of the film-making community that Peter, Fran and their extraordinary team of collaborators have created in New Zealand," he said. Jackson's Wingnut and WETA production facilities will provide digital effects.
(25 April 2008)

Taylor-made for shortlives
Richard Taylor's animated children's programme Jane and the Dragon now airs in the US every Sunday afternoon on NBC. Jane and the Dragon is created from drawings so detailed they required even more than the 48,000 props Taylor used to create the special effects for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He says his own children are his most exacting critics. "Children are a critically discerning audience. There's no grey area at all. They either like it or they don't. Also, there's an incredible need for extreme care to be taken around the moral compass that you build into your show if it's for children." Taylor is the creator and head of Oscar Award-winning prop and special effect company, Weta Workshop. 
(31 March 2008)

Clement's celestial Chevalier
Wellington Conchord Jemaine Clement takes on the role of fantasy novelist Dr Ronald Chevalier in teen comedy Gentlemen Broncos, a film created by Napolean Dynamite's Jared Hess to be released in 2009. According to Cinematical "the cast is an 'indie' affair, but with the addition of Sam Rockwell and Clement there's more 'hipster' cred." In the promotional videos and audio snippets on the film's website Clement portrays Chevalier as a third-rate Orson Scott Card with the voice of Orson Welles. Clement and Bret McKenzie have announced the end of the popular Flight of the Conchords television show after the next season so they might pursue other prospects.
(13 August 2008)

Telepathic in Louisiana
Anna Paquin, 26, is mind-reading Southern waitress Sookie Starkhouse in the HBO vampire series True Blood, which starts September 7 in the United States. Paquin chats with Women's Wear Daily about going blonde (and tan) for the role, shooting in the South and waiting tables for the first time. "[Louisiana] was hotter than hell," Paquin says. "There's nothing that really prepares you if you're not from there from stepping outside and feeling as if you just opened an oven into your face. But it kind of makes all the tiny, teeny, skimpy outfits seem incredibly justified." Paquin's character is described on the show's official site as having learnt "to serve up a combination of sexiness and sass" though "she has yet to find out whether her bite can back up the bark." True Blood is created by Six Feet Under's Alan Ball. 
(18 August 2008)

Screen Australia hires Harley
New Zealander Ruth Harley - currently CEO of the New Zealand Film Commission - has been appointed chief executive of the newly formed national film agency, Screen Australia. Dr Harley begins the position in November. The appointment is tacit acknowledgment that New Zealand has been, and remains, the role model for national filmmaking outside the Hollywood studio system. The appointment was announced by the Australian Arts Minister, Peter Garrett who commented "Following an extensive global search the government was particularly impressed by Dr Harley's experience and commitment to the development of a successful and sustainable local film industry". Screen Australia is the Australian Government's new screen agency replacing the Australian Film Commission, Film Australia and the Film Finance Organisation. Harley is a former Fulbright Scholar. She was awarded an OBE in 1996 for her contribution to the broadcasting and the arts. 
(15 August 2008)

With unstudied grace
New Zealand actor Jonno Roberts has the role of Stanley Kowalski in a Seattle production of A Streetcar Named Desire. It may seem a strange quirk, that someone from New Zealand has been given such an iconic American role. But Roberts, nine years into an unexpectedly indefinite stay in the US, graduated from Harvard's Institute for Advanced Theatre Training, which emphasizes Constantin Stanislavsky's "method" approach. Roberts feels the burden of playing a role so strongly associated with Marlon Brando's electric performance in 1947. "It's like playing Luke Skywalker, a very singular character," he says. "The job becomes how to do it yourself." Roberts attended the Moscow Art Theatre, has had a number of Broadway and Off-Broadway appearances, as well as US television roles, including in Law and Order and Jericho.
(3 July 2008)

Constantly gardening 
Auckland greensman Robbie Penny has worked on Bridge to Terabithia, 10,000 BC and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian arranging on-set nurseries, sourcing Belgian lettuce ferns and relocating apple orchards. Feet are Penny's biggest enemy. For instance, "In Prince Caspian, you've got horses running through the sets. So you can imagine the devastation you've got to deal with between takes . . . You're constantly trying to make the set look like it was the first day they walked in. That is the biggest challenge, I find - maintaining continuity," he says. 
(18 May 2008)

New leathers for Lawless 
Lucy Lawless, has been both trawling the back streets of West Hollywood for replacement leather chaps and performing at the Carling Academy in Islington, London. The lesbian icon, just turned 40, talks to Time Out about Russell Crowe, 'cowboy' vs. 'rock 'n' roll', and those chaps. Lawless is also attending a London Xena Convention at the Hilton Metropole Hotel on Edgware Road. What happens at a convention? "We just yak. I never prepare anything - I just go along, answer the fans' questions, or do a silly little song," she replies. Lawless is currently filming an Adam Sandler comedy, Bedtime Stories in Los Angeles. 
(28 April 2008)

Island Calling at Festival 
New Zealand filmmaker Annie Goldson's An Island Calling, featured at the Canadian International Documentary Festival, explores Fiji's infamous 2001 murders of Red Cross boss John Scott and his partner. "The facts are known about the case. So it isn't an investigation," Goldson said. Her film instead goes behind events to reveal hidden contexts. The New Zealand Herald says Island Calling "is a complicated but clearly articulated story of the toll colonialism, homophobia, evangelical Christianity and the tension between indigenous Fijians, Indians and kai valagi (white Fijians) have taken and continue to take on life in the islands." Goldson's Punitive Damage and Georgie Girl have also been internationally acclaimed. 
(23 April 2008)

And the award goes to
Lincoln-born Phil Keoghan, Emmy Award-winning host of television show 'The Amazing Race', shares some of his on and off air adventures with USA Today ahead of the show's 13th season and a stint in New Zealand. "New Zealanders are very proud of their indigenous Maori culture," Keoghan says in the interview. "We were looking to get something of that in the show. We ended up having the teams search for Maori warriors on an extinct volcano (near Auckland), and it was the most magical morning when they arrived: As the sun was rising, there were these warriors doing the haka with a magnificent rainbow over the top of the hill." 'The Amazing Race' won an Emmy this year for best Reality-Competition Programme, the show's sixth such accolade. 
(25 September 2008)

Filming the Arabian dream
New Zealand writer and director Craig Johnson, who has lived in Dubai since 2003, is about to begin filming an English-language production based on expatriate life in the city, to be released in time for the Dubai Film Festival. "It used to be the American dream but now it's the Arabian dream that modern day emigrants seem to be chasing," Johnson says. To be shot in Bombay and throughout Dubai, Johnson says the film industry has a lot of potential in the City of Gold. "For the canny businessman it could be an investment with returns that can rival and exceed real estate." Johnson's feature-length screenplay Repping was purchased by Hollywood-based Supreme Media Group in late 2007 and goes into production next year.
(25 August 2008)

Montreal bound
New Plymouth-born actress Melanie Lynskey stars in the Anthony McCarten-directed Show of Hands, which has been selected for its world premiere at this year's Montreal Film Festival. Show of Hands is based on McCarten's novel of the same name and is set in and around a Taranaki car-yard, where an endurance competition with a difference is being staged. McCarten - whose first feature film Via Satellite was adapted from his own award-winning stage play - said: "Being officially selected for a festival like Montreal, consequently, is a great compliment and an endorsement that all the work might not have been in vain." Show of Hands premieres in New Zealand in November. Lynskey next appears in Steven Soderbergh's thriller, The Informant, in which she plays opposite Matt Damon. 
(8 August 2008)

Ward and Puhi reunite 
Director Vincent Ward, 52, has been in Sydney at the world premiere of his latest feature Rain of the Children, a film which documents the life of Tuhoe woman, Te Puhi who Ward met 30 years ago caring for her mentally ill adult son Niki in the Urewera Ranges. Rain follows on from Ward's 1978 In Spring One Plants Alone, a 43-minute observational film about Puhi, who Ward lived with for 18 months to make the film. Rain was one of 12 selected from 1500 feature films previewed in Sydney. "It's a big honour," Ward said, "and it was great that our Tuhoe collaborators could be here for it," Ward said. "As the overall producer I felt in charge of my own destiny. I was able to get the film I wanted. And it's more than the film I set out to make." Rain premieres in New Zealand at the Auckland Film Festival in July. 
(3 June 2008)

Hobbiton revisited 
New Zealand is once again the backdrop for Middle Earth, Peter Jackson and Hobbit director Guillermo Del Toro confirmed in an hour-long live internet chat with fans. Speaking from New Zealand and London respectively, the pair answered 20 of the most popular questions they received online, including the location of The Hobbit, the casting of Bilbo Baggins and whether or not an extended edition of the film would be made. Jackson discusses his role in the production of the films: "Truth is 'Executive Producers' do a range of things on movies from a lot to virtually nothing! I see myself being one of a production team. I see my role as being part of that writing team, which will create the blueprint, and then helping Guillermo construct the movie." The Hobbit will be released December 2011. 
(24 May 2008)

Finding Precious 
Tauranga-based filmmakers Lance and James Morcan are searching for the best person to take on the role of four-foot-nine power-lifting champion Precious McKenzie. Ranked the best weightlifter in South Africa, McKenzie, now 71, was barred from representing his country because he was classified as coloured under the apartheid regime. After competing at the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch, he decided to settle in New Zealand, winning gold wearing the silver fern at the age of 42. The father-and-son team believe McKenzie's story deserves to be told. "It's not a weightlifting story, it's a human drama of one guy overcoming the odds," Lance Morcan told the Dominion Post. Morcan said he hoped Precious would begin shooting on location in South Africa by early November. Lance Morcan is a former journalist who has also written three novels: Land of the Long, White Cloud, Fiji and The Ninth Orphan, the latter two co-written with James. 
(16 May 2008)

Great spirit returns 
New Zealand's favourite wizard, Sir Ian McKellen will return to the country to reprise his role as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings prequel, The Hobbit. McKellen had told Empire before he was cast that he was a very lucky actor and would certainly return to the role if asked. "Encouragingly, Peter and Fran Walsh told me they couldn't imagine The Hobbit without their original Gandalf," McKellen said. Andy Serkis, who played Gollum in The Rings, has also been re-cast. 
(28 April 2008)