Renowned choreographer, dancer and teacher Daniel Belton is bringing two programmes of award-winning dance films by Good Company screening for over two consecutive weekends at the Film Archive.

The programmes – Choreographing the Screen Programme 1 & 2 begin this Friday.

There are double passes up for grabs. www.filmarchive.org.nz

Send an email to information@nzfa.org.nz with the name of the second programme which screens on Saturday 20 & 27 September to get your hands on your own double pass.

Oh my stars, we are so very excited to announce that the Wellingtonista Bowling League for 2008 is about to start. Next Thursday September 25 to be exact, at 6.30pm at The Lanes on Wakefield Street. What does this mean for you/your organisation/social circle? It means that you have to find three friends to form a team (or more, members can rotate in and out at will), come up with a name and register here before next Tuesday 23 September so we can come up with a table and you can start insulting your competition.. The league will last for as many weeks as there are teams (with a maximum of eight teams due to the space I’ve booked), minus one, as we’ll play round robin.

The rules on the night are as follows:

• If at the end of the game your team’s sum total (total of all four players) is higher than your opposition’s then you get four competition points.
• If your team consumes more than four beverages (or averages more than one per player) you get a bonus competition point
• The team with the highest sum total on the night gets an extra bonus point.
• There will be one random league point awarded on the night in an area of our choosing. The first one will be for the best-dressed team.
• Trash-talking AND fraternising with the enemy are both highly encouraged.

So if you booze up and roll like a god your team could come away with seven points.

We really did have a tremendous amount of fun last year, made new friends, business contacts and drinking buddies, so what are you waiting for? Sign up already!

I’m having flashbacks. There’s three courses of delicious food. There’s an auction with amazing goods to be won like a stay in a French villa, a 32 inch TV and an assortment of wines. There’s a commitment to raise $6000 for Save the Children and cycle 400km in Vietnam.

Hang on a second, it’s not a flashback at all! It’s an upcoming event – a Vietnamese banquet and charity auction on September 29 at Restaurant 88. Tickets are $50 and are available from their website, and you should get one. If you don’t like Vietnamese food or good causes, do it purely because ClickSuite won the most outgoing award in last year’s Wellingtonista Bowling Awards, so you’re guaranteed good company on the night.

The Wellington City Council is seeking public input on how to guide the future growth and change of the Adelaide Rd area. This is a vitally important part of town (especially now that the Wellingtonista seems to be turning into the Newtownista), and I invite you all to have a look at the detailed draft framework and imagine for yourself what this currently somewhat neglected district could become.

But first, let’s clear up a few of the misconceptions which could have been gleaned from the brief articles in the press:

Software Freedom Day (SFD) is a worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to be held this year on Saturday 20th September, 2008.

Our goal in this celebration is to educate the worldwide public about the benefits of using high quality FOSS in education, in government, at home, and in business — in short, everywhere!

So what’s happening in Wellington? Well, there’s a hackfest, a bar camp and free coffee all day long. Check out the software freedom day site for more information…

A wee heads-up about a very interesting (and FREE) film screening this Saturday at 7pm at the Film Archive.

Shot in 1954 by a UK team, The Seekers is a very colonial take on first contact between Maori and Pakeha in a bizarre NZ ‘Wild West’ style feature film.

Both riveting and shocking viewing (there’s eroticised dancing and plasticine moko for a start) it’s also one of the few films made in NZ the late fifties/early sixties. A combination of the introduction of television and a lack of government support for independent film making at the time means we have only the occasional international project like The Seekers to show for nearly 15 years of New Zealand’s feature film history.

Witness people falling live into boiling mud, geysers exploding around sailors etc etc – all used for maximum impact to represent our great ‘Land of Fury.’

And did I mention it’s FREE?!

Kia Ora Tatou, I’m Richard Meros and I have a Dream.

Our proud nation has laboured too long under a barely discernible pendulum wobble from Labour to National, National to Labour, so on ad nauseum. Yet we yearn for, and deserve, something greater. Through meticulous research I have drawn an inescapable conclusion: that only my personal engagement with the electoral process – and with our noble Prime Minister – can herald the glorious future of our South Pacific Utopia.

My acclaimed pamphlet of romantic political philosophy, On the Conditions and Possibilities of Helen Clark Taking Me as Her Young Lover, provoked howls of acclaim when published in 2007, and I have committed to share the “powerpoint” version of my book the length and breadth of New Zealand before Election Night 2008. Why? Because I care.

This life-changing lecture has toured across Aotearoa; enlightenment comes now to Wellington.

Apologies for the incoherence, but this fly’s report cannot help being rendered in a burst of overexcited sentence fragments with gratuitous exclamation marks.

Tropical cocktails! Shimmery dresses! German covers of The Monkees! Omnisexual pan-ironic hipsters! Six-foot-four drag queens wearing yellow balloons! Wildly abandoned rock’n’roll dance moves!

Sources admit there was a “balls up”.

Full story here.

and more books

wellington’s biggest booksale starts tomorrow. There are over 60,000 books being stacked as we speak for the Downtown Community Ministry Bookfair tomorrow.

It’s all being held at TSB area, entry is free, But the books, jigsaw puzzles, magazines, records, CDs and DVDs are not. however the prices are just the right size for anyone wanting to stock up on reading for the summer

as a mad keen collector, my favorite stop is the children’s book area. However i will also be spending quality time in the Science Fiction (usaully all sells out by about 2pm Saturday) DVD and vinyl sections. I also plan to pick up a truck load of magazines, hopefully a years supply of the new yorker.

Doors open at 9am on Saturday (closing at 5pm) and at 10am on Sunday (closing at 4pm).

Plus the best part every bit of money you pay for all those books, jigsaw puzzles, magazines, records, CDs and DVDs goes toward helping wellington’s most in need people.

it’s shopping and helping save the world all at the same time 😀