BATS Theatre’s new play Heat starts this Fri­day, and has been selling itself on an unusu­al point: “eco-theatre”. The show’s lights and sound will be com­pletely off-grid, and the pre­par­a­tions for the sus­tain­able energy sources were vis­ible over the week­end.

Such a ploy could come across as gim­micky, but it’s designed to mim­ic the con­straints of its set­ting, an Ant­arc­tic sur­viv­al cap­sule. And with tal­ent such as play­wright Lynda Chan­wai-Earle and com­poser Gareth Farr involved, it’s bound to have a lot of appeal, and one of the act­ors even has the appro­pri­ate name Bri­an Hot­ter.

For those of you who missed the recent screen­ing of Shaker Run at the Wel­ling­tonista Film Fest­iv­al (next up, Carry Me Back on Wed 5 Nov), here’s one of the best bits: a car chase through the streets of mid-80s Wel­ling­ton, then up and over the Rimu­taka Hill Road…

[you­tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roFmeudE6Sc]

Says Kir­an, in a review over at Tex­ture

The film is like one long, exten­ded stunt scene. End­less car-chases, explo­sions and fancy race­car tricks around the South Island and Wel­ling­ton left me feel­ing exhausted…

This par­tic­u­lar Wel­ling­tonista was just down at a protest tak­ing place at the Great­er Wel­ling­ton Region­al Coun­cil offices.

Of course, the GWRC trans­port plans (PDF) are well worth protest­ing about: more roads, no light rail? Des­pite the hun­dreds (and the great major­ity) of sub­mis­sions ask­ing for the oppos­ite? 

As Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil­lor and Greens’ spokes­per­son Iona Pan­nett points out…

The Plan ignores Wel­ling­to­ni­ans’ huge sup­port for more pub­lic trans­port, their oppos­i­tion to new tun­nels and Wel­ling­ton City’s com­mit­ment to car­bon neut­ral­ity … Over 4,500 people made sub­mis­sions on the study the Plan is based on, with 3,750 people sup­port­ing light rail, more buses and walk­ing and cyc­ling options whilst oppos­ing the two tun­nels and fly­over. In con­trast only 480 people sub­mit­ted that the tun­nels should be built. So, by a ratio of nearly 8 to 1 there was huge sup­port for pub­lic trans­port and oppos­i­tion to roads…

Quite.

But, what really caught the eye was the many pro­test­ers plac­ards. Not so much the front of them, but the back. It was heart­en­ing to see the Greens and their allies recyc­ling (pre­sum­ably) dis­carded Real Estate sig­nage upon which to dis­play their protest slo­gans. Nice.

Wel­ling­ton has secured the rights to host the 2011 Tae Kwon Do (or Taek­wondo, Taek­wan-Do, or oth­er vari­ations, depend­ing on where you look) World Champs. 

New Zea­l­and fin­ished 3rd at the 2007 World Champs (note, link is to a PDF of the medals table), and, with the sport thriv­ing in NZ, the home team is expec­ted to do well with the next event on home turf.

To cel­eb­rate, the Inter­na­tion­al Taek­won-Do Found­a­tion of New Zea­l­and has organ­ised a Taek­won-Do demon­stra­tion today (Thursday 30 Oct), which will, ahem, kick off at 2:30pm at Civic Square.

Hal­loween approaches and what bet­ter way to cel­eb­rate than to scare your­self shit­less watch­ing what’s rumoured to be the scar­i­est movie ever pro­duced in this coun­try? Yep, the Wel­ling­tonista Film Sea­son at the Film Archive con­tin­ues at 7pm on Wed­nes­day the 29th Octo­ber with Glenn Standring’s notori­ous The Irre­fut­able Truth About Demons.

The Irre­fut­able Truth About Demons (offi­cial site) centres on Dr Harry Bal­lard (Karl Urb­an), a Uni­ver­sity lec­turer who has become obsessed with expos­ing cults since the recent death of his broth­er. “The story unfolds,” explains Standring, “when Harry is attacked by this hor­rible cult, at which point he has to try and work out wheth­er there is just a weird cult chas­ing him, or wheth­er, there are in fact demons. So he goes through a whole real­ity shift that he’d nev­er con­sidered before – embark­ing on a jour­ney to dis­cov­er the irre­fut­able truth.”

More (includ­ing a 7 minute doc­u­ment­ary video) after the jump…

Almost in order to prove that rumours of the death of genu­ine, good qual­ity music retail­ers in this coun­try have been greatly exag­ger­ated, on Novem­ber 6 Wel­ling­ton will have a new spe­cial­ist music retail store. Samurai Store will be the retail exten­sion to the long stand­ing Samurai Dis­tri­bu­tion and the recently estab­lished ‘Samurai Music’ record label.

Owned and oper­ated by Geoff Wright (aka DJ Pre­sha) with the assist­ance of Darryl McGown (aka D Dog from ‘Bass Fron­ti­ers’), Samurai Store will spe­cial­ise in Drum and Bass, Dub­step, and Breaks vinyl, CDs, and a rage of related mer­chand­ise. The store will also be stock­ing oth­er forms of elec­tron­ic music and selling event tick­ets.

Wel­ling­ton has not had a spe­cial­ist store like this for many years, and with the know­ledge and com­bined busi­ness exper­i­ence going into the cre­ation of this vinyl buy­ers para­dise, Samurai Store will be an excit­ing addi­tion to the cap­it­al city’s music retail entit­ies.

Samurai Store [from 6 Nov 2008]
151 Wil­lis Street [near that weird place where Turn­er­’s Steak­house was]
Wel­ling­ton 6011
Phone: 04–3842145  Fax: 04–3843646
email: info@samuraistore.co.nz
 

Remem­ber a few years ago when a bunch of punks dressed up as fair­ies chased the Nation­al Front guys around the Rail­way Sta­tion beat­ing them up?  LOLarama.  Any­how…

Anti-racism act­iv­ists will be hold­ing a rally and pic­nic at the Wel­ling­ton Ceno­taph at 10am on Sat­urday Octo­ber 25. The rally and pic­nic is in oppos­i­tion to plans to hold a “Flag Day” rally by the “Nation­al­ist Alli­ance”, a coali­tion com­pris­ing the Nation­al Front, New Right and Nation­al Demo­crats. 

More about these asshats after the jump.…

Holy crap! The last game of the sea­son is tonight, and things are look­ing tight tight tight!

Last week the Purple Cobras took the Bow­l­ing­tonista 471 to 349, pick­ing up an extra point for their highest score, while Tom from the Bow­l­ing­tonista got the league point for the best flair, bowl­ing without spill­ing a drop of his mar­tini held in the oth­er hand. The Furry Fer­als took Xero 372 to 314, which means they’re tied for first place with the Cobras, although the Cobras have a by-week this week, which means in the­ory that unless the Fer­als don’t show up they can­’t win the league, but I’m going to throw things WIDE OPEN and announce that tonight there’ll be league points for fast­est bowl, slow­est bowl AND best flair, and I know the Cobras have booked their own league, so we’ll see how things go. Mean­while Bow­l­ing­tonista will be play­ing Xero for last place, and the Mighty Boost will be try­ing to move up to first or second instead of third. All bets are off, except on us hav­ing a good time. 

Bow­l­ing­tonista: 7 

Furry Fer­als: 22

Mighty Boost: 16

Purple Cobras: 22

Xero: 6

The Greens have just launched their new Wel­ling­ton Trans­port Plan, com­plete with Green MP Sue Kedgley as their Wel­ling­ton Trans­port Spokes­per­son.

Wel­ling­ton has a pretty kick-arse pub­lic trans­port sys­tem as it is, with a well used net­work of buses, trol­ley buses, trains and the good ol’ cable car. So what plans do the Greens have for the future?

In short, their plans involve: bet­ter walk­ing, more cyc­ling, cheap­er buses, light rail, expan­ded trains, trol­ley bus love, and use­ful bus stops. And then there are oth­er ideas, like encour­aging people to work from home and shop online, and rethink­ing those mam­moth planned road­works.

Per­son­ally, I’m excited by the idea of turn­ing the Melling train line into light rail that will extend into a loop through Lower Hutt. That’s right, you’ll be able to get the train to Queens­gate without a massive walk. Wow, just like a prop­er grown-up city!

It will be inter­est­ing to see what plans, if any, the oth­er parties have for Wel­ling­ton’s trans­port.