Beautiful Burnout tasting session

Frantic Assembly and the Nation­al Theatre of Scot­land are over here with their acclaimed show Beau­ti­ful Burnout. Tonight there’s a spe­cial ‘Social Media Call’ for social media users.  The cast will per­form two key scenes from the show, then will be avail­able for a short Q&A ses­sion. You’ll be able to film, pho­to­graph, tweet, and/or […]

My highlights for 2011

I had a busy year, which shows in my poor post­ing record recently. Des­pite the man­i­fold reas­ons to be cheer­less, there were also plenty of good things hap­pen­ing in Wel­ling­ton: on the water­front, up Cuba St and all over town.

Urban Harvest

Urb­an Har­vest is a Wel­ling­ton-based com­pany that deliv­ers loc­ally grown pro­duce, meat and oth­er culin­ary delights. For the fest­ive sea­son, they’ve branched out into Christ­mas hampers, and have opened a pop-up shop in their Mt Vic­tor­ia headquar­ters (29 Hania St) for those who like to get up close with their yuletide nomz. The Wel­ling­tonista were […]

Little Bark – Party

Fri­day music video time. Here’s a new one from Wel­ling­ton’s Little Bark. Lots more good Little Bark listen­ing (and free down­loads) over at her band­camp page.

Review: Wake Less

Binge Cul­ture Col­lect­ive were “attempt­ing to cre­ate an envir­on­ment that’s as flu­id and respons­ive as a dream is.” They want to “push the bound­ar­ies of per­form­ance and explore the things that can’t be done onscreen or online.” I think they have suc­cess­fully achieved these two aims. Wheth­er the per­form­ance says any­thing more than ‘exper­i­ment­ing with […]

Review: Drowning in Veronica Lake

Veron­ica Lake was a film star in the 1940s. She was a tiny, sexy blonde. Her hair was styled to fall art­fully over her face con­ceal­ing one eye. She lived her life in a sim­il­ar man­ner – chan­ging her story to suit the mood she was in at the time. Drown­ing in Veron­ica Lake is […]

Pie time

Many fin­gers in many pies and bunny men of the moment, The Nudge have their album release gig this Fri­day night at San Fran­cisco Bath House.  You’ll recog­nise these three from a con­coc­tion of oth­er incarn­a­tions: Ryan  Preb­ble, James Coyle and Iraia Whakamoe with spe­cial guests War­ren Max­well  and DJ Elect­ica.  $15 on the door  

Notional Significance: Clearing

 [See all Notion­al Sig­ni­fic­ance posts] The offramp leads me down into what, for want of a bet­ter term, I will call the heart of John­son­ville. The loc­al RSA greets me with a Bofors gun and an ad for its eponym­ous res­taur­ant (“Fam­ily Friendly Envir­on­ment”). Along with the Sal­va­tion Army, Super Liquor, a ser­vice sta­tion and […]

Notional Significance: Gorge

[See all Notion­al Sig­ni­fic­ance posts] The stretch of Hutt Rd from Kaiwarawhara to Ngaur­anga is a long, dry slog through an arti­fi­cial val­ley. The west­ern side is almost nat­ur­al, covered by ten­a­cious regen­er­a­tion, but often cut, but­tressed and battered to keep the slope from fail­ing, occa­sion­ally sliced by gul­lies and roads that scrabble up to […]

Wellingtonians welcome

This is a cheeky post but it involves a heap of Wel­ling­to­ni­ans so bear with me. Thanks to Air NZ, it’s pos­sible to vis­it Wel­ling­to­ni­an Bret McK­en­zie and funny man Ham­ish Blake on the set of Two Little Boys, Rob Sarkies latest fea­ture, cur­rently being shot in Inver­car­gill. It’s a very rare chance to come […]