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.