Today’s soup is Mine­strone and today’s film is Nude Zealand

Soup & a Seat for $8!
Need I say more?

Nude Zealand (New Zealand, 1999)
Ninox Films, Exempt, 45 min­utes

A series of frank inter­views with var­i­ous New Zealand natur­ists, explor­ing their many and var­ied moti­va­tions for fol­low­ing the clothes-free lifestyle.

Orig­i­nal­ly screened in Prime Time on TV3, Nude Zealand man­ages to avoid many of the clichés and much of the innu­en­do that so fre­quent­ly goes hand-in-hand with doc­u­men­taries on natur­ism.

Nude Zealand talks to mem­bers of Natur­ist clubs and the doc­u­men­tary crew is on hand when Christchurch fire­fight­ers pay a vis­it to a local club, some of whom are mak­ing ten­ta­tive steps towards life ‘in the buck’.

Nude Zealand also looks back to the first NZ nud­ist club, estab­lished in 1933. Warn­ing: (not sur­pris­ing­ly) CONTAINS NUDITY.

Event details here

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.