Author: Dan

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

While the Film Fes­ti­val dom­i­nates the screens at the Embassy, Para­mount, Te Papa, the Film Archive (and par­tial­ly takes over the Pent­house) there are still main­stream releas­es being flung to the four winds.

As a writer, Mike White has been respon­si­ble for some of the weird­est (Chuck & Buck), the straight­est (The Good Girl) and the fun­ni­est (The School of Rock) films of recent times. Year of the Dog is his first film as a direc­tor and is about a decent, sin­gle, sec­re­tary (played by peren­ni­al sup­port­ing actress Mol­ly Shan­non) and her quest to replace her deceased pet. It’s a roman­tic com­e­dy and the sup­port­ing cast is pret­ty flash: includ­ing John C. Reil­ly and Peter Sars­gaard. Pent­house exclu­sive.

The uplift­ing sto­ry of William Wilber­force (Ioan Gruffudd) and his quest to out­law slav­ery (inspir­ing — or inspired by — the hymn) is told in Amaz­ing Grace. Also star­ring the won­der­ful Romo­la Garai who will be here in less than a month to star with Ian McK­ellen in “King Lear” and “The Seag­ul­l”. Pent­house, Read­ings, Light­house Petone and Rial­to.

Knocked Up is the sto­ry of an unlike­ly cou­ple who, after a one-night-stand, are forced to deal with the preg­nan­cy that binds them togeth­er. It’s by the team that made The 40-year-old Vir­gin and stars Seth Rogen (pro­mot­ed from sup­port­ing actor in the pre­vi­ous film) and Kather­ine Hei­gl. A hoot by all accounts. Read­ings, Regent-on-Man­ners, Light­house Petone, Sky City Queens­gate.

Final­ly, prob­a­bly co-incid­ing with the Dowse’s “Making of” exhi­bi­tion, King Kong gets anoth­er trot out at Queens­gate at 2.30pm on Sun­day.

Cinephilia: 36th Wellington Film Festival Preview

It’s Film Fes­ti­val time of year, that two and a half week peri­od when watch­ing three films a day becomes more than shame­ful self-indul­gence, its almost oblig­a­tory.

Like life itself, prepar­ing for the Film Fes­ti­val is all about choic­es. You start with a vir­gin pro­gramme and then, over a peri­od of weeks, notes are scrawled, dates are checked, friends are con­sult­ed and pre­views like this are read and then dis­card­ed. You check the timetable won­der­ing whether you can leave work to, er, post a let­ter for a cou­ple of hours on Fri­day morn­ing; you find your­self at lunchtime check­ing how long it real­ly does take to walk briskly between Te Papa and The Embassy, and you try and for­get those moments dur­ing past Fes­ti­vals when you come out of a dis­ap­point­ing but wor­thy Finnish dra­ma at the Para­mount and pass hordes of hap­py peo­ple who saw the extra­or­di­nary Japan­ese ani­ma­tion at The Embassy instead.

The whit­tling is relent­less as the forces of time and space require choic­es to be made. To add an oth­er lay­er of com­pli­ca­tion to your per­son­al process here’s my list of the less obvi­ous options, some of which I’ve been lucky enough to pre­view, but most­ly I’m hang­ing out to see them like every­one else.

The rest of the pre­view, after the jump.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

A very qui­et week for open­ings, the calm before the Film Fes­ti­val storm you might say. Slip­ping out a day ear­ly under cov­er of dark­ness is Har­ry Pot­ter and the Order of the Phoenix (or Har­ry Pot­ter 5 as it said on my tick­et this after­noon). Sneak pre­view of my Cap­i­tal Times review next week: “meh”. (Empire, Read­ings, Regent, Sky City Queens­gate).

The only oth­er pic­ture open­ing this week is the unfor­tu­nate­ly titled Bra Boys, which is a doc­u­men­tary about the famous Syd­ney surf gang from the sub­urb of Maroubra. The film is direct­ed by one of the Bra Boys him­self, Sun­ny Aber­ton, and Exec Pro­duced by Rus­sell Crowe who is under­stand­ably more inter­est­ed in his South Syd­ney roots than his South Welling­ton ori­gins (doc­u­men­tary about Strath­more any­one?). Crowe is so into this par­tic­u­lar sto­ry that he’s slat­ed to direct and star in a fic­tion­alised ver­sion of it in 2009. Rial­to only.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

A qui­et week this week for cin­e­ma releas­es (at least until Wednes­day).

Return­ing from April’s World Cin­e­ma Show­case are Word­play, well-regard­ed doc­u­men­tary about the New York Times cross­word (very lim­it­ed ses­sions at the Light­house in Petone only) and Aussie mock­u­men­tary Raz­zle Daz­zle about the world of kids’ dance com­pe­ti­tions (Light­house Petone and Pent­house).

For the school hol­i­days the Para­mount has a dai­ly 11.00am screen­ing of anoth­er Aussie flick, The Sil­ly Bil­lies Save The Cir­cus. When I was at the Para­mount we had two live vis­its from The Hoo­ley Doo­leys who I kind of con­sid­ered to be the Wig­gles you have when you can’t have The Wig­gles. It looks like The Sil­ly Bil­lies are what you get when you can’t get The Hoo­ley Doo­leys.

Also at the Para­mount this week, a chil­dren’s movie of a dif­fer­ent kind, All The Invis­i­ble Chil­dren: an anthol­o­gy movie sup­port­ed by Unicef fea­tur­ing sev­en short films about the plight of chil­dren around the world. Direc­tors include Rid­ley Scott, Spike Lee and John Woo.

Oh, and on Wednes­day, pret­ty much every­where, the new Har­ry Pot­ter opens: Har­ry Pot­ter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

School hol­i­days start on Mon­day and Hol­ly­wood is doing its bit to turn your kids’ brains to mush with Trans­form­ers, an enor­mo-bud­get extrav­a­gan­za about cars that turn in to robots (or the oth­er way around). Pro­duced by Jer­ry Bruck­heimer and direct­ed by Michael Bay, Trans­form­ers should give the boys plen­ty of bang for your buck (while the girls get to swoon over cur­rent heart-throb Shia LaBeouf). Play­ing all over town includ­ing Read­ings Courte­nay Cen­tral; Sky City Queens­gate; Embassy; Regent-on-Man­ners.

Sen­si­ble-shoe wear­ing girls may well get more out of the lat­est incar­na­tion of teen detec­tive Nan­cy Drew, this time star­ring Julia Roberts’ niece Emma. A slight­ly small­er release this one, at Read­ings Courte­nay Cen­tral and Sky City Queens­gate only.

After the jump: Heart­break Hotel, Starter for Ten, Francesca and Nun­zi­a­ta and The Iron Giant.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

It’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.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

UPDATE: How Much Do You Love Me? is also play­ing at the Light­house in Petone.

This week’s block­buster is the third install­ment in the Pitt/ Clooney/ Damon/ Soder­bergh smug-fest, Ocean’s 13. This time the 11 from the first pic­ture are joined by Ellen Barkin and Mr Hoo-Haa him­self, Al Paci­no. Dimin­ish­ing returns? You be the judge at Read­ings, Sky City Queens­gate, Pent­house or Empire Island Bay.

More down-to-earth is the messed-up Aussie no-bud­get romance Pup­py (Para­mount), described as a “weird and won­der­ful jour­ney”. Anoth­er messed-up romance starts Thurs­day at the Para­mount: How Much Do You Love Me? stars Mon­i­ca Bel­lu­ci as a pros­ti­tute who gets paid 100,00 euros a month to live with a lot­tery win­ner — until the mon­ey runs out. Also star­ring Gérard Depar­dieu.

Bridge to Ter­abithia, Pier­re­point, Scenes of a Sex­u­al Nature and Off the Grid — after the jump.