Oscar Nominee Bret McKenzie on Conan

Last night, Bret was a guest star on Conan Show. He was the best.



You gotta win, Bret!

And the Oscar nomination goes to... Bret McKenzie!

Bret McKenzie has been nominated for Best Original Song Academy Award for The Muppets track "Man or Muppet". Can you believe it?

CONGRATULATIONS BRET!

He's got only one contestant to defeat, "Real in Rio" from Rio (Jemaine voiced Nigel, the bad cocatoo in it). Luckily, Jem didn't write this song, so the boys don't stand against each other.

I so hope Bret wins!

Bret McKenzie - Guest DJ Project

Image copyright: KCRW.com

Hey guys, it's been a long time since I've posted here. Been fairly busy and I haven't had the chance to update anything for a while.

Anyways Bret dropped by the Los Angeles radio station KCRW. He was there to pick out his five favorite songs that inspired him throughout his entire life. Parts of each song were played over the air for everyone to enjoy. Bret discusses why he loves these songs.

To hear the interview go here: KCRW

BLACK SANDS - a short film starring Bret McKenzie

BLACK SANDS from Dugan O'Neal on Vimeo.

An Experimental Short film shot in the Mojave desert on September 8th, 2010.
Original Score by the Glitch Mob

Starring
Bret McKenzie
Melinda Lee
&
Terrill Hardaway

Written and Directed By Dugan O’Neal

Nigels

You should probably already know that FOTC work with New Zealand Symphony Orchestra also known as Nigel Collins, but this post isn't going to be about him or his clones.

The first Nigel is a character played by Bret in his new film called Two Little Boys directed by Duncan Sarkies. I wrote about this little earlier. The shooting was finished at the end of February and the premiere is planned in early 2012. If you want to find out more, read interviews and keep an eye out on this film, visit its facebook page.



I can recommend you to listen to an episode of a radio show Hamish & Andy where Bret was a guest on February 11th. Hamish Blake co-stars in the movie and he and Bret seemed to get along with each other pretty well during the shooting.

Listen to the show here or download the episode.

The other Nigel is an animated character, a cockatoo voiced by Jemaine in Rio. You're going to see this film much sooner - next month on April 15th! Another great news is that Jemaine will feature in the soundtrack from Rio. He sings "Nigel's Song" and you can already listen to it here!

Jemaine's in Rio and Bret's One Little Boy

Just a quick post about some great news, because today has been pretty busy day news-wise and I want to keep this blog and my other one, World of Taika, with fresh news and on time.

To start with, here's a new trailer for Rio, a new animated movie where Jemaine voices one of the birdy characters. You won't miss him ;)



And Bret has been officially confirmed to star in a New Zealand film Two Little Boys directed by Robert Sarkies, who directed Out of the Blue and Scarfies (both movies have my personal recommendation). Two Little Boys is based on a book on the same name by his brother, Duncan Sarkies, who also wrote a couple episodes of Flight of the Conchords. Read more about it here.

Anyway, I've read the book. It's great and I couldn't imagine anyone else as Nige but Bret. Total WIN!

Friends go shopping together, lalalala

Glory to Twitter!


The filming of MiB3 has started this month and for his role, Jemaine had to grow an epic beard.


Here, he's with his old friend, the director of Eagle vs Shark and BOY, Taika Waititi. They're both in New York City and this photo is just raising my hopes that they're working together on something awesome.


From other news

You can now pre-order Dinner for Schmucks from Amazon (US) or HMV (UK). The release dates: 4 and 17 January 2011.

And...

Don't forget to download a free album "Christmas Gig" with Bret's new song at Target.com.

I hope you had a great holiday, America. Winter came too soon and too strong for me. Time for some hot chocolate :).

P.S. re: the source tweet.

Jemaine doesn't have his own personal twitter account, as far as I know, so @JemaineC is NOT the real Jemaine Clement. The only verified twitter account is @fotc. But @TaikaWaititi is absolutely the real Taika Waititi.

Christmas song from Bret McKenzie

Wait! WHAT?! Yep. Not only working on the Muppets, but also he's been busy preparing a gift for us for this year's Christmas! :D
Target is releasing a free Christmas album which includes a song from Bret. It'll be available for download 11/28 from here, but today you can already listen to it on You Tube:

VIDEO KID IS BACK!!!

*****

From Jemaine news, the filming of MIB 3 has started this week, but no signs of Jemaine himself in the on-location photos. Let's be patient. ;)

The photo of Bret was taken from here.

Bret with the Muppets at their first table read

We've already heard some rumours here and there, but now it's officially confirmed that, as you can see in this photo, Bret McKenzie is working with James Bobin on The Greatest Muppets Movie Ever Made. Although one of our two favourite Conchords is composing some new tracks, I hope we'll see him on the screen as well.
The film, which will also star Jack Black, Donald Glover, Jane Lynch, Danny Trejo, Eric Stonestreet, John Krasinski, Ed Helms, Lady Gaga, and Paul Rudd, is set to open on December 25, 2011. That's going to be the Greatest Christmas Ever! (unless FotC will come up with a Christmas special some day... wishful thinking? I hope not!)
If you want to see the image above in High-Resolution, go to the source.

(very excited)

First yellow Conchords pictures

It's been quiet for a while on the Conchords front, but luckily that always means good things to follow.

We've already mentioned here that FotC will guest star on 22nd season premiere of The Simpsons. And here are first images of Jemaine and Bret or rather the characters they will lend their voices to. Does anyone have any idea why their names will be Kurt and Ethan? Anyway, I must say, they look much better than I expected. :D

As far as individual projects undertaken by the Conchords are concerned, Jemaine was busy with Dinner for Schmucks release and now is probably filming Men in Black 3 in New York. We haven't heard much of Bret recently, but... If you remember James Bobin, the co-creator of FOTC tv series, he's been asked to direct the New Muppets movie. And guess who he's working with? Read this story. It's hard to compete with the Conchord.

We will still have to wait a little bit to see the movie, because it is to be released on Christmas 2011. So, for now, remember to turn your tv sets on on September 26th this year to watch the yellow Conchords!

Photos obtained here and here.

Timetripping: Dave Likes Art

Since we're talking about Jemaine and his love to claymation, I think I should add one more video to complete the collection.

This stopmotion animation is from 2003. It was written by Jemaine Clement who also provides the voice for Phil (other characters are voiced by Bret McKenzie - Steward and David Fane - Dave). This short film was created for ClemengerBBDO (Wellington NZ) for Land Transport and it took them one year to produce.

The video was for cinema and was promoting safe driving. "It's not apparent that it's an anti-speeding ad until the end — and even the hedgehogs are surprised. The ad is longer than usual at four and a half minutes, it's in a claymation format (Wallace & Gromit style) and there's no LTSA or Police logos. But what you won't miss is the same hard-hitting message — the faster you go, the bigger the mess — which comes in right at the end." (more under this video)

What I'm mostly proud of and happy for Jemaine is that Dave Likes Art won three awards at Axis that year - Animation, Direction and Best cinema campaign.