Nadya Vessey lost her legs as a child but now she swims like a mermaid. Ms Vessey’s mermaid tail was created by Wellington-based film industry wizards Weta Workshop after the Auckland woman wrote to them two years ago asking if they could make her a prosthetic tail. She was astounded when they agreed. She lost both legs below the knee from a medical condition when she was a child and told Close Up last night her long-held dream had come true. “A prosthetic is a prosthetic, and your body has to be comfortable with it and you have to mentally make it part of yourself,” she said. Mermaid dream comes true thanks to Weta
Category: Production
She may have waited 15 years, but as Kate Winslet accepted her first Oscar for best actress, she didn’t forget to mention the person who helped launch her career Wellington director Peter Jackson. Winslet, who worked with Jackson in her first feature Heavenly Creatures, filmed in New Zealand, won her first ever Oscar yesterday for her role in The Reader. Down under featured throughout the ceremony, highlighted again when Australian presenter Hugh Jackman amused the crowd as he quipped about New Zealand. “Everything is being downsized because of the recession,” Jackman said. “Next year I’ll be starring in a movie called New Zealand…” Heavenly creature Kate Winslet wins
From Entertainment Weekly: When the news came down yesterday that a heretofore unpublished book by J.R.R. Tolkien will be hitting bookstores in May, I was a little surprised that I, an avowed Tolkien dilettante, felt a genuine twinge of excitement. Although I have never read Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, I did love me Peter Jackson’s LOTR moving pictures something fierce, and I’m quite twitterpated to see what director Guillermo Del Toro and exec producer Jackson have cooking for The Hobbit. Maybe this new Tolkien story — which the good professor reportedly wrote before spinning his tales of furry-footed Hobbits and ring-seeking dark lords — would prove just as richly filled with fodder for a sweeping fantasy epic that wins oodles of Oscars. EW.com
The team at Weta sent us word that they have just launched a cool new website. Here is what they had to say:
Weta has a brand new website! Please check it out at www.wetaNZ.com
It’s full of “never seen in public before” images from our projects over the last 20 years. We hope you’ll enjoy all these new features: Continue reading “Weta launches new website”
Elven x sends this in: This week’s guest on Fictional Frontiers with Sohaib is Michael Regina from TORN (our own Xoanon) And with lots to talk about and a full summary of what’s been happening in the realms of Middle-Earth Please feel free to comment on the show and the discussion! Fictional Frontiers is aired Sundays at 11am Philadelphia time. You can listen online at WJNC1360AM Philadelphia, listen to the podcasts, or visit the Fictional Frontiers website.
Peter Jackson has joined a campaign to honour a forgotten Kiwi hero who changed the course of world history. Coromandel-born Sir Keith Park commanded the Royal Air Force squadrons that won the pivotal Battle of Britain against superior German forces during World War II, saving Britain from invasion. Political intrigue saw him pushed sideways after the battle and all but erased from the history books. Tribute to forgotten Kiwi hero