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Review: Strike Sessions with Adam Page

Strike Ses­sion with Adam Page is about halfway through its run at Down­stage. Strike is a long-stand­ing New Zealand-based per­cus­sion group, and they’ve teamed up with Ade­laide mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist Adam Page for this show. 

After the jump, kumaras, mir­im­bas and old car parts.

Fight of the Conchords, Part Deux

Recent­ly the gals over at Pret­ty Pret­ty Pret­ty ran a poll to set­tle the age-old argu­ment about which of the Con­chords is pret­ti­er — Bret or Jemaine. Bret won that round, but now that Jemaine has been nom­i­nat­ed for an Emmy for Best Actor in a Com­e­dy Series, that means he’s at least the sixth fun­ni­est actor on tel­ly, and Bret isn’t. Right? 

Oh, and they were also nom­i­nat­ed for Best Com­e­dy Series. Good for them.

Same old

The Graf­fog­ra­phy and Wgtn Wall Street graf­fi­ti blogs noticed that the Welling­ton City Coun­cil’s anti-graf­fi­ti posters (you know, these ones) had illus­trat­ed the evil graf­fi­ti by using a pho­to col­lage of actu­al non-ille­gal graf­fi­ti.

Wgtn Wall Street says:

My man over at Graf­fog­ra­phy first alert­ed me to the work by Drypnz and Ran­dom being used in the cam­paign, art­work that broke no law and was now put under a neg­a­tive spot­light by the Coun­cil.

So then Wgtn Wall Street emailed the coun­cil with his con­cerns.

They were apolo­getic and appar­ent­ly the ‘pho­tog­ra­ph­er’ did­n’t know that the work used in the cam­paign was deemed legal. They agreed to remove the work from future cam­paigns but god knows how many posters, stick­ers etc that have already print­ed and not to men­tion the amount of mon­ey wast­ed on a poor­ly researched scheme.

It does­n’t reflect so well on the coun­cil. Their anti-ille­gal-graf­fi­ti cam­paign seems to demon­strate that they don’t actu­al­ly know what they’re fight­ing.

Remembering Dr Seddon Bennington

Quite apart from the work he did at Te Papa, Dr Sed­don Ben­ning­ton was some­one who will be remem­bered by many Welling­to­ni­ans, both per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly. I met him a cou­ple of times through the Civic Trust, and was always impressed with his charm and intel­li­gence.

His funer­al will be at Ron­go­maraeroa (Te Papa’s marae) on Wednes­day after­noon and his cas­ket will be brought onto the marae on Tues­day 21st July at 4pm. Those wish­ing to pay their respects will be able to do so until 10pm that night. Dr Ben­ning­ton will remain on the marae overnight until the con­clu­sion of the funer­al ser­vice on Wednes­day, and there is also a memo­r­i­al book to sign on Lev­el 2 of Te Papa.

PUDDLE PUDDLE PUDDLE

The love­li­ness of one of New Zealand’s best-ever pop bands The Pud­dle is man­i­fest­ing at Hap­py on Sat­ur­day night.

They’ve even got a video for a sin­gle off one of their new albums:

Sup­port from Marineville. Hap­py down­stairs cnr Vivan and Tory streets.

Stockhausen! (reminder)

Just a quick reminder: Stock­hausen’s Mantra!  Sun­day, 6 pm, Hunter Coun­cil Cham­ber, VUW Welling­ton.

There will also be a pre-con­cert talk by Robin Maconie at 5 pm in the Hunter Lec­ture The­atre. Tick­ets: $5/$10/free for stu­dents.

More here.

fabric, fabric , everywhere

After a bril­liant launch in April, Fabr ic-a-brac is back!

Here’s your chance to pick up fab­u­lous vin­tage, unusu­al and mod­ern fab­ric, but­tons & pat­terns. Fab­ric-a-brac promis­es  a huge range of fab­ric styles – from off­cuts of uphol­stery fab­ric, to style‑y leather and tons of vin­tage

So head over to Brook­lyn Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre this Sat­ur­day from 12 noon till 3pm. We rec­comend get­ting there bang on noon as we know from last time the ear­ly bird does score the best fab­ric haul.

Fab­ric-a-brac also fea­tures a stall rais­ing mon­ey for Mary Pot­ter Hos­pice. Any­one can donate for the table just pop along to any of the places list­ed on the web­site.

Now park­ing is pret­ty tight so con­sid­er catch­ing the bus and since you are up that way drop into the pent­house and catch some film fes­ti­val screen­ings.

When: 12noon – 3pm, Sat­ur­day 18 July
Where: Brook­lyn Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, 18 Har­ri­son St, Brook­lyn

More info head over to the Fab­ric-a-brac web­site.

Cinephilia: Film Festival Preview

The Welling­ton Film Fes­ti­val (sor­ry, New Zealand Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, Welling­ton Branch) is a huge under­tak­ing for the com­mit­ted cin­e­ma-goer. Every year we devour the pro­gramme for weeks in advance, sched­ul­ing annu­al leave and long “lunch breaks”, try­ing to work out what is essen­tial and what isn’t. After 20 years of this, I’ve only just begun to realise that in the search for the essen­tial many oth­er plea­sures have been pass­ing me by. This year, before I even looked at the pro­gramme, I asked the Fes­ti­val to choose a stack of DVDs for me, with the empha­sis on the unher­ald­ed and the unex­pect­ed. Thus, of the 13 films I’ve been watch­ing over the last three or so weeks, all but one of them were from the back half of the book (and prob­a­bly would not have been on my per­son­al short­list) but all of them had some­thing spe­cial to offer. So, is my advice for the Fes­ti­val to not book in advance but instead choose films at ran­dom depend­ing on your own avail­abil­i­ty and prox­im­i­ty to a venue? Maybe it is.

[Read the rest of the Welling­ton­ista Film Fes­ti­val Pre­view after the jump]

Never mind the bad puns, here’s Pollux

One of the worst-kept secrets in Welling­ton bar-land is about to be revealed: new wine bar Pol­lux will open next week, in what was once the State Opera House espres­so bar in Man­ners St.

Now, as a mod­est­ly-edu­cat­ed fly I knew that Pol­lux was a god and a star, which made me won­der what made it a good name for a wine bar. But appar­ent­ly “Pol­lux” comes from poly­deukeis, Greek for “much sweet wine”, so that astrologers asso­ciate the star Pol­lux with pros­per­i­ty and cel­e­bra­tion with wine. I’m not one for astrol­o­gy myself, but I’ll drink to that!

Real Hot Bitches — record breakers

Who knew (this par­tic­u­lar Welling­ton­ista did­n’t) that our fair city’s top ’80s cheese-rock dance troupe’ — the Real Hot Bitch­es — had set the world record for most peo­ple in a syn­chro­nised dance? In Christchurch, of all places. Here’s the evi­dence, in all its leg­warmed, span­dexed glo­ry…

[Hat-tip: From the Morgue]