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 […]

Steak frites: does what it says on the box

If you’re after a clas­sic and hearty meal, then we heart­ily recom­mend you hoof it to Le Met­ro­pol­it­an on Cuba Street. In fact, we sug­gest you go there on Monday March 14 espe­cially when they’re hav­ing a fun­draiser for Christ­ch­urch. How about I tell you about the din­ner I had there recently in order to […]

Offbeat is back!

The Off­beat Ori­gin­als story has a happy end­ing it seems – they are open for busi­ness, since Tues­day even. We can report that the fish­bur­gers are just as they always were. Pre­vi­ously: What happened? Most missed Signs of life And the ori­gin­al Wel­ling­tonista Off­beat review

Two Pecha Kucha Nights

If you’re like me, you’ve spent the last few days feel­ing rather glum and not in much of a going-out mood. But there are a couple of Pecha Kucha Night events com­ing up in Wel­ling­ton this week­end that look pretty good – one with an arts theme, the oth­er with a sci­ence theme (includ­ing a […]

Christchurch

A rather viol­ent earth­quake hit Christ­ch­urch yes­ter­day, and it has dev­ast­ated a city that, quite frankly, has had enough of feel­ing the earth move. People are help­ing where and when they can. We do know that this is one situ­ation where throw­ing money at a prob­lem can help. It might not fix everything, but right […]

Profile: The mysterious guy behind Weird in Wellington

A few of us at the Wel­ling­tonista are fans of the TAWA-nom­in­ated Weird in Wel­ling­ton photo blog, a col­lec­tion of oddit­ies, curi­ous­it­ies and just real weird stuff out there in the city. So, using a trail of car­pet offcuts, I lured the mys­ter­i­ous fel­low behind the blog in to Wel­ling­tonista Towers, strapped him to the […]

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 […]

Review: Long Cloud Youth Theatre

For the last few weeks, a group of bright young act­ors have been hard at work at the Long Cloud Youth Theatre’s sum­mer school work­shop. The sum­mer school attendees – aged from 16 to 21 – were split into two groups that pro­duced Daugh­ters of Heav­en and The Pic­ture of Dori­an Gray. And these two […]

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

In 1969 John Wayne won his only Academy Award for his por­tray­al of the iras­cible one-eyed US Mar­shal Roost­er Cog­burn in True Grit, hired by young Kim Darby to avenge the murder of her fath­er. Now the ever-sur­­pris­ing Coen Broth­ers have brought us their inter­pret­a­tion (back to Charles Portis’ ori­gin­al nov­el, with evid­ently no ref­er­ence […]

Review: Heat

Baby, it’s cold out­side. “Heat”, by New Zea­l­and play­wright Linda Chan­wai-Earle, returns to Wel­ling­ton after its 2008 debut at Bats. I did­n’t quite know what to expect of this icy Ant­arc­tic tale, but I ended up really enjoy­ing it, and found it sur­pris­ingly mov­ing. Set in an isol­ated research hut in Ant­arc­tica, it focuses on […]