News
Theatre opening is a dream come true
Taken from NZ Herald, by Dionne Christian.
It's the stuff of theatre legend. When William Shakespeare and his friends were devising their own shows, theatre was cheap and spectators let the actors know whether they thought they were getting their pennies' worth.
They jeered, they called out to characters, they threw rotten fruit. While today's theatregoers are more well-behaved, the cast of Raising the Titanics experienced a taste of history when they performed at the Dargaville Town Hall.
Actor Wesley Dowdell says three men opted to stand at the back of the hall, beers in hand, so they could beat a hasty retreat if the sellout performance wasn't their thing. But they were quickly captivated, yelling out suggestions to the characters and singing along. So how did the cast, unaccustomed to such reactions, feel?
"I loved it because it showed how engrossed everyone was and that they loved it, too," says Dowdell, who played Outrageous Fortune's Aaron Spiller.
Now Raising the Titanics is set to make history. The show ends a nationwide tour as the first main bill production at Auckland's new theatre, Q, and those behind the production couldn't be more thrilled that a "little theatre company" had that honour.
Read the full article here.
NZ Herald's Week of It
Taken from NZ Herald, by Shandelle Battersby.
MOVIES
Billy T James pops up at the movies again this week - or at least his voice does, as pie cart owner Pawai in New Zealand's best animated feature (actually still our only animated feature) Footrot Flats: A Dog's Tale.
The film celebrates its 25th birthday with a re-release in cinemas from today. Murray Ball's iconic characters, which began life in a newspaper comic strip, were painstakingly drawn on to 3000 frames by hand after a long writing process with fellow cartoonist Tom Scott.
Other famous voices to appear include John Clarke as Wal, Peter Rowley as Dog, Rawiri Paratene as Rangi and Fiona Samuel doubling up as the brassy Cheeky and the sweet Pongo.
With its memorable music by Dave Dobbyn, the film is a slice of our movie history.
Read the full article here.
Topless Women talk about their Lives available on DVD
Topless Women talk about their Lives is now availale on DVD, containing both the TV series and the movie. With a new commentary by the actors and the director.
On a beach in New Zealand, a German tourist stops two women. "Is this the beach where they filmed The Piano?" he inquires. So begins the freshest, cheekiest and most engaging film from New Zealand for years. The women on the beacg are best friends, Liz (Danielle Cormack) and Prue (Willa O'Neill). Liz is pregnant, but has split up with the father Neil (Joel Tobeck) whom she doesn't love (and vice versa) and is now with the cute but vapid Geoff (Andrew Binns).
Hovering like a loon in the background is the budding scriptwriter Ant (Ian Hughes), who's nearing melt-down in his tiny brain. Topless Women talk about their Lives is a film with an absolutely direct, vivid and unpretentious sense of life. The characters are mostly late twenties, kind of dodgy, and chronically unperceptive about their love lives. Harry Sinclair loves them all and elicits great deadpan comic moments from their fumblings after affection, sex or both.
For more information click here.
TV Pick of the week: Bliss
Taken from NZ Herald, TimeOut.
In her younger years, Katherine Mansfield led a scandalous life. The New Zealand writer was somewhat of a rebel, and it's this side of her personality that is portrayed in Bliss. Written and directed by Fiona Samuel and starring award-winning actress Kate Elliot, the Sunday Theatre production delves into the short story writer's hunger for experience.
"She was a very passionate woman," says Elliot, who breathes flirtatious, vivacious life into the character. "She's very alive ... This is a very youthful, exuberant Katherine. As all these things happen to her and then she became more withdrawn and insular."
At age 19 and known as Katie Beauchamp, the young writer struggles to find much to look forward to. It's the early 1900s and the majority of her friends are getting married and planning their futures as housewives. Katie, meanwhile, dreams of travelling, much to the disappointment and frustration of her parents, particularly her mother, who balks at the sexual content of her daughter's writing.
Desperate to leave home, she arrives in London with a small allowance. During the next year of her life, everything changes: the ambitious Mansfield takes singing lessons and plans to go on the road with a performing arts company. She causes a stir wherever she goes, falling in love, breaking hearts and polarising people.
Read the full article here.
Mr Asia drama lays bare a nasty saga
Taken from Stuff, by Jane Clifton.
Viewers of last night's Underbelly NZ - Land of the Long Green Cloud, TV3, needed a strong stomach - for the fashions alone.
There are many fine things about this show, but perhaps the most unexpected, and useful, is its value as an antidote to the fervent view of the under-30s that 1970s fashion and decor is deeply cool and gorgeous.
Not if you were there at the time. The costumiers and set dressers on this project have spared us none of the horror. Here was New Zealand in the early 70s, its moustaches, trouser bottoms and lapels as wide as doorways, its hair big and straggly, and all located in an unnatural habitat of orange and turquoise decor, accented with plenty of Karitane yellow - all flare and no flair.
Most authentically retro of all, and so deeply, nostalgically glamorous, was the smarmy treatment of women, as faithfully portrayed here: still regarded as property, and the grateful recipients of men's sexual appetites, not as meaningful participants, not even in crime.
The woman detective here is treated as though she's lucky to be taken seriously.
The era is as much a part of the story as the drugs and the monstrous ambition and violence. The rise of our most successful and infamous drugs cartel was possible mostly because New Zealand was naive, slow-moving target. It was remarkably easy to get the business off the ground, and as it grew more sophisticated, remarkably difficult to stop it.
This story is the story of Marty Johnstone, who originated the Mr Asia syndicate and ended up grotesquely rich and gruesomely dead. Necessarily, he's presented as a glamorous, appealing figure. This grates, but realistically only people with a degree of charisma can accrue the power to locate themselves at the centre of such dangerous operations. He's attractive, amoral and with a sense of entitlement not common among the young of his day.
Dealing cannabis with his psychopathic Scots henchman Andy Maher, he quickly builds a cannabis-dealing operation up to megabuck level, amping up the stakes with the advent of Chinese Jack, the Asian ship's steward who brings more potent Thai green over on his employers' vessels.
You almost begin to admire their industry and ingenuity, except that the whole empire is policed at fist-point. So far these are innocent days - no guns, no murders - but already brutal beatings are common currency among Johnstone's henchmen.
No-one entirely trusts anyone else, nor should they. Chinese Jack is two-timing Johnstone's operation, and palely lurking Terry Clark is already bringing in harder merchandise across his colleagues' turf.
Read the full article here.
TV Eye - Marty gets the party started
Taken from NZ Herald, by Greg Dixon.
As a matter of taste, I like my crime hardboiled. As a matter of style, I like my crime noir.
In print, my favourite copper is Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther, a flawed (natch) Berlin private dick, and my favourite criminal is James Ellroy's Pete Bondurant, a six-foot-six monster who almost whacked "Bad-back Jack", aka JFK.
On TV, it's always been Fitz from Cracker who's been my most compelling, well, crime-cracker, and Tony Soprano who's been the most compelling cracker crim.
If any of them have committed a crime or solved it, it's been bitter, hardboiled and noir. If any of them have offered a laugh, it's been bitter, hardboiled and noir.
So I was ready, on principle, not to like Land of the Long Green Cloud (TV3, Wednesdays, 8.30pm) and I was plenty ready not to fall for Marty Johnstone, the based-on-fact anti-hero of New Zealand's first crack at the Aussie TV crime syndicate, Underbelly.
Read the full article here.
Billy T: Te Movie Premiere Thrills
Taken from Stuff, by Louise Risk.
Like the man they were there to honour, the family of the late, great Billy T James shied away from the publicity at the world premiere of Billy T: Te Movie at the opening of Hoyts Te Awa at The Base in Hamilton last night.
But while his whanau were difficult to spot among the hundreds of people who gathered for live music, drinks and nibbles in the windswept Te Awa shopping centre, there was no shortage of people who wanted to talk to about what Billy T meant to them.
The youngest person to walk the yellow carpet that paid tribute to Billy T's trademark towel was 12-year-old Teina Terei, son of comedian and MC for the night, Pio Terei.
Teina who played a cameo role as Billy T as a child, was born almost a decade after Billy T died of heart failure in 1991, but said he was excited to learn more about the comedian.
"I just know he's a great role model, especially to Maoridom, and I look up to him," Teina said.
Billy T: Te Movie, which tells the two sides of Billy T's life - the confident Billy T on stage and the shy William Te Taitoko off stage - was "on the money" according to his friend and fellow comedian Peter Rowley.
"They have captured our Billy, they really have," Rowley said.
"They have captured the essence and the insights as to why wwe as a country fell in love with the man." Rowley said the "accurate and insightful" film would give viewers a new realisation about why and how Billy T because the man he was.
"It's so beautifully told. Everyone is going to love it."
Director Ian Mune, who broadcast across the six digital theatres along with the other guest speakers, said all Billy T ever wanted was to "reach out to people heart to heart".
He said Billy T's greatest talent was to reach out to every person watching him and make them feel like they were the only other person in the room or watching television.
"That's magic I can't explain ... I don't want to explain it," Mune said.
"Billy T touched out hearts. This movie is a celebration of us through Billy T James."
Watch the video link here.
Gladiator gardener wins Kapiti Island Residency
Taken from The Big Idea.
A multi-talented bi-lingual writer and performer from Whaingaroa has been named the 2011 Tau Mai e Kapiti Writer in Residence.
Antonio Te Maioha (Waikato/Nga Puhi) is well known as an actor on stage and screen, most recently as the gladiator 'Barca' in the US television series Spartacus: Blood and Sand. He is also known as a co-presenter on the Maori Television series Kiwi Maara, a show which aims to revitalise Maori gardening practices.
As an emerging writer, Antonio has been composing and performing poems, stories and waiata at events throughout the North Island. He is one of a number of poets and writers invited to respond to the Oceania Exhibition at Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand when it opens later this month.
Antonio is the fourth Kapiti writer in residence and will head to the island later this month to begin his two month stay. This year's judging panel describe him as having a diverse range of writing skills and experience across different media.
"His strengths include fluency in the Maori language and appeal to audiences of all ages," said judging panel member Mei Hill. "He has energy and versatility both as a writer and a performer - a combination that is not easy to achieve."
The judges commented that they were impressed with Antonio's motivation during the residency - to "listen to the island". He expects to complete projects in hand and extend current material, including a series of stories for children featuring two adventurous characters, Pango and Puki.
The Tau Mai e Kapiti Maori Writers' Residency is funded by Te Waka Toi / Creative New Zealand and hosted by Kaitiaki o Kapiti Trust. The residency offers a grant and allows an up and coming Maori writer to live and work on the northern end of Kapiti Island for eight weeks.
"Kapiti has profound spiritual power which has inspired writers and artists for many years," said Minnie Barrett, from Kaitiaki o Kapiti Trust. "This is the only residency in the country created and run by Maori for Maori Writers. We expect this year's writer in residence will respond well to the opportunity to spend eight weeks on the island."
Last year's Kapiti writer in residence, Nuki Takao, described the experience as "a dream come true".
Auckland Council buys film studios share
Taken from NZ Herald, by Wayne Thompson.
Auckland Council will pay $1.5 million for a joint-venture partner's share in the Auckland Film Studios in Henderson.
The council inherited a 44.4 per cent share in the studios from the Waitakere City Council, which tried to turn a former apple coolstore site into the "Hollywood of the South Pacific".
The studios were used to make films such as The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, and the television series Xena: Warrior Princess.
But the need to build a big sound stage for productions forced the council to seek a partnership with a developer. Tony Tay Film received a 56.6 per cent share in the Henderson Valley site in return for taking on the $7 million cost of developing it for medium-budget films.
Read the full article here.
Louise Tu'u joins 5th deciBel Performing Arts Showcase
Taken from deciBel.
Eight high profile arts professionals from six countris have been named as recipients of a Visiting Arts International Connections bursary scheme. The International Connections programme will enable the selected experts to share their experience with UK-based arts professionals at Arts Council England's 5th deciBel Performing Arts Showcase in Manchester from 13 - 16 September 2011.
The arts professionals selected for International Connections come from as far afield as Australia, China, USA, New Zealand and India. They are:
- Sam Cook, Director of The Dreaming: International Indigenous Festival, Australia
- Sasha Dees, independent curator and producer, Holland
- Kath Duncan, multi-media producer and cultural commentator, Australia
- Anjum Katyal, Editor, Art in the City, India
- Monique Martin, Director of Family Programming, CityParks Foundation, USA
- Leroy Franklin Moore Jr., Founder of Krip-Hop Nation, USA
- Louise Tu'u, writer, director and producer, New Zealand
- WANG Chong, Program Director of Beijing International Fringe Festival, China
At the deciBel Performing Arts Showcase, International Connections participants will be able to share ideas with their UK peers and experience cutting-edge work from England's culturally rich performing arts scene. In return, Showcase artists and delegates can gain insights into international markets, make connections and find out about opportunities to present work outside of the UK.
Nike Jonah, deciBel Performing Arts Showcase Project Manager, Arts Council England, said: "International Connections encourages the sharing of best practice in the international performing arts, while at the same time enabling overseas professionals to see the excellent work being made by artists from diverse backgrounds in England."
Find out more about the International Connections here.