Author: Dan

A refugee from Thatcher's Britain, 30 years ago Dan Slevin produced and hosted the Radio Active guide to cultural Wellington, Asleep At The Wheel. Since then he has bounced around various creative endeavours including co-owning and managing the Paramount between 2002 and 2005. For six years he was the Capital Times film reviewer and is now a regular contributor to RNZ on the Widescreen movie page and on Jesse Mulligan's afternoon programme. His collected film reviews can be browsed free of charge at Funerals & Snakes. His day job is Marketing and Communications Manager for Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School.

New-ish at the Movies: The Great Gatsby, Bekas, Fast & Furious 6 and The Last Sentence

For all the dig­i­tal glit­ter and anachro­nis­tic hip-hop­pery that sig­ni­fies our lat­est re-entry into Luhrman-land, The Great Gats­by itself takes fun­da­men­tal inspi­ra­tion from a black and white clas­sic from 1941. Fea­tur­ing a flash­back fram­ing device, a lone­ly and heart­sick tycoon star­ing out of the win­dow of a grotesque cas­tle, and even a breath­less deathbed “Daisy” […]

New at the Movies: Kon-Tiki, Snitch and Broken

Speak­ing as some­one whose taste for adven­ture does­n’t stretch much fur­ther than going to the dairy in the rain, the reck­less self-endan­ger­­ment rep­re­sent­ed by Joachim Røn­ning and Espen Sand­berg’s Kon-Tiki was a gen­uine eye-open­er. The bones of the sto­ry are well-known enough to any­one who built bal­sa mod­els of Hey­er­dahl’s raft at pri­ma­ry school in […]

New at the Movies: Iron Man 3, First Position and Identity Thief

What­ev­er they are pay­ing Robert Downey Jr. to play Iron Man, it is is worth every pen­ny. Iron Man 3, the third instal­ment in his own branch of the Mar­vel Uni­verse series that also fea­tures Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, The Mighty Thor and The Hulk is hurtling towards a bil­lion dol­lars of box office rev­enues and might […]

New at the Movies: Olympus Has Fallen, Evil Dead and Escape from Planet Earth

While orig­i­nal Die Hard direc­tor John McTier­nan lan­guish­es in min­i­mum secu­ri­ty fed­er­al prison his heirs are keep­ing the action movie flame alive. Most recent­ly, Antoine Fuqua’s Olym­pus Has Fall­en might as well be called Die Hard at the White House as one man attempts to res­cue the hostages held cap­tive in the impreg­nable bunker beneath […]

Entrancing

Dan­ny Boyle is a British film direc­tor with a quite extra­or­di­nary track record includ­ing Trainspot­ting, The Beach, 28 Days Lat­er and mul­ti-Acad­e­my Award win­ner Slum­dog Mil­lion­aire. His lat­est film, Trance (reunit­ing him with Trainspot­ting and Shal­low Grave writer John Hodge) opens on Thurs­day and the Light House Cuba have a spe­cial pre­view screen­ing of it […]

World Cinema Showcase 2012

After a splen­did Welling­ton Film Fes­ti­val last year, the New Zealand Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val might be for­giv­en for putting their feet up and tak­ing it easy but instead they have gone out of their way to pro­duce anoth­er bas­ket of good­ies to fill the East­er week­end and beyond: the grand­ly titled World Cin­e­ma Show­case. Arguably […]

Deluxe is deluxe

One of the most excit­ing and stim­u­lat­ing things about liv­ing in Welling­ton is the fact the our cin­e­mas are con­tin­u­al­ly rein­vest­ing in their facil­i­ties and always try­ing to top each oth­er in qual­i­ty of fit out and cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. What have we done to deserve this!? This year the burghers of Mira­mar got the Ming […]

Festival 2012

I’m old enough to remem­ber when the Arts Fes­ti­val was known arch­ly as The New Zealand Inter­na­tion­al Fes­ti­val of the Arts. In recent years the name has been tidied up but the goal has remained the same — bring real­ly cool, real­ly great, inter­na­tion­al artists to Welling­ton and show­case their work along­side the best of […]