Remem­ber the good time y’all had last year at the TAWAs? Sure, a lot of that was us up on stage, but also, it was the Klezmer Rebs, play­ing rol­lick­ing­ly good tunes. So we imag­ine you’d like to see them again, yes?

Good news, friends! They’re play­ing a gig next Fri­day July 30th at the Bath House, with Rodri­go Bros, The Char­coal White, Sam Man­zan­za Africa Rhythm Band, Rose’, Rus­sell Self, Han­nah Howes, oSka and more yet to con­firm. The gig is to raise mon­ey for the Sea Shep­pard and Pete Bethune. 

Come out and show your sup­port for oppo­si­tion to whal­ing.  All bands are donat­ing their ser­vices and all pro­ceeds go to the Sea Shep­herd Soci­ety to help them con­tin­ue their direct action against whalers in our oceans.

Yes, there are divid­ed opin­ions on the Sea Shep­pard’s tech­niques and Pete Bethune in par­tic­u­lar. What’s not up for debate? How much fun it is to have a jol­ly good dance. 

Cross­post­ed from Pret­ty Pret­ty Pret­ty, because I can.

It’s been a while since our last Pret­ty Pret­ty Par­ty cloth­ing swap, and giv­en my cur­rent home­less­ness, it’ll prob­a­bly be ages until the next one, but nev­er fear! If you need to fresh­en up your wardrobe, you can still get your swap on, next Sun­day:

The Big Shwop

• Sun­day July 25
• Venue: The St James The­atre, Courte­nay Place, Welling­ton
• Time: 10 am — 2.30 pm
• Tick­ets: $20 from our web­site or just turn up on the day
• R 18 event as alco­hol is being served
• Bring up to 20 items of cloth­ing

Tick­ets are $20, but because there are strict rules for what peo­ple can bring in, you know that the clothes will be good. Also, there’s all kinds of added good­ies on the day.

In 1895, an elder­ly, ill Mark Twain embarked on a world lec­ture tour, in order to earn enough mon­ey to pay back the $100,000 debt he held. The tour took him down under, includ­ing a vis­it to Whanganui. And it’s this event that Mark Twain and Me in Mao­ri­land takes its inspi­ra­tion from.

After its pre­miere at the New Zealand Fes­ti­val of the Arts ear­li­er this year, the play returns for a short run at Down­stage.

The play sup­pos­es that Mr Twain took a rather more active role in local pol­i­tics, inflam­ming the Pake­ha, and both pro-Euro­pean and anti-Euro­pean Maori alike.

But this is no staid his­toric dra­ma. The play has lash­ings of te reo Maori — some­times trans­lat­ed, oth­er times not, but you’re clever so you can fig­ure it out from the con­text. And there’s a pleas­ing amount of song and music, with Mr Twain strap­ping on an elec­tric gui­tar at one point, to join in on a blues num­ber.

Play­wright David Geary’s inno­v­a­tive script has moments of high com­e­dy, yet with the pow­er to get right down into some real­ly grit­ty emo­tion­al moments. But what I real­ly enjoyed the most was how New Zealand this play is. I’m sure all the places Twain vis­it­ed on his 1895 tour have their own sto­ries to tell (or make up), but it’s just real­ly sat­is­fy­ing to see an inven­tive, enter­tain­ing play like this that’s come out of New Zealand.

• Mark Twain and Me in Mao­ri­land
  Down­stage The­atre until 24 July

 I am not going to see a sin­gle film at the Film Fes­ti­val. I’m not much of a movie-goer at the best of times, and the idea of hav­ing to decide where I’m going to be weeks in advance in order to avoid hav­ing to sit with my knees around my ears in the back row some­where just does­n’t appeal to me at all. But I know that there are peo­ple amongst us who love the fes­ti­val. One Welling­ton­ista has tak­en two weeks off work to attend as many films as pos­si­ble. Anoth­er’s going to see The Room in Christchurch and Welling­ton. You crazy kids and your hula hoops and your mov­ing pic­tures! 

But appar­ent­ly not all is run­ning smooth­ly. We got a copy of an angry let­ter an acquain­tance is send­ing to the fes­ti­val, and I thought I’d post it here to see if any of y’all are hav­ing sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences.

To whom it may con­cern,

I write to you in response to the chaos I wit­nessed this after­noon whilst lin­ing up to buy a tick­et for a pop­u­lar film at the Embassy the­atre. I know it was sil­ly of me to expect to get a tick­et on a busy Sat­ur­day half an hour before the film starts, but some peo­ple choose to make these choic­es. What shocked me was the lev­el of com­pe­tence involved at the box office. The whole thing seems very inef­fi­cient. I have an idea that you may find use­ful or not. Why not have three sep­a­rate lines lead­ing to the three sep­a­rate con­soles using dividers? I used to work at the Embassy and I know they have these dividers in the base­ment. If the lines are orga­nized you can then make things a lot smoother dur­ing peak times. Make one line for advance book­ings, one line for tick­et col­lec­tion from pre-orders, and one line for the imme­di­ate screen­ing. You can even go a step fur­ther by using a sign stat­ing the title of the film about to screen and whether or not it is sold out

There are craft mar­kets that hap­pen occa­sion­al­ly like Craft 2.0 and the Knack, which we get suit­ably excit­ed about at the time, but anoth­er mar­ket that hap­pens every week­end takes place on Sat­ur­days in the under­ground carpark at Frank Kitts.

Usu­al­ly they have a mix of stalls, food and music, but tomor­row they have a par­tic­u­lar focus: 

“Won­ders of Wool” Mar­ket

Show­ing off the region’s fibre artists, spin­ners, fel­ters, knit­ters & weavers.

Includ­ing demon­stra­tions on spin­ning, weav­ing, cro­chet­ing as well as some specif­i­cal­ly for the kids.

Over 60 stalls, includ­ing:

• Felt­ed hats, scarves & throws
• Alpaca cloth­ing
• Hand­wo­ven nov­el­ty yarns
• Hand-dyed spin­ning and felt­ing fibres
• Cro­cheted items
• Meri­no cloth­ing
• Balls of wool, knit­ting nee­dles, felt­ing nee­dles etc

 The mar­ket runs from 10am-4pm, it’s under cov­er, and the organ­is­ers promise it’ll be warm, so if you’re up for some yarn, you should def­i­nite­ly go along and check it out, not least because my aunt will be sell­ing off her huge stash of weav­ing wool (we’re all about the nepo­tism here, of course).

It’s nev­er been a tougher time to be run­ning a film fes­ti­val. In addi­tion to the usu­al com­mer­cial con­sid­er­a­tions of just sell­ing enough tick­ets to stay afloat, each year brings with it fresh wrin­kles to be accom­mo­dat­ed. The win­dow of avail­abil­i­ty of titles shrinks every year because dis­trib­u­tors don’t want to sit on their invest­ment. There’s increas­ing pres­sure to get films into cin­e­mas before down­load­ing destroys the mar­ket and less time for films to build a deserv­ing inter­na­tion­al buzz.

In pre­vi­ous years films like the Argen­tin­ian Best For­eign Lan­guage Oscar win­ner The Secrets in their Eyes might have been tent-pole fea­tures for a Welling­ton Film Fes­ti­val but have already been and gone from local cin­e­mas so it’s incum­bent on direc­tor and chief pro­gram­mer Bill Gos­den (and his cohorts) to dig deep­er to find more gems for our annu­al mid-win­ter fix.

Peo­ple keep ask­ing me, Dan, they say, what sort of Fes­ti­val is it, this year, and I have to answer that I real­ly don’t know. I’ve only seen 19 out of the 160+ movies in the book. That’s not enough to know any­thing, real­ly, about the Fes­ti­val as a whole. It’s less than 15% of an enor­mous­ly rich and diverse smor­gas­bord of poten­tial good­ies.

As usu­al, I asked the Fes­ti­val peo­ple to feed me the unher­ald­ed and unknown, the films that might miss out on atten­tion from the big media, and they did. As might be expect­ed, not all of them worked for me but I have some sug­ges­tions for films that I am assured will not be com­ing back on gen­er­al release lat­er this year.

In the dra­ma sec­tion I was very affect­ed by Hon­ey, a beau­ti­ful Turk­ish film about a young boy with some kind of learn­ing dis­or­der, des­per­ate for the approval of his teach­ers, class­mates and his tac­i­turn bee­keep­er father. A fine exam­ple of slow cin­e­ma, I feel cer­tain that you will be absorbed by its beau­ty and the mirac­u­lous cen­tral per­for­mance.

The rest of the Welling­ton­ista pre­view, after the jump.

We already told you how excit­ed we are about the upcom­ing Welling­ton on a Plate fes­ti­val, and now we’re even more excit­ed to announce that we’re work­ing with Pos­i­tive­ly Welling­ton Tourism to help you get the most out of the event. Yes, that’s right, you! Over the next five weeks, we’re going to be giv­ing away one $100 vouch­er each week to one of five dif­fer­ent restau­rants par­tic­i­pat­ing in Welling­ton on a Plate. That’s some seri­ous deli­cious­ness to be had right there!

First up, we have a vouch­er for Ele­ments Cafe. Ele­ments is a fre­quent nom­i­nee in our TAWAs  for Best Sur­bur­ban Venue, and with menu items like char­grilled lamb loin, lamb & porci­ni pie served with truf­fle mash on the din­ner menu, it’s not hard to see why. The ser­vice is warm and friend­ly, the set­ting in an old butcher’s shop is love­ly and the food is extreme­ly tasty. It’s well worth a trip out to Lyall Bay either for brunch, din­ner or their cook­ing class­es.  As part of Welling­ton on a Plate, Ele­ments are offer­ing a $35 two-course lunch, or a $40 three-course din­ner, includ­ing a glass of wine. Yum!

It’s time to eat eat eat! The pro­gramme for Welling­ton on a Plate has been launched, and it is mak­ing us mighty hun­gry. At the same time though, it makes us a lit­tle frus­trat­ed, because we’re not sure how to book events, or how much they’ll cost, and the descrip­tions are often quite vague. Still, there’s a lot of events that sounds fun, from Steam­punk tours to mur­der mys­ter­ies, and there’s a range of spe­cial deals on at restau­rants (final­ly eat­ing at Mar­tin Bosley’s is in finan­cial reach!). Also new this year is a burg­er con­test. We dare you to try each and every one, and report back to us with your find­ings. So, you’re tak­ing us out for din­ner then, yes?