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No Socks Required

Sep­tem­ber is the month for dance lovers — whether obser­va­tion­al or more involved — with the Dance Your Socks Off fes­ti­val run­ning all month.

All the news that’s fit to drink

There have been a few recent (re)openings on the hospo scene recent­ly, and a few more are either immi­nent or rumoured. A quick round-up of drinkie and food­ie news, includ­ing drunk­en pigs, an Ital­ian inva­sion and a touch of cin­na­mon, after the jump.

Crafting at Pataka

Tomor­row why not pop out to the very love­ly PATAKA in Porirua for the Day.

Because as well as their very love­ly Japan­ese gar­den you can have a bit of a shop and a browse at all sort of Crafty goods.

Why? Well it just so hap­pens that from 10am till 2pm Craft­ing is being held.

Think fun, funky, unique and you’ve got an idea of the range of crafty things for sale at CRAFTING.

There will be jew­ellery, cro­chet, dolls, stuffed toys, cush­ion, clothes, badges, bags Russ­ian dolls, and all sorts great things for sale from a bunch of crafty types from around the welling­ton region.

You can find PATAKA on the cor­ner of Nor­rie and Paru­moana St, Porirua.

And heck I bet if noth­ing else you’ll find some great inspi­ra­tion for enter­ing our com­pe­ti­tion to win a phone from Voda­fone.

Win a new phone! Go mobile in Wellington thanks to Vodafone

As a web­site for peo­ple who are con­stant­ly on the go around Welling­ton, we recent­ly got con­tact­ed by Voda­fone who want­ed us to know that they’re chang­ing the way their mobile inter­net works.

Voda­fone is mak­ing it even eas­i­er for peo­ple to con­nect to the inter­net – wher­ev­er they are – with the launch of revamped mobile data pric­ing and a smart back­end that refor­mats web­pages for easy view­ing on a mobile screen.

Now, for up to just $1 a day on the days you use it, casu­al users of the mobile inter­net can browse the world wide web eas­i­ly and inex­pen­sive­ly… with­out com­mit­ting to a fixed month­ly data con­tract.

The new $1 a day casu­al rate gives cus­tomers up to 10MB of data.

And how do we know this is actu­al­ly true? Because we’ve got a new Nokia 6121. And even more excit­ing­ly, we’ve got one to give away, so you can have a chance to find out for your­self too. Find out how after the jump.

If you like movies, quizzes and the Paramount, boy do we have a deal for you!

Are you still in with­drawl from the Film Fes­ti­val? Are you try­ing to come up with any rea­son to head back to the the­atre, even if it’s just for the ice cream?

Guess what? From this Thurs­day onwards, the Para­mount The­atre is start­ing a week­ly movie quiz “A quiz in 60 min­utes” at 9pm in the Para­mount Bar.

Movie fans will be invit­ed to take part in this unique and free quiz night to com­pete for a chance to win a fort­night’s free movies for two peo­ple and a num­ber of oth­er spot prizes.

“There are a lot of very knowl­edge­able movie fans out there; we are real­ly look­ing for­ward to offer­ing some­thing a bit dif­fer­ent. I don’t think any oth­er cin­e­ma has done this before in Welling­ton” say Kate Larkin­dale, Man­ag­er of the Para­mount.

“After the suc­cess of the film fes­ti­val this year, we are excit­ed about this quiz night. Peo­ple will be able to see a movie at after work and then have a drink and stretch their brains for an hour”.

The quiz night will be only 60 min­utes long, cov­er­ing all areas of film, and all decades. Movie quotes, Oscar win­ners, theme tunes, Movie taglines, actors, direc­tors — it’s all in there!

Check out the Para­mount web­site for more infor­ma­tion.

As promised

Here’s some info about This is Exper­i­men­tal — also kick­ing off tomor­row eve.….

A fes­ti­val of exper­i­men­tal film and film mak­ers (talk about niche‑y) If you know some­one who’s into avant-garde film, please do let them know.

High­lights include a screen­ing and work­shop by Guy Sher­win, one of the pre-emi­nent British film artists of the last 40 years; Free Rad­i­cal: The films of Len Lye, a pro­gramme which screened to over­whelmed audi­ences in the USA last year; and a col­lec­tion of 1980s Super 8 Movies from Cana­da, NZ and USA pre­sent­ed by film mak­er Mar­tin Rums­by.

Image: Len Lye, Stills Col­lec­tion; New Zealand Film Archive

Plus The Michael Nichol­son Stu­dio Visu­al Music Project Stage 3: Ops 1–4 video instal­la­tion — see below.…

Video synthesizer

Open­ing this Thurs­day at the Film Archive at 5:30pm, an exhi­bi­tion by 92-year old Welling­ton painter, sculp­tor, artist Michael Nichol­son.

If that’s not impres­sive enough this work, The Michael Nichol­son Visu­al Music Project: Stage 3. Op.s 1–4, was orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed on a “Scan­i­mate” machine in Aus­tralia in the 1980s; the same machine that ear­ly Star Wars, Sesame St and The Elec­tric Com­pa­ny ani­ma­tions were made on. Nichol­son worked with the Film Archive to restore the orig­i­nal U‑matic tapes and edit­ed them togeth­er as ‘Visu­al Music’ with the assis­tance of edi­tor Diane McAllen.

Michael Nichol­son first came to New Zealand in the 1950s to work at the Elam School of Fine Art. His lat­est work is inspired by the abstract expres­sion­ist paint­ings of Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky. It’s hyp­not­ic, fas­ci­nat­ing­ly beau­ti­ful and on dis­play for the next month in the Pelorus Trust medi­a­gallery.

This event launch­es an Exper­i­men­tal Film Fes­ti­val too but more about that soon!

Still images: Screen grabs from The Michael Nichol­son Visu­al Music Project: Stage 3. Op.s 1–4

Have a Caeli — that’s Ball to you!

Cys­tic Fibro­sis is a cause close to the hearts of some of the Welling­ton­ista, so we’re real­ly hap­py to pro­mote the Win­ter Caeli (Scot­tish Ball) at the Inter­con­ti­nen­tal on August 23.

This fundrais­ing ball will be an event like noth­ing ever seen before in Welling­ton — find out how things are done the Scot­tish way and help raise mon­ey in style

Tick­ets are $90, and for that you get:

• Wel­come bub­bles
• Three course meal
• Wine with din­ner
• Live music
• Scot­tish danc­ing
• Fundrais­ing auc­tion and raf­fle

For more infor­ma­tion or to buy tick­ets, con­tact 0800 651122 or CFwinterball@gmail.com

Nothing fishy going on in this post

For those of us who like pub­lic trans­port but real­ly could give less than a fly­ing fish about a cer­tain S word, here are some tid­bits to round out your week­end:

• Per­haps we won’t always have Paris — a notice of “reen­try” has been sight­ed in its win­dow.
• The ‘Ho won ‘Best Bar in New Zealand’ for like, the mil­lionth time. Go them!
• In hap­py bus news, Go Welling­ton has final­ly cot­toned on to the fact that many uni stu­dents live in Hataitai and Brook­lyn, so they’re doing a tri­al exten­sion of the #5 and #7 routes up to Kel­burn. This is also good news for peo­ple who work on the Ter­race but are too lazy to take a lift up to there from Lambton Quay, but not that great if you’re look­ing for more infor­ma­tion about it on the Metlink site.
• The Wom­en’s Lifestyle Expo: appar­ent­ly all women need to lose weight, have bad cred­it and like to eat choco­late. Well duh, say the Pret­ty Pret­ty Pret­ty girls, who hap­pen to have an awe­some Skin­food prize pack to give away that this Fly is cov­et­ing.
• An ad on Radio Active promis­es two cock­tails and some tapas for $15 on Wednes­days at Vin­tage Bar, but their out-of-date web­site can’t con­firm this.
• In oth­er gos­sip, appar­ent­ly the crowds of Bridge and Tun­nel­ers who want to go to Tem­per­ance Bar are caus­ing some has­sles for oth­er venues on the street, with mass­es queu­ing out­side. There was men­tion that police in riot gear have been called in, but our source, while gen­er­al­ly very reli­able, was almost as drunk as this Fly, so take it with a grain of salt.
• Look­ing for a cen­tral city loca­tion for cot­tag­ing? The Coun­cil is look­ing to rede­vel­op Coble­stone Park on Vivian Street.

snapped? (wha)

It’s been a cou­ple weeks since we last checked in on Snap­per.

The Snap­per roll­out has con­tin­ued apace, and some of us haven’t used our old ten-trips for two whole weeks! (Well, we were excit­ed about this, any­way.)

More and more peo­ple are board­ing bus­es armed with the cards; and more and more bus­es (and their dri­vers) are ready to take them.

And in the mean­time we’ve learnt many things. (Read on for more.)