Hope they kept the red carpet from last time.

As if they could even think of hold­ing it else­where, it has been con­firmed that the NZ premiere of King Kong is going to be held in Wel­ling­ton, in mid-Decem­ber. United Inter­na­tion­al Pic­tures, the film’s New Zea­l­and dis­trib­ut­or, has con­firmed Wel­ling­ton will hold the premiere hours before King Kong is released around the world. Spokes­man […]

Places we like to shop & watch outrageous music videos – The Guava Tree

This lunch­time I spent a pleas­ant 20 minutes or so in a new store called The Guava Tree. Not nor­mally a place fre­quen­ted by Wel­ling­tonis­tas, but my interest was piqued by the vast plasma screen observ­able through the shop win­dow play­ing what appeared to Bol­ly­wood movies. I’ve always wanted to see a Bol­ly­wood movie. They […]

Hello NZ Girls!

We heard you might be drop­ping by… and in your hon­our, we’d like to offer you the chance to WIN A DATE WITH ORLANDO BLOOM* Hope you find some­thing of interest here, we’ll endeav­our to tar­get your par­tic­u­lar demo­graph­ic (reli­ably informed: female, 18–25 years) over the next say… until we get bored with it. In […]

Film Society for August

Apo­lo­gies, a bit slow on film soci­ety news this month… I’m post­ing this too late to cov­er Place Vendome, but what remains is well worth see­ing. JEANNE AND THE PERFECT GUY (1998). At first glance, Olivi­er Ducastel and Jacques Mar­tineau­’s film appears to be a rel­at­ively tra­di­tion­al French melo­drama about AIDS – well acted and […]

Wellington Film festival – We Recommend…

God! Where to start? We’re about a third way through the pro­gramme & EVERYTHING so far looks like a must see. Kudos to Mr Gos­den & his team this year. Dis­claim­er: Our opin­ions are not infal­lible, we saw a prom­isingly enthralling doc­u­ment­ary a few years ago called Hybrid… and it was lit­er­ally watch­ing corn grow… […]

A preview of coming attractions.… soon!

That’s a clev­er quote from Hitch­cock­’s Rear Win­dow… But that’s irrel­ev­ant right now… Com­ing soon (only just scored the bro­chure, so bear with us)… I’ll give you my legendary (unaf­fili­ated with any spon­sors – so far…) Film Fest­iv­al run­down. What’s hot, what’s good (they’re all good), what’s heart-warm­ing, what’s art-house, what’s sleaze, what’s art-house sleaze, […]

Wellington Film Society screenings for June

What with Queen’s Birth­day and all, it’s a light, but good month for Film Soci­ety screen­ings. First up is the 1998 Ger­man movie 23, a film by young Ger­man dir­ect­or Hans-Chris­ti­an Schmid is based on the true story of Karl Koch, a young com­puter hack­er who stumbles across a hid­den world of intrigue, decep­tion and […]

“The best Elvis-fighting-a-mummy-movie I have ever seen”

So said (words to that effect) Simon Mor­ris on his Nation­al Radio movie pro­gramme about Bubba Ho-Tep. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ve read & heard quite a bit about it since its release in 2002. And now it’s com­ing soon, to the Para­mount & Light­house Theatres. I’ve sug­ges­ted to my wife on sev­er­al […]

Psst… wanna be a movie star?

48 Hours – Offi­cially NZ’s largest film com­pet­i­tion. Hun­dreds of teams of film-makers kick off tonight all around the coun­try & fin­ish on Sunday night. Dami­an Christie sug­gests “if you’re approached by a bedraggled film crew (the chances are high, there’s a couple of hun­dred teams around the coun­try), be nice to them, do what […]

The Film Festival that lasts all year long…

We thought we’d be the first to post here actu­ally. That’s “we” because James has giv­en strict instruc­tions that there is no “I” in “Wel­ling­ton­ist”. Um… pos­sibly he said it “starts with “we””. But any­way, it’s clear already who the team play­ers are, eh? So we had this epi­phany in the bath last night. (By […]