Keep that picnic rug in the car

Just a note to any­one plan­ning on head­ing to the Dell for the 2012 Films By Star­light screen­ing tonight, Bill Cun­ning­ham New York has been post­poned due to the wind until tomor­row night, Fri­day 20 Janu­ary.     The screen­ings start at dusk (approx 8:30 – 8:45pm). This pic­ture is the crowd assembled by 7:45 last night […]

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 […]

Our movies have gone to the dogs

Remem­ber Footrot Flats? Of course you do. You prob­ably did­n’t even need that link, unless you’re a wee little thing or new to the coun­try. Mur­ray Ball’s car­toon strip about farm life and a dog named Dog ran every day in the Even­ing Post for nearly 20 years. In fact, in 1987, Footrot Flats: A […]

Preview: 2011 Film Festival

Des­pite the shock­ing and inex­plic­able decision to omit Patrick Keiller’s Robin­son in Ruins from this year’s Film Fest­iv­al (a dis­aster applic­able only to me I think) the actu­al line-up is as good as every­one says. At least I think it is from sur­vey­ing about 20 out of the 160+ titles in the pro­gramme – hardly […]

No Way. Yes, Way.

Shot in Auck­land and put togeth­er in Miramar­wood, “The War­ri­or’s Way” is an NZ/South Korea/US East-West samurai-cow­­boy green-screen action-fx tongue-in-cheek cheese-fest mash-up. While this fine Oscar-worthy fea­ture has unbe­liev­ably gone straight to DVD in NZ, fol­low­ing sold-out screen­ings at the Roxy last week­end (wrangled by its Wel­ling­ton edit­or Jonno Woodford‑Robinson) there are three more this […]

Cinephilia: World Cinema Showcase 2011 Preview

For this year’s World Cinema Show­case pre­view I star­ted with a list of all the films I wanted to see and then real­ised that I had used up my entire world lim­it. So, for­give me if these briefs are brief but this year’s Show­case is as heavy­weight as it’s ever been (and runs for three […]

The Roxy: it’s a little bit foxy

On Thursday I took a step back in time to the early 1930s and entered the Roxy Cinema. Dan will, I’m sure, tell you more later about just what sort of cinema the Roxy is. For those who can­’t wait it’s the first pur­­pose-built 3D cinema in the coun­try, with the best tech­no­logy out there. […]

Brooklyn School raises funds for Redcliffs

Brook­lyn School has organ­ised a spe­cial screen­ing of shorts this Sunday (3 April) at the Para­mount to raise funds for Red­cliffs School in Christ­ch­urch, which reopened last week after the Feb­ru­ary 22nd earth­quake. Fol­low­ing a selec­tion of NZ film clas­sics — includ­ing Sima Urale’s beau­ti­ful and poignant debut “O Tamaiti” — you’ll be able to […]

Wellington Killah Beez on the Swarm

We like our blue cheese served with honey at Pol­lux, and we like our cock­tails honey-rimmed at S&M. It’s fair to say that we here at the Wel­ling­tonista are fans of bees, no mat­ter what their polit­ic­al affil­i­ations may be. That said, every­one knows we’re a bunch of pinko lefties, so it’s only fit­ting that […]

Wellington Film Society starts tonight

All over the world it is volun­teer organ­isa­tions like the Wel­ling­ton Film Soci­ety that keep the flame of film art alive so that cinephili­acs like me can get a decent pal­ate cleanser every Monday night after a week­end of Hol­ly­wood tosh. I can’t recom­mend Soci­ety mem­ber­ship highly enough. Your mem­ber­ship fee equates to around three […]