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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.

Shaker Run!

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…

The Greens: recyclers extraordinaire

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.

Tae Kwon Do World Champs

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.

When you discover the irrefutable truth about demons can you still survive?

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…

Samurai Store Coming

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
 

Anti-racism rally and picnic

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.…

The Safety Dance

The Fly was out buzzing around recent­ly, and was hor­ri­fied to hear some­one at a sup­pos­ed­ly upmar­ket bar (for its type) polite­ly ask a gen­tle­man to remove his hat. Why might this be? he asked. Appar­ent­ly it was a “secu­ri­ty issue”.

Are the water­ing holes of Welling­ton desparate­ly afraid of tom­my guns in tril­bys? Sem­tex in som­breros? Flick-knives in fedo­ras? Appar­ent­ly not, because the gen­tle­man in ques­tion was lat­er approached by the apolo­getic bar man­ag­er and pro­vid­ed with a glass of wine on the house, because the rule was devised to deter chavs rather than chaps: a rash of base­ball caps at apeish rather than rak­ish angles had prompt­ed a revi­sion of the dress code.

Fair enough, one might say, but numer­ous pun­ters were hap­pi­ly served while wear­ing the afore­men­tioned ersatz sport­ing head­gear, and one rum cove was even spot­ted wear­ing some­thing more appro­pri­ate for a lla­ma herder than a man-about-town. While one can sym­pa­thise with the man­age­ment look­ing askance at our com­pan­ion’s attire (and real­ly, a Gats­by cap and club col­lar is so nou­veau riche), sure­ly if they mean to enforce sar­to­r­i­al stan­dards it would be bet­ter not to hide behind “secu­ri­ty” con­cerns and just be open about it.

WBL Round Four Results:

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

Greens launch Wellington Transport Plan

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.