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.