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.