The Wellingtonista

Random stuff about Wellington since 2005

Dan Slevin

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

by Dan June 14, 2013

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” […]

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

by Dan May 21, 2013

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 […]

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New at the Movies: Star Trek Into Darkness, Song for Marion, Gambit, Spring Breakers and Maori Boy Genius

by Dan May 14, 2013

The 2009 Star Trek reboot went into production on the eve of the writers’ strike and therefore had no right to be as entertaining – or to make as much sense – as it did. In fact, it was so successful that it has become the gold standard of dormant franchise resuscitation and I’m hoping […]

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New at the Movies: The Company You Keep, Rebelle (War Witch), Haute Cuisine, Antiviral and Jurassic Park 3D

by Dan May 7, 2013

It’s easy to laugh at ageing movie stars. Crumbs, when they make films like The Expendables they actively encourage us to make jokes about creaking joints and dicky hips. But let us pause for a moment and salute the longevity of one of the greatest movie stars there ever was, someone who was headlining box […]

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

by Dan April 30, 2013

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 […]

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

by Dan April 23, 2013

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 […]

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Entrancing

by Dan April 1, 2013

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 […]

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World Cinema Showcase 2012

by Dan April 3, 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 […]

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Deluxe is deluxe

by Dan December 9, 2011

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 […]

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Festival 2012

by Dan November 3, 2011

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 […]

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