Nocturnal Sunshine

Well today there is time to squeeze the out the last of sol­stice by squeez­ing out a quick post to mark the occa­sion.  Mid-win­ter is offi­cial­ly here with the end of the short­est day, the end of the grow­ing pow­er of cold and dark­ness and the start of the growth of warmth and light.  While there is plen­ty to cel­e­brate about mid-win­ter (mulled wine, boots, hats and scarves spring to mind) there is some­thing heart­en­ing in the knowl­edge that the days will be get­ting longer and us hardy Welling­to­ni­ans can give our­selves a pat on the back for sur­viv­ing the worst of it with our love for Welling­ton intact.  After all, there is no such thing as bad weath­er, just bad clothes.

You may or may not have noticed but the ener­gies of the Welling­ton­ista have been divert­ed into the twit­ter­stream some­what of late, but hey we find plen­ty of our read­ers there these days too!  Sol­stice is get­ting a few a men­tions around the place and I found  this charm­ing tweet:

@RowanSmith Went to Druids’ sol­stice do at Stone­henge Aotearoa. Druid: “We give thx to the pow­ers of the East and to the guy hold­ing this light for me”

So we are curi­ous, do you mark Sol­stice?  Are you plan­ning any­thing for Matari­ki this week?  Let us know in the com­ments or on twit­ter @wellingtonista, a post on hot tips for Matari­ki is planned for tomor­row.

Whare ’nuff

This Thurs­day the 18th of June, Dei­dre Brown’s “Maori Archi­tec­ture: from Fale to Wharenui and Beyond” will be launched at the School of Archi­tec­ture in Vivian St.

The cel­e­bra­tions will start with a mihi at 5:45pm, fol­lowed by a lec­ture at 6 and drinks at 7. If you’re inter­est­ed, please con­tact Chris­tine McCarthy (04 463 6164 or christine.mccarthy@vuw.ac.nz) to RSVP before the end of tomor­row (the 16th).

Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra — Tickets Giveaway

The Welling­ton Inter­na­tion­al Ukulele Orches­tra have flicked us a cou­ple of tick­ets to give away for their upcom­ing show at the Michael Fowler Cen­tre (Sat 27 June). 

To be in to win, watch their new ‘It’s a Heartache’ video, then email info@wellingtonista.com with the sub­ject line: WIUO Com­pe­ti­tion, and in the body of the email, answer this ques­tion: what is the flavour of the tart that fea­tures in the video?

Com­pe­ti­tion clos­es Noon, Wed 24 June.

Win­ner has been noti­fied! Thanks for all the entries.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqynAAYdLW8]
 

Bus STOP

Hey, Mr Bus Dri­ver, that per­son run­ning down the foot­path, wav­ing at you, just ten metres or so from the bus stop? They prob­a­bly want to get on the bus.

And the guy who’s just got on and tells you to “wait, there’s some­one just com­ing” — he’s prob­a­bly want­i­ng you to wait, ‘cos there’s some­one com­ing.

I under­stand you’re the ‘Express’ — but, real­ly, no-one is going to be put out if you wait an extra 5 sec­onds to let a strag­gler catch up (espe­cial­ly if you spend a minute harangu­ing a pas­sen­ger for dar­ing to try and pay their fare with a $20 note.)

Censor this!

I’m sure most Welling­ton­istas would agree that Aro Video is the best video hire place in town, so when our sub­scriber newslet­ter includ­ed the head­ing “We inter­rupt our reg­u­lar pro­gram for this impor­tant announce­ment…” we could­n’t ignore it, and in fact we felt it was our duty to pass on this impor­tant mes­sage:

CAMPAIGN FOR CENSORSHIP REFORM

We are spear­head­ing a cam­paign for cen­sor­ship reform and are call­ing upon the sup­port of our val­ued cus­tomers and the wider film-lov­ing pub­lic.

We believe that the cur­rent leg­is­la­tion is seri­ous­ly out­dat­ed and unfair­ly dis­ad­van­tages the medi­um of DVD. As such, it has severe­ly impact­ed on what titles can be made avail­able for rent, sale or trade with­in New Zealand.

The main rea­son for this are the ‘pro­hib­i­tive’ costs of clas­si­fi­ca­tion fees, and par­tic­u­lar­ly the cri­te­ria for which titles are sub­ject­ed to the cost­ly exam­i­na­tion process. For exam­ple, it would cost over $2200 to clas­si­fy the high­ly acclaimed orig­i­nal BBC mini-series of “State of Play” (the Hol­ly­wood remake of which is cur­rent­ly play­ing in cin­e­mas).

This cam­paign is not “anti-cen­sor­ship” but we insist that the cur­rent lev­els of reg­u­la­tion are no longer appro­pri­ate for today’s media and cul­tur­al envi­ron­ment. We sim­ply would like to be able to pro­vide you with a greater range of qual­i­ty enter­tain­ment, and help elim­i­nate the ridicu­lous dou­ble-stan­dards that cur­rent­ly pre­vail.

For more infor­ma­tion, please vis­it our online forum at www.lumiere.net.nz/censorship-reform, where you can also reg­is­ter your sup­port, com­ments and sug­ges­tions.

Also, if you know of oth­ers that would be inter­est­ed in this cause, please pass on this e‑mail or the forum address, or spread the word by Facebook/Twitter, etc.

A seri­ous “show of hands” will make a dif­fer­ence, so don’t be shy! Thank you for your sup­port.

Kind regards,

Andrew Armitage
pro­pri­etor
AroVideo Online

“Experimental filmic punk experience”

Yowza — what on earth could that be I hear you won­der­ing.…. I’m a lit­tle unsure myself but this week/end from 11–13 June the Film Archive cin­e­ma (cor­ner of Tarana­ki and Ghuznee Sts) is going to be explod­ing with the best of exper­i­men­tal film from Aus­tralia. 

Three of the lead­ing lights of the genre —  Sal­ly Gold­ing, Joel Stern and Dirk de Bruyn — have been brought over with help from the Aus­tralian High Com­mis­sion to present three nights of mind-blow­ing enter­tain­ment.

Each night promis­es to be some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent, kick­ing off with the his­tor­i­cal then the god­fa­ther of Aus­tralian exper­i­men­tal film, fol­lowed up a riotous con­clu­sion of hand­made and hand processed film, feed­back sys­tems, incon­gru­ous foley noise, sprock­ets and flick­er, trum­pets and strings, spe­cial­ly pre­pared screens and alien­at­ed nar­ra­tion.

You’d be crazy to miss this cal­i­bre of per­for­mance in a live set­ting. As NZFA Project Devel­op­er Mark Williams says…

Big Freeze Video

Video of last week’s ‘Big Freeze’ (pre­vi­ous­ly blogged about by Sue here).

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

  Cour­tesy: The Side­strip

A week of it

What a week to look for­ward to!

Tues­day 9th: Pecha Kucha at the OPT from 6:30pm. We love these nights, and this time they’ve got writ­ers, artists, car­toon­ists and land­scape archi­tects (among oth­ers) in the line-up. Those with a prac­ti­cal inter­est in street art might have to rush there from the At Large plan­ning meet­ing at Manky Chops, which starts at 5:30.

Wednes­day 10th: Artist Matt Hunt (aka Ace Hurt from Corti­na) launch­es his new exhi­bi­tion at Peter McLeavey gallery at 5:30pm (link for Face­book types). The title “Dream­ing of a New Heav­en and Earth and the Eter­nal Night­mare of Hades” makes one won­der just what to expect from the after-par­ty at Mighty Mighty.

Thurs­day 11th: Did some­one say “Bur­lesque”? Oh, right, we did.

Fri­day 12th: If you’re plan­ning to go to Fly My Pret­ties, you’ll no doubt have had this night booked well in advance. Oth­er­wise: it’s Fri­day! Enivrez-vous!

Sat­ur­day 13th: More fly­ing pret­ti­ness, with a Mati­nee as well as the evening gig. But if you pre­fer your pret­ties more earth­bound, and think that feath­ers are best used for fan danc­ing, bring your pen­cils along to Dr Sketchy’s life draw­ing class at Mighty Mighty at 4pm.

Sun­day 14th: The much-hyped City Mar­ket final­ly opens at Chaf­fers Dock. The hours (8:30am-12:30pm) might not appeal to night owls, but their Twit­ter feed sug­gests that there’ll be plen­ty to tempt us out of bed.