Fabric Frenzy descends on Brooklyn

This is cer­tainly a Wel­ling­ton week­end for every­one! I’m sure oth­er Wel­ling­tonis­tas have more to say about the soc­cer, the Santa Parade, the poten­tial All Whites parade and the Kirk’s Christ­mas win­dows.

But for me the week­end is all about fab­ric, craft­ing sup­plies, and adding to my craft stash.

My eyes and wal­let are all pre­pared for Fab­ric-a- brac at the Brookylyn Com­munity Cen­ter this Sat­urday from 12 noon till 3pm. 

Wel­ling­ton’s crafters have gone through their craft stashes and are selling them off.

At Fab­ric-a-brac you’ll  see mod­ern fab­ric, vin­tage fab­ric, threads, but­tons, pat­terns, trims, notions and so much more.

There is also a fab­ric fun­drais­ing table for Mary Pot­ter Hos­pice, which means spend­ing money and doing good thigs all at the same time, YAY!

There will be cof­fee, tea and sweet treats all day long. So you can shop, take a breath­er and then shop some more. As any good bar­gin hunter knows often the most prized items in a crafter­’s stash don’t hit the tables till near the end of the fair.

Remem­ber to bring cash, it’s the only cur­rency accep­ted at Fab­ric-a-brac.

Fundraising event at the Paramount featuring Guilliermo Del Toro

Tonight at the Par­mount you can sit down for two hours with Guil­li­ermo Del Toro.

He’ll be talk­ing about his life in film, and includes clips from films he’s worked on, like “Pans Labyrinth” and “Hell­boy”. Plus it’s a ques­tion and answer ses­sion, so if any­one finds out who is play­ing Bilbo, please report back.

This is a fund-rais­ing event, so it’s $45 a tick­et! Money riased tonight will go towards Wel­ling­ton pro­du­cer Bon­nie Slater and dir­ect­or Sam Kelly’s first fea­ture film, “One for the Road”.

And don’t for­get the Para­moun­t’s movie quiz night on Thursday nights, start­ing at 9 o’c­lock sharp.

So if Guil­li­ermo Del Toro is not your thing, quiz prob­ably is. And if both are, I think the choice is obvi­ous: you’ll be spend­ing every night at the Paz.

Short Film Workshop

This year the Show Me Shorts film fest­iv­al is offer­ing a half day work­shop in Wel­ling­ton open to any­one inter­ested in short films. The work­shops are a unique oppor­tun­ity to meet exper­i­enced and up and com­ing film­makers, see some great films and learn more about the craft of devel­op­ing a good short film.

 

When & Where: Sat­urday 14 Novem­ber at Para­mount Theatre

Cost: $10

 

Regis­tra­tion: 9am

 

Ses­sion One: Script devel­op­ment 9.30am – 11.00am
Film­makers Louis Suth­er­land (Run, The Six Dol­lar Fifty Man) and Paul Ward (The Graf­fiti of Mr Tupaia, Choice Night) will screen and talk about one of their own short films and dis­cuss with producer/director Paul Swadel (Poppy,No Ordin­ary Sun) what makes a great short film. There will be time for Q&A at the end of this ses­sion.

 

Morn­ing Tea: 11am – 11.30am (food and bever­ages provided)

 

Ses­sion Two: 11.30am – 1.00pm: New Shorts Show­case
Film­makers Sally Tran, Andrew Cam­pi­on, and Rollo Wen­lock screen recent work and dis­cuss the pleas­ures and chal­lenges of mak­ing shorts. 

Register for the work­shop online here.
Or con­tact anna@showmeshorts.co.nz for more inform­a­tion.

Show Me Shorts

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNA4bC0-7tw]

Show Me Shorts Film Fest­iv­al rolls into town this Thursday for 6 days with a fine selec­tion of the New Zea­l­and and Aus­trali­an short films that were con­tenders for the 8 awards. 

Tomor­row is Wel­ling­ton’s open­ing night at the Para­mount kick­ing off at 7.30pm.  Open­ing night show­cases the 8 win­ners in each cat­egory, tick­ets are $20 and include a glass of wine.

Full details of the Fest­iv­al, includ­ing the full sched­ule, themes and details of each film can be found in the pdf linked to from this page.  (We will report back with sug­ges­tions about the best ses­sions to attend.)

Come cel­eb­rate the short form and see if you can spot the next Taika Wai­titi.

West Hollywood lounge experience

Today’s Dom Post reports that the Loaded Hog will, intriguingly, be redeveloped into a “west Hol­ly­wood lounge exper­i­ence”.

Los Ange­les’s West Hol­ly­wood area is best known for its large gay vil­lage and its notori­ous night­life.

It’s the home of the Chat­eau Mar­mont (where John Belushi died and numer­ous stars did very bad things), the Viper Room (where River Phoenix died), the Roxy (where the first Amer­ic­an run of the Rocky Hor­ror Show was per­formed), the Whisky a Go Go (the club that inven­ted go-go dan­cing) and the Sun­set Strip, where dreams are made and crushed, daily.

And it’s also known for being the home of the second wave of hair met­al, spawn­ing such mas­ters of mas­cara as Pois­on, L.A. Guns and Möt­ley Crüe.

So will we see the ‘Hog trans­formed into a sort of late ’80s theme bar – a faded 1960s nightclub with chipped paint, used needles and the aroma of hair­spray waft­ing from both the men’s and the ladies’?

And – more import­antly – will we expect to see a nu hair met­al scene evolve, with a loc­al ver­sion of Möt­ley Crüe?

One can only hope the answer to all these ques­tions is, “Hell yes, please”.

Spartacus R rounds off Soundstage for 2009

The debut sea­son of Downstage’s Sunday music pro­gramme ‘Sound­stage’ has been a tear­away suc­cess. The for­mid­able line-up of bands includ­ing The Woolshed Ses­sions, Little Bush­man, Sam F Scott and The B.O.P and Rhi­an Shee­han have all thrived in the the­at­ric­al envir­on­ment play­ing to capa­city audi­ences.

We’re now at the last Sound­stage gig for 2009 and Wel­ling­ton six piece psy­che­del­ic psy­chonauts Sparta­cus R are the per­fect band to close out the sea­son. Their the­at­ric­al cre­den­tials are impec­cable hav­ing built a repu­ta­tion for unique and innov­at­ive per­form­ances at the NZ Fringe Fest­iv­al. At the Fringe 07 they presen­ted Sparta­cus R in Octo­phon­ic, and the fol­low­ing year at the Fringe 08 Sparta­cus R in 3D, com­bin­ing live music with 3D visu­als in the Para­mount.

Based on a found­a­tion of blues, rock and funk, Sparta­cus will deliv­er a cap­tiv­at­ing and elec­tri­fy­ing per­form­ance that explores new music­al and visu­al ter­rit­ory. For Sound­stage on 15 Nov Sparta­cus R have craf­ted a com­pletely new show com­bin­ing 100% new music­al mater­i­al with pro­jec­ted visu­als, act­ors and even live poetry.

More about Sparta­cus R and Sound­stage after the jump.

You’re fly-erred

Plenty of Wel­ling­to­ni­ans would have spat out their flat whites on Sat­urday morn­ing when the Dom Post cov­er revealed that our old friend Terry Serepisos is going to host New Zeal­and’s ver­sion of The Appren­tice. As I’m sure you’re all aware, the Amer­ic­an ver­sion Don­ald Trump is fam­ous for put­ting his name on all sorts of ridicu­lous things:

With his suc­cess in real estate and tele­vi­sion, Trump has suc­ceeded in mar­ket­ing the Trump name on a large num­ber of products. These products include Trump Fin­an­cial (a mort­gage firm), Trump Sales and Leas­ing (res­id­en­tial sales), Trump Uni­ver­sity (a busi­ness edu­ca­tion com­pany), Trump Res­taur­ants (Loc­ated in Trump Tower and con­sist­ing of Trump Buf­fet, Trump Cater­ing, Trump Ice Cream Par­lor, and Trump Bar), GoTrump(an online travel web­site), Don­ald J. Trump Sig­na­ture Col­lec­tion (a line of menswear, men’s accessor­ies, and watches), Don­ald Trump The Fra­grance (2004), Trump Ice bottled water, Trump Magazine, Trump Golf, Trump Insti­tute, Trump The Game (1989 Board Game), Trump Vodka, and Trump Steaks. In addi­tion, Trump reportedly receives $1.5 mil­lion for each one hour present­a­tion he does for the The Learn­ing Annex.

So what this fly wants to know is what products do you see Terry put­ting his name on? And would you buy them?

Under the Southern Cross

A safe place to avoid all the ghouls and zom­bies this Sat­urday night will be the Film Archive cinema.

A bril­liant silent fea­ture film from the 1920s – Under the South­ern Cross – is screen­ing with live music­al accom­pani­ment by War­ren Max­well, Maaka McGregor and Himi­ona Grace.  

This “Maori folk drama” made by Uni­ver­sal Stu­di­os in 1929, fea­tures an epic love tri­angle, cave scenes shot on Waitomo and White Islands, a fiery vol­cano and ‘A Con­test of Spears’. It’s also worth com­ing to see for the inter­titles alone.  

“Neither tri­bal cus­tom, danger nor the sac­red ban of “tapu” could cover­come the strength of his love” 

Lim­ited seats avail­able. Tick­ets: $10

Weight Watchers

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Par­al­lel Dance Ensemble (and their video mak­ing team) for tak­ing out the top award at this year’s Handle the Jan­dal music video awards. Enjoy…

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQRJTVraV1M]

Oth­er win­ners (click thru for video on You­Tube):

Best Use of Exploit­at­ive Tac­tics to Pro­mote A Band:
Judah Finnigan and Ben Forman for High­life’s Ber­serk

Best Editing:
Joe Fish for James Duncan’s A Obvi­ous

Best Cine­ma­to­graphy:
Kim­ber­ley Brown for Elec­tric Wire Hustle’s Per­cep­tion

Best Concept:
Lisa Dunn for Par­al­lel Dance Ensemble’s Weight Watch­ers

Best Anim­a­tion:
Pre­ston McNeill for Isaac Aesili’s With You In My Bed

Rising Star:
Greg Paw­sey for Cou­gar Cou­gar Cou­gar’s Satan’s Blues