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