Tuesday, January 30, 2018 at 6:00AM by Nathaniel R
Jane Campion and Michelle Pfeiffer embracing in New Zealand
Thanks to the twitter pfan account LaPfeiffer for alerting us to this but Michelle Pfeiffer was recently spotted in New Zealand hiking with her husband David E Kelley and... (gulp) Jane Campion, only one of the greatest living filmmakers. But why was she there...?
Friday, July 7, 2017 at 5:00PM By Glenn Dunks
Alison Maclean is not a prolific filmmaker. While her resume is littered with TV (Sex and the City, The Tudors), music videos (Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn”) and short films (the superb domestic horror Kitchen Sink, and a segment in Subway Tales), films are few and far between. Her third feature is The Rehearsal and if its release feels awfully quiet then you can probably thank the near 20-year gap between feature projects and her return to her native New Zealand with a thorny film about tricky subject matter and written with a sense of ambiguous mystery.
My knowledge of New Zealand cinema is by far not as thorough as Australian film, but Maclean’s Crush is perhaps my favourite from there that isn’t Heavenly Creatures or The Piano. It is a film rife for rediscovery, not least of all for the delicious performance by Marcia Gay Harden at its centre (it also competed for the 1992 Palme d’Or). I was less enamoured by Jesus’ Son, a film that I assume stuck too closely to the often chaotic and episodic short story structure of its source novel to find its own groove, although Maclean’s experiences in the vast expanses of New Zealand and Canada gives her a unique advantage in framing the emptiness of the American mid-west and finding idiosyncrasies for her characters.
The Rehearsal is a much different style of film. It’s smaller in scope in terms of its core narrative, less tied to and reliant on its location and a sprawling need for its characters to escape whatever it is that nevertheless confines them to their place in life.
Thursday, April 9, 2015 at 12:00PM 
With her 1990 film An Angel at my Table, Jane Campion solidified a pattern for herself. Her films would be about extraordinary women in stifling circumstances. Whether it is mental institutions, marital institutions, family, or society, Campion’s heroines have to overcome great difficulties in order to live truly as themselves. An Angel at my Table, based on the autobiographies of New Zealand author Janet Frame, stands out as the only film of Campion’s early body of work that could be comfortably called a biopic. But to dismiss An Angel at my Table as just another biopic would be to ignore the unusual film Campion has made about an unusual woman.
Janet Frame’s life was as strange as any of the twenty works she wrote. She spent her childhood poor but happy in rural New Zealand, grew into an awkward woman whose anxiety was mistaken for mental illness, spent eight years in a mental institution, was freed when her writing was published, and went on to become a New Zealand icon. Campion cast three actresses to play Frame as she matured: Karen Fergusson, Alexia Keogh, and finally the incredible Kerry Fox. The three actresses are unified by a shock of red, unruly hair, and an awkward physicality that show someone more comfortable in her imagination than in the world.
An Angel at my Table is shot in a straightforward style far removed from the canted camera angles and wide angle lenses of Sweetie. The practical reason for this was the film's humble beginnings as a TV miniseries. However, beyond practicality, this less showy camera blocking lends itself to grounding Janet Frame’s story in reality. Frame’s impoverished but happy upbringing, her nightmarish eight year detention in a mental institution, and her subsequent successful writing career are shown in mostly medium or long shots, with Janet at the visually at the center. Typically subjects are set off-center in a shot, because symmetrical framing looks odd to the audience’s eye. Placing Janet at the center of the frame visually sets Janet apart - reacting to, but separate from, the world around her.
Janet Frame's colorful inner life after the jump.
Thursday, April 2, 2015 at 12:00PM 
Welcome to Jane Campion month! When I asked you all to vote for our next Female Filmmaker, I was surprised when the New Zealand native won nearly half of the vote. In retrospect, I should have seen it coming. Jane Campion is one of the most honored ladies on our list! She’s been nominated for two Academy Awards (one of which she won) and two Golden Globes for The Piano in 1994, garnered three Emmy nominations for Top of the Lake two years ago, and she won the Palm d’Or in 1986, before our story with her even starts! We pick up with her three years after her prestigious win, with a sad, strange, sometimes silly story of one weird woman’s even weirder family.
If taken at face value, Sweetie is a cautionary about how a daughter's untreated mental illness can cause an already unstable family to disintegrate. But nothing in Campion's surreal story is meant to be taken at face value. With the help of (lady!) cinematographer Sally Bongers, Campion shows a gift for making the mundane malevolent. When cast under shadows and seen through a wide angle lens, plastic furniture, dappled rugs, and the brightly-colored trappings of middle class suburbia suddenly suggest something rotten in the state of New Zealand. Campion refuses to shy away from the ugliness of her characters, instead covering them with candy colors that make them all the more grotesque.
Jane Campion's twisted family story after the jump
Wednesday, December 3, 2014 at 10:17PM 
Glenn here. If you had ever wondered what a pre-colonial New Zealand western may look like, Toa Fraser's The Dead Lands just may be it. The film's story of revenge taken by a Maori chieftain's son after the slaughter of his tribe and family is very typical fodder for the western genre, but with its use of indigenous languages (a language that itself has been slaughtered throughout history) mixed with local mythology and lore, the film proves an entirely unique proposition. It's only the third foreign language submission in the small island nation's history, and the first to be set before white settlement. I spoke to the director last week, just a few days before his film received the biggest haul of nominations at the New Zealand Film Awards. The Dead Lands received 14 nominations and will face stiff competition from the inspirational chess drama The Dark Horse with 13. We talked about about the festival circuit, Oscar campaigning, being the underdog, historic authenticity, costuming and more.
You have recently played at Toronto and London film festivals, and now you're a submission for the Oscar, how have these last few months of yours been taking this film around the world.
It's been amazing. We only finished the movie a few weeks before we went to Toronto and I had only seen it once in its entirety before we screened it at Toronto so it was kind of a high stakes game. We had, I think, six cast members come to Toronto and be a part of the experience, so it was a great premiere and we were very happy with the way that it was received. We were very grateful. And then to get back to London for the festival was also great. We had a great big group of Maori come down to the show and stand proudly at the side of the stage without telling us they were coming. They all had a great time. And then back to New Zealand for the premiere there, so it's been a bit of a whirlwind, but I am very proud of the movie and love talking about it. Good times.
Have you by any chance been given any education on campaigning techniques when it comes to the Oscar? Is it a big deal in New Zealand or do you take it stride?
We are the Cool Runnings of the foreign language race [laughs]. You know, I think we're only the third ever from New Zealand…
Yeah, it is, after The Orator (2011) and White Lies (2013).
Yeah, and we're up against some formidable and very established industries that make movies in languages other than English. So, we under no pretense we have… we're the underdog in this game, but in terms of strategy? No. I understand there are very strict rules and so I'm anxious not to suck up. We're from New Zealand, we're very play by the rules types.
More on Peter O'Toole, costumes, and action choreograhy after the jump...
James Rolleston, Lawrence Makoare and Toa Fraser on the set of 'The Dead Lands'
