Normally around this time our lovely Sue would be getting all rapturous about the Downtown Community Ministry‘s Annual Book Fair, but since she’s rather busy, let me just tell you that the fair is happening again this weekend (August 21 & 22) at the TSB Arena, with doors will open from 9am to 4pm each day.

If you like books, you should go along, because prices start at $2. Not enough of a spiel for you? Well what Sue said last year should do!

The Film Archive Traveling Film Show is back in Wellington this week with a brilliant selection of space films sourced from their extensive collection.

This should be a doosey (doozey? have just realised I don’t know how to spell that) with early fantasy films from the late 1890s by French film maker and magician George Méliès. Plus footage from 1965 of Russian astronaut Alexei Leonov conducting the world’s first spacewalk!

So y’all asked for more food reviews with pics, so today I am going to do short reviews of the following places:

1. The Ambeli
2. The Grill at the Duxton
3. Lagerfield as a function venue
4. St John’s Restaurant

I hope you don’t mind that I’ve put them all in one post.

Congratulations to Richard who you will find hiding away at Munchen Burger getting his borsct on. This week we’ve got our last prize to give away, thanks to celebrate Wellington on a Plate, thanks to the lovely Positively Wellington Tourism, we have a $100 voucher to The Occidental to give away.

Writing recaps of New Zealand’s Next Top Model is something that I’d normally do over at Pretty Pretty Pretty, but since the first episode of Season Two was filmed in Wellington (nice work, Positively Tourism!), I thought I might put up some thoughts on all the places that they shot.

• The girls stay at
  The Museum Hotel, which one girl describes as “pristine”, while another expresses surprise that they’re not staying in a backpackers’ to save money. It’s cute that she knows about budgets, and hopefully she’ll learn about product placement sooner rather than later. The Museum Hotel is indeed a gorgeous space, and the bathtubs are so big that you could probably fit all 13 girls in at once. There is in fact a clip of them all sitting in a spa later but I couldn’t figure out if it was at th hotel or out at Boomrock.
• For their first catwalk experience, the girls are charged with stomping around the Water Whirler – which we’d already read about on Stuff. It was reassuring to see how bad most of the girls were at walking in heels, but a warning: if you’re thinking about trying to recreate this scene, security guards will have a very different idea about what ‘fierce’ is. You are not allowed on the Water Whirler.
• Because every tourist venture needs a montage, we get to see the girls with Solace in the Wind (a less polite person than me would comment on how Mr Solace appears to be more animated – and articulate – than some of them) and getting excited about shopping in the Old Bank Arcade.
  
  Joanna

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Hey all, just did a site upgrade (from Drupal 5.something to 6.17, for those that are interested).

I seem to have lost some comments off the last couple of posts — they should be recoverable and back online tomorrow.

If you notice anything else amiss, drop us a line at our info email address.

(Incidentally, this new theme is temporary — we’re working away on another one in the background — this one was just easier to use with the upgraded system instead of upgrading the old theme, which was riddled with, errr, idiosyncratic code).