Paris je t'aime posterIt’s as if the gurus in Hol­ly­wood know that here in Welling­ton the Film Fes­ti­val approach­es and they’re try­ing to get the pop­corn mate­r­i­al out of the way before it is over­pow­ered by more cere­bral delights. Actu­al­ly, that can’t be true, pret­ty much every week is like this…

The lat­est in the seem­ing­ly end­less series of Will Fer­rell sports movies in which our the star improvs him­self a fea­ture film while play­ing an emo­tion­al­ly stunt­ed man-child is Blades of Glo­ry and the sport this time is — Ice Skat­ing! Fig­ure Skat­ing to be exact. Fer­rell is joined by Napoleon Dyna­mite’s Jon Hed­er as the two pair up to be the first all-male Olympic Ice Danc­ing cham­pi­ons (Read­ings and Sky City Queens­gate).

After the jump: Fan­tas­tic Four: The Rise of the Sil­ver Surfer, Paris je t’aime, Eden and Break­fast at Tiffany’s.

The Fan­tas­tic Four return after the sur­prise world­wide suc­cess of their first effort and this time they intro­duce us to a new vil­lain: The Sil­ver Surfer. I used to think the Sil­ver Surfer was real­ly cool, back in the day, but I was only nine (Read­ings, Empire Island Bay and Sky City Queens­gate).

My pick for the week is the port­man­teau film Paris je t’aime, fea­tur­ing 20 short films by a class bunch of direc­tors on the sub­ject of Paris and lurve. The great thing about films like this is that if you don’t like a seg­ment for any rea­son, it does­n’t real­ly mat­ter as there’ll be anoth­er along in a minute (Pent­house only). The Para­mount opens Eden, an unher­ald­ed lit­tle Ger­man film about a mas­ter chef whose life changes when he meets a young woman with Down’s Syn­drome.

Final­ly, a chance to wal­low in some nos­tal­gia at the Light­house in Petone: a short sea­son of a beau­ti­ful­ly restored Break­fast at Tiffany’s, star­ring Audrey Hep­burn (Bel­gian, don’t you know) and her lit­tle black dress.

The Film Fes­ti­val pro­gramme is launched tomor­row evening and tick­ets for that go on sale via Tick­etek out­lets on Tues­day. I’ll be writ­ing more about that here, and at Funer­als & Snakes, as we get clos­er to the event itself.

Reviews for all of the above will appear next Wednes­day at Funer­als & Snakes and, in occa­sion­al­ly edit­ed, old-fash­ioned dead-tree for­mat, in the Cap­i­tal Times on the same day.