‘Safe For Life’ Women’s Self Defence Seminar – Wellington

Although the last thing in the world that I want is for the Wel­ling­tonista to come across like tra­di­tion­al fright­en­ers media, I think we can all acknow­ledge that some­times the world can be a scary place for women (and men), so here’s some­thing you can go to that might make it a little less scary.

Pro­tect, who teach real­ity-based self-defense, is run­ning a sem­in­ar entitled ‘Safe For Life’ in Wel­ling­ton on Sat­urday Octo­ber 18. If you don’t want to take the bus out to Khan­dal­lah by your­self, how about you go with Leaf, Prob­ably?

I haven’t been to one of their courses, so I can­’t tell you what it’s like, but I do appre­ci­ate that they advert­ise one of the things that they teach is con­fid­ence, which will provide a healthy remind­er that no one is ever ask­ing to get attacked or deserves it (just be wary: pos­sibly NSFW).

Don’t forget to win yourself a new phone

Today’s the second to last day to enter our com­pet­i­tion to win a new Voda­fone phone because we’re going to draw it at noon tomor­row. Hav­ing had a 6121 for a couple of weeks now, I have to tell you that it’s pretty damn awe­some for check­ing your email on, espe­cially while wait­ing for your bags at air­ports. Except for today when the net­work did­n’t seem to be work­ing. So what are you wait­ing for?

Con­grat­u­la­tions Cat! The Ran­dom­izer picked your num­ber, so you’ve won your­self a fant­ast­ic new phone. We’ll be in touch to get your deliv­ery address.

And Bingo was its name O

Sure, you already play Hip­ster Bingo at the SFBH, but have you thought about play­ing the real game instead? From the good people who bring you the movie quiz at the Para­mount comes a new way to spend your Sunday after­noons: Hangover Bingo!

It will be hap­pen­ing for the first time at 2pm on Sunday 7th Septem­ber at the Cour­tenay Arms.

Settle down in front of a warm fire, with yummy food, some hair of the dog and a few leis­urely games of bingo!

Cash Money to be won plus loads of oth­er good­ies. Go along and make it a suc­cess so that it can become a reg­u­lar event.

Live! 3D! audio-visual rave-slash-cinema!

Art No Made is a live audio-visu­al per­form­ance staged by Argen­tinean mul­ti­me­dia artists Niko and Ayelen Schiavi at the Film Archive this Fri­day and Sat­urday night.

The artists, who are cur­rently res­id­ent in Wel­ling­ton, marry 3D film cre­ated using Chro­madepth – which trans­forms a 2D graph­ic­al inter­face into a strik­ing 3D illu­sion­al space – with elec­tron­ic soundtracks DJ’d live in the cinema. Tick­ets are avail­able from the Archive, pre-sales and door sales alike are $8 or $6 con­ces­sion, and on the night(s) 3D glasses will be provided for your enjoy­ment of and par­ti­cip­a­tion in this world premiere event.

Ori­gin­ally Niko and Ayelen designed the pro­ject for a party, but have since adap­ted the pro­ject for a lounge format, which “involves the spec­tat­or all the more since he/she is not los­ing energy and con­cen­tra­tion in dan­cing”.
Fri­day 29th & Sat­urday 30th August at the Film Archive, cnr Tarana­ki & Ghuznee Sts

Brian Jones vs David Hasselhoff

You can tell that sum­mer is com­ing from the tour­ing inter­na­tion­als headed our way, if not by the weath­er right now! Septem­ber to Decem­ber is always a frenzy of north­ern hemi­sphere bands escap­ing the cold to tour down under and to kick it off none oth­er than Bri­an Jon­estown Mas­sacre are hit­ting (hope­fully not lit­er­ally) Wel­ling­ton on Sept 4th.

Any­one who’s seen the fab­ulous doco that fol­lows BJM and their friends-turned-bit­ter-enemies the Dandy War­hols, Dig, will be excited to see the volat­ile band in the flesh as well as thrilled to know that after a hiatus, tam­bour­ine play­er (yep, that’s his instru­ment) Joel is back in the band.

Sup­por­ted on their Auck­land and Wel­ling­ton tour dates by Shayne Carter­’s Dim­mer and by Mar­tin Phil­lipps’ ever-evolving Chills in Duned­in, the line-up is like a rock-slash-drama ner­d’s dream! But to top it off, if you can­’t make the Wel­ling­ton show (tix selling fast, by the way – from Slow­boat records on Cuba st or through Under the Radar) you should high­tail it to Christ­ch­urch on the 3rd of Septem­ber for the super-spe­cial sup­port from the Has­sel­hoff Exper­i­ment! I kid you not! They reformed for a one-off reunion earli­er this year and blew every­one’s socks off so if the deep south is call­ing you, now’s the time to vis­it. (I have a feel­ing this might be a secret sup­port slot but, hello, don’t tell Wel­ling­ton’s biggest gos­sip in that case… that’s me, by the way). See you at San Fran Bath­house on the 4th – BYO tam­bour­ine.

Hang the DJ. Please.

On Fri­day night, Fur Patrol played at Bar Bodega. They announced their last song, played it with aplomb, and left the stage. Now, every­one knows that the last song isn’t really the last song because the band comes back for an encore or two – well, every­one know that, that is, except for the DJ, who star­ted play­ing MGMT again, even as curi­ous heads emerged from around the corner of back­stage going “What? Can you turn that off please?” to no avail. The crowd were con­fused – DJ music always means the end of a gig – and shuffled off, so by the time the DJ got the mes­sage that they’d fucked up, Fur Patrol would have played to an empty room.

So, because someone did­n’t know the rules of the encore, we missed out on Fur Patrol’s first air­ing of ‘Dom­in­oes’ in like, eight years. You suck, DJ.
Photo by Rat Pony

Shall I Compare Thee to Oriental Bay?

What’s some­thing that this fair city has been need­ing since it was foun­ded in… say, when was Wel­ling­ton foun­ded any­way?

That’s right, you guessed it, you KNEW it all along, Wel­ling­ton needs a son­net!

And here’s where you can help: You can write that son­net!

Wel­ling­ton Son­net Com­pet­i­tion 2008

Wel­ling­ton needs a son­net. Lon­don has ‘Upon West­min­ster Bridge’ by Wil­li­am Wordsworth and in more recent times, oth­er poets have writ­ten son­nets about their favour­ite cit­ies. So have you got what it takes to write Wellington’s son­net? We are look­ing for the best unpub­lished son­nets about Wel­ling­ton and you could be in to win $1000.

This com­pet­i­tion, sponsored by New Zea­l­and Post, is being run as a pro­mo­tion for the Wel­ling­ton Writers Walk, an ini­ti­at­ive of the New Zea­l­and Soci­ety of Authors, Wel­ling­ton Branch. The walk pays trib­ute to nine­teen New Zea­l­and authors with a series of sculp­tur­al and ‘benchmark’ quo­ta­tions set in sur­pris­ing and unex­pec­ted places around the water­front.

The Wel­ling­ton Writers Walk is con­tinu­ing to devel­op, assisted by gen­er­ous indi­vidu­al spon­sor­ships for each com­mem­or­a­tion and over­seen by a small, vol­un­tary com­mit­tee. By enter­ing this com­pet­i­tion, you are con­trib­ut­ing to the con­tinu­ity of the pro­ject.

Find out more about the walk here

Prizes
1st prize $1,000
2nd prize $500
3rd prize $250
Plus 10 highly com­men­ded prizes of $50 each

Click here for fur­ther details, an entry form & the small print.

Please note: there are very spe­cif­ic rules gov­ern­ing the con­struc­tion of son­nets: the num­ber of syl­lables in each line, the num­ber of lines in the son­net, metre, rhyme scheme etc etc…

Double pass giveaways

I have two double passes up for grabs for the silent film screen­ing at the Film Archive tomor­row night – the 80th Anniversary of The Bush Cinder­ella – Rud­all Hay­ward’s fourth and final silent fea­ture.

First and second per­son to email me at anna.dean@nzfa.org.nz and tell me the name of Rud­all Hay­ward’s wife, who worked closely along­side him on his film pro­jects, gets tick­ets to tomor­row night’s rare event with live piano accom­pani­ment.

Let them eat antipasto platters!

Some­times a fly likes to take time out from fre­quent­ing the fine bars of this city to spend some time in the fine cinemas of this city.

But when one buzzes into a cinema foy­er, one does not expect to find that one has walked into a staff meet­ing, espe­cially when one is in the posh sec­tion of the cinema – the part that charges $31.50 a tick­et.

Yet there I was, try­ing to pro­cure tick­ets to Mamma Mia for me and mi amore, when I found myself the unin­ten­tion­al audi­ence of a man­ager who was loudly announ­cing some import­ant news to staff: the posh $31.50 tick­ets would soon no longer come with free pop­corn and soft drink.

That’s loco, crazy-insane, I thought. Pop­corn and soft drink cost cents to make – surely they can afford to give it away to cus­tom­ers pay­ing $31.50 a tick­et.

The prob­lem was, the man­ager explained to his charges, that punters were filling up on the free pop­corn and drinks and not buy­ing any of the food offered on the menu. It was, after all, a busi­ness that needed to make a profit. And not, one pre­sumes, a food bank.

Now I don’t want to go read­ing too much into this, but I can­’t help but won­der if man­age­ment is tak­ing the wrong approach here. I sug­gest they start with not hold­ing staff meet­ings in pub­lic areas, and then con­sider how many people just take the free food because it’s there, rather than because they’re hungry/thirsty.

I was plan­ning a romantic night at the posh lounge cinema see­ing the Dark Knight, but instead I’m switch­ing to some nibbles at Sweet Mother­’s Kit­chen, fol­lowed by a private screen­ing of the 1966 Bat­man movie ($9.99 from the Ware­house).

Photo cour­tesy of Aim and Shoot!‘s Flickr pho­to­stream.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

In an age of whizz bang graph­ics and fancy cam­era tech­niques, it’s a real treat to be able to watch a silent film with speech titles such as: “Where Mary was con­cerned Sammy, the hired hand, had the soul and ardour of a fifth cen­tury poet” ??WTF!? and all with live piano accom­pani­ment.

On Wed­nes­day 20 August, 7pm The Bush Cinder­ella is screen­ing, a present­a­tion by the Friends of the Film Archive, to cel­eb­rate the 80th anniversary of this Rud­all Hay­ward film.

Star­ring Miss New Zea­l­and Dale Aus­tin, “who com­bines Hol­ly­wood exper­i­ence and tech­nique with a fault­less pho­to­gen­ic face.” – The Sun, 1928.

No New Zeal­ander Should Miss It! A Tri­umph of Domin­ion Enter­prise, Filled with the Famil­i­ar Sen­ti­ments, the Typ­ic­al Humour, and the Glor­i­ous Scenery of God’s Own Coun­try.
Tick­ets $8 / $ 6