Film
Netherwood: A Kiwi film worth seeing
Taken from NZ Herald, by Dominic Corry.
We've been talking about New Zealand movies lately, and I saw one last week that felt like a confident step forward for Kiwi cinema.
It wasn't the greatest movie I've ever seen, or even the greatest New Zealand movie I've ever seen, but it was pretty good and deserves your attention.
Netherwood is a would-be Coen-esque tale that with any luck from this point forward shall no longer be known as That Movie Those Shortland Street Actors Made.
Lead actor / producer Owen Black (who played the nefarious Dr Ethan Pierce on our revered local medical drama, Shortland Street) is touring the film on the 'Netherwood Rural Roadshow', hosting screenings at various picture houses around the country (next stop: Taihape, further screening details can be found here).
Read the full article here.
Kiwi actors' starring roles at Sundance
Taken from NZ Herald, by Helen Barlow.
When Sydney-based director Kieran Darcy-Smith auditioned 70 actors in Australia for a pivotal role in his film, Wish You Were Here - which opened the Sundance Film Festival last week - he couldn't go past New Zealander and former Outrageous Fortune star Antony Starr.
"Antony had the natural charisma, the effortless charm, the dark sex appeal we'd written into the script. He was Jeremy."
It's important that in the movie we are on Jeremy's side, and with his gleaming blue eyes and garrulous smile we certainly can see why the gorgeous, blonde Steph (Teresa Palmer) would be attracted to him.
Jeremy's a furniture importer who invites Steph's sister Alice (Felicity Price, co-writer of the screenplay with her husband, Darcy-Smith) and her husband Dave (Joel Edgerton) to join him at a resort in Cambodia where he does a lot of trade.
Read the full article here.
Make My Movie Winner Announced
Taken from TimeOut, NZ Herald.
A romantic-comedy about a creepy stalker trying to meet girls by going through their rubbish has taken out the Make My Movie competition.
How to Meet Girls From a Distance, created by a Wellington team of budding film-makers, will now be filmed and turned into a movie, to premiere later this year.
That's thanks to Make My Movie, a new initiative from the New Zealand Herald, the New Zeaand Film Commission and NZ On Air, that sees novice film-makers get the chance to turn their film dreams into a reality.
With the tagline, "Get to know her, then meet her", How to Meet Girls was one of two finalists, beating out the sci-fi spoof This Papier Mache Boulder is Actually Really Heavy from an Auckland team in today's winner's announcement.
Read the full article here.
Reviews - Wish You Were Here
Reviewed by David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter.
Its core plot elements might almost be mistaken for The Hangover Part II remade as a dramatic thriller. But that would be trivializing Wish You Were Here, a psychologically complex account of one man's unexplained disappearance during a Southeast Asian vacation and the fallout for the three friends traveling with him. Anchored by a riveting performance from rising star Joel Edgerton (Warrior), Australian director Kieran Darcy-Smith's debut feature maintains a vice-like grip that reaches maximum intensity as the mystery is solved.
Co-written by the director and his wife, Felicity Price, who also acquits herself effectively in a lead role, the film begins with a cunning false clue. Looking out across the water on a pristine beach in Southern Cambodia, Jeremy (Antony Starr) answers the ultimate fantasy question of where he would most like to be by saying, "I'd stay here." The screen then explodes behind the opening titles into a kaleidoscope of vibrant color, bustling street life, chaotic movement and exhilarating music that conveys both the seductive exoticism and the dangerous otherness of the place.
A handful of ecstasy pills are distributed during a wild night of drinking and dancing, before the action cuts abruptly to pregnant Alice (Price) and her husband (Edgerton) returning home to Sydney. It's clear something is wrong from the uncomfortable glances exchanged with Alice's mother (Tina Bursill) as she hands over their two young children (Otto Page, Isabelle Austin-Boyd), and the quietest suggestion of tension as the family sits down to dinner. But only when Dave goes online later, looking for news updates, do we discover Jeremy has been missing for nine days.
Shifting in nonlinear but fluid fashion between Sydney and Cambodia, in the present and the recent past, it's revealed that Jeremy had been dating Alice's flaky younger sister Steph (Teresa Palmer) for only a month or two before the trip. She urged the couple to accompany them, partly out of insecurity about the fledgling relationship and partly to force them to take a break before the increased responsibility of a third child. But beyond a rudimentary explanation on his Asian import business, none of them knows much about handsome, easygoing Jeremy.
Read the full review here.
Read the Film.com review here.
Read the LA Times review here.
Read the Variety review here.
Netherwood coming to a town near you
Taken from TimeOut, NZ Herald.
It's had primetime current affairs coverage and celebrity endorsements. But local movie Netherwood - a rural western thriller produced by and starring onetime Shortland Street-ers Will Hall and Owen Black - hasn't been able to get itself a cinema run, despite selling out its sessions in Christchurch at the New Zealand International Film Festival last year.
So its makers are taking it on the road for a series of 23 one-off screenings starting at Auckland's Academy Cinema on January 28 and ending up at the Waipara Community Hall, near where it was shot in 2009, in late February.
Read the full article here.
For more information and to book tickets visit the Netherwood website
Tommy Lee Jones to film war movie in NZ
Taken from TimeOut, NZ Herald.
Famously gruff American actor Tommy Lee Jones is returning to New Zealand to play US General Douglas MacArthur in Emperor, a movie set in the aftermath of the Japanese surrender in World War II.
Earlier in his career Jones came here to make the 1983 adventure movie Savage Island - also known as Nate and Hayes - in which he played legendary South Seas pirate Bully Hayes.
Read the full article here.
Review - Sione's 2
Reviewed by Steve Kilgallon, Stuff.
Writers James Griffin and Oscar Kightley first proposed a sequel to Sione's Wedding back in 2006 but, despite the landmark success of that movie, nearly six years have now passed since the original was released.
Explaining that time lapse in the lives of their characters was clearly the most substantial challenge Kightley and Griffin faced in producing this sequel, and their answer comes in the catalytic events of the opening scenes, which makers South Pacific Pictures asked (very nicely) that we don't reveal.
So we won't, except to say it ain't about a wedding this time.
Essentially, Sione's 2 becomes a quest movie, sending the bous off on a mission designed to show that they've finally grown up.
Of course, they haven't quite. One of the appeals of Sione's 2 is that the entire core cast have returned, and we know their characters so well: nerdy Albert (Kightley), pants-man Michael (Robbie Magasiva), drunk Sefa (Shimpal Lelisi), impressionable Stanley (Iaheto Ah Hi) and Dave Fane's otherworldly Bolo.
Now Michael is living offshore, Albert is living on the Shore, Sefa is unemployed and Stanley has found God and, in particular, Kirk Torrance's entertaining and thinly disguised version of Destiny Church leader Brian Tamaki.
The shared histories of those lead actors again translates well to an on-screen understanding which keeps the pace quick and the story rolling.
Despite a somewhat darker plot, it retains the resolutely cheerful, upbeat tone of Sione the first. It also has neatly etched cameos (I do like Mario Gaoa's saturnine cab driver) and a side attraction of location-spotting.
But some of the humour is perhaps a little insular. I found the funniest part to be a riff by Kightley's character Albert - tussling with the ennui of middle-aged, middle-class life away from his old mates - about the soullessness of Glenfield.
It's a joke any Aucklander will appreciate but which may be lost in the provinces and completely meaningless to viewers further afield.
The other challenge of a five-year gap is the anticipation involved. Sione's Wedding, fresh, genuinely funny and innovative, was something special in New Zealand cinema.
Sione's 2 won't and never could have attained quite that status, but seen on its own merits, it proves worth the wait.
Watch the trailer HERE.
Matthew Fox coming to Auckland for war movie
Taken from NZ Herald, by Andrew Koubaridis.
Lost actor Matthew Fox is coming to Auckland to star in a new movie that has been called a major coup fo the local film industry and the city,
The 45-year-old will play the lead role in Emperor, a film based on post-World War II Japan. Filming begins at film studios in Henderson this month.
Emperor will be the first major production filmed at the West Auckland facility since Auckland Council Investments (ACIL) took control of the studios last year.
Read the full article here.
NZ named one of the world's top film locations
Taken from NZ Herald.
New Zealand has been named as one of the "Top Ten Filming Locations in the Universe" by United States movie magazine P3 Update in its December issue.
New Zealand and Canada were the only two countries individually named in a list comprising the United Kingdom and several states of the USA.
Film New Zealand chief executive Gisella Carr said the accolade was a tribute to the hard work of the country's industry and was also an incentive to invest in our talent.
Read the full article here.
Show Me Shorts: Short films hold surprises
Taken from NZ Herald, by Lydia Jenkin.
With the tagline "Here for a good time, not a long time", you might think the annual Show Me Shorts festival aims to shock or entertain rather than delve too deeply into sophisticated stories.
The festival, which opens in various Auckland cinemas tonight, does indeed do both shocking surprises and entertaining commentary amazingly well, with many films packing a punch that's all the more potent due to brevity.
But 14 minutes is also longer than you might think in the world of cinema and allows the creators plenty of time to charm and provoke as they tell often-heartfelt stories of complex issues. This year the festival is also showcasing works from Australia, France, Ireland, the United States, Germany and South Africa.
The 47 films are collected into six different sessions, with seven or eight films in each, tied together by a common theme. This year's themes are: Unexpected Adventure, Master Chef, Love You To Death, Extreme Measures, Small Pleasures, Unlikely Bedfellows and Hitting The Road.
Read the full article here.
See the Show Me Shorts website for more details.