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.