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Something smells like fish

For those of you who’ve nev­er heard of Nanook, Thurs­day night’s screen­ing at the Film Archive is unmiss­able.

Wide­ly con­sid­ered the first fea­ture length doc­u­men­tary ever made (shot in 1922) it’s an excep­tion­al account of Inu­it life on the ice.

Using tra­di­tion­al meth­ods (includ­ing killing large fish by bit­ing the back of their heads/necks? what­ev­er you call that bit at the top) and hang­ing out with his “wives” in the harsh­est of climes, this snap­shot of Nanook’s life is even more poignant as he died two years lat­er, lost in a snow storm.

The film lat­er went on to be dis­cred­it­ed for “set­ting-up” tra­di­tion­al hunt­ing meth­ods, rais­ing inter­est­ing ques­tions which fit per­fect­ly with the cur­rent medi­a­gallery exhi­bi­tion by Welling­ton artist Sarah Jane Par­ton.

She’ll be per­form­ing a response to the film live with the musi­cal back up of Henderson/Beban/Crewdson

THIS THURSDAY, 7PM, AT THE FILM ARCHIVE
TICKETS $8 / $6

Film Archive events cal­en­dar

snapped?

So maybe it’s been easy to escape, but next week the new Snap­per cards come into cir­cu­la­tion.

Any­one who trav­els on a Welling­ton Bus can­not have failed to notice the new­ly installed orange and black fish logo-ed teardrops at the front and side doors. These are the read­ers for the cards. Just wave the card over the read­er, and val­ue is deb­it­ed from them to fund your bus trip. You can recharge them over the ‘net (but only if you have a Win­dows PC and a masochis­tic will­ing­ness to sub­ject your­self to Inter­net Explor­er) and at any of the sup­port­ing cafés and for­mer 10-trip tick­et sell­ers.

It all sounds pret­ty good real­ly: no more being stuck for the right change; nev­er a click short on your 10-trip; and nev­er even hav­ing to think about how much extra is stop past your usu­al. And then there’s the pos­si­bil­i­ty (as some of us, tri­alling Snap­per, are doing now) of putting the first cof­fee of the morn­ing on it as well.

And it’s cool. We like the logo; the dif­fer­ent form fac­tors; and just the sheer tech­no-geek­ery at play.

Oth­ers have been pos­i­tive, too; Poneke has had a rea­son­able time with their card. So here at Welling­ton­ista we’re all real­ly look­ing for­ward to it.

We do have a few ques­tions though, (after the jump):

Malls, and Lack Thereof

The NZ Her­ald reports that a com­pa­ny named RCG, who are “retail experts” have giv­en rat­ings to the malls of Aotearoa because, “We thought it time­ly.”

So I thought it was time­ly to take a look at what they thought of the malls of the greater Welling­ton area. Do any of them equal Auck­land’s mighty four-star West­field Albany?

The arti­cle is skewed towards Auck­land Malls, but it does men­tion poor North City in Porirua, which is only worth two stars as it is “strug­gling to achieve good sales”. The arti­cle also says that Low­er Hut­t’s Queens­gate “made a big state­ment” (What, “I’m a mall in Low­er Hutt!!!”?), but does­n’t say what the rat­ing is.

But most inter­est­ing­ly, the arti­cle notes that the researchers found that “Welling­ton was bereft of malls”, like that’s a bad thing.

Per­haps it’s because Welling­ton’s inner city street shop­ping works so well it has­n’t cre­at­ed a demand for giant malls lurk­ing out in the sub­urbs.

We have Cuba Mall, and I reck­on that’s worth more stars than any dirty ol’ sub­ur­ban mall out there.

Pho­to cour­tesy of Sol­id State.

Cellar-Vate Nga Waka Dinner Menu July 9

We men­tioned it before (and reviewed a pre­vi­ous din­ner), but if you need fur­ther con­vinc­ing, here’s the menu for the Cel­lar-Vate Nga Waka din­ner on July 9

Nga Waka Three Pad­dles Sauvi­gnon Blanc ‘07
Corn, cap­sicum and pars­ley risot­to with goats cheese

Nga Waka Ries­ling ‘03
Skin-on Ter­ak­i­hi, water­mel­on, red onion and dill sal­sa

Nga Waka Mar­t­in­bor­ough Chardon­nay ‘07
Gin­ger, soy and chilli chick­en pieces

Nga Waka Home Block Chardon­nay ‘04
Sliced pork rib­eye with Dijon, cream and white wine sauce

Nga Waka Pinot Noir ‘06
Rab­bit pie, mash and jus

Nga Waka Late Har­vest Ries­ling ‘04
Coconut pan­na cot­ta

You don’t get huge por­tions of any­thing, but you do get lots of taste­bud par­ties in your mouth, and stim­u­lat­ing con­ver­sa­tion. There are still some tick­ets avail­able for this tast­ing. Book­ings can be made by e‑mailing Rebec­ca — becs[a]cellar-vate.co.nz. The event costs $40.00 a head and starts at 6pm in the Cab­i­net Room (func­tion suite above the Back­bencher).

Team Puppy Guts fingers their way to the top of 48Hours film comp

Con­grat­u­la­tions to team Pup­py Guts who have only just gone and won the grand final of the 2008 48Hours film com­pe­ti­tion with their dance short F*DANCE, mak­ing them the first Welling­ton team to do so.

F*DANCE is the tale of a bad-ass fin­ger dancer (you know, when you make dance moves with your fin­gers) who los­es his mojo and must learn the hard way how to fin­ger his way back to the top.

The film impressed the judges enough to make it to the Welling­ton finals, and was a Peter Jack­son wild­card pick (oo-ooh!) for selec­tion in the nation­al finals.

So what impressed the inter­na­tion­al judges? Was it the humour? The fin­ger danc­ing? The spe­cial effects? Or was it the splen­did mon­tage train­ing scene that fea­tured a gru­elling fin­ger-run up the Civic Square steps?

Well, what­ev­er it us, team Pup­py Guts have done us proud.

Cut for Winter

As the killer Welling­ton wind stalks the Welling­ton­ista tow­ers by day we’ve been seek­ing solace in beau­ti­ful music, as you do. And since a copy of Cas­set­te’s brand new EP Can­cer land­ed in my cold lit­tle hands I’ve been able to lis­ten to very lit­tle else — oth­er than the howl­ing wind, natch. As their press release says, “If you like eagles, there’s 3 on the cov­er”. And if you like Cas­sette, you can catch them at Bode­ga next week to launch those very same eagles.

Details after the leap

Random acts of kindness

This par­tic­u­lar Welling­ton­ista was sit­ting at the bus-stop last night, when a lad on a motor­bike scoot­ed up, and asked me if I want­ed to make use of his now unneed­ed daytrip­per pass. Of course I did! $2.80 saved (the cost of a click on my 3‑zone ten-trip)! Score!

This led to some dis­cus­sion on the Welling­ton­ista list as to oth­er acts of kindness/generosity you can per­form for your fel­low cit­i­zens with­out any great oppor­tu­ni­ty cost of your own.

The oth­er obvi­ous one is park­ing coupons. Got half an hour left when you go to leave? Just roll the tick­et up and pop it in the coin slot of the vend­ing machine. Next per­son to come along will (hope­ful­ly) realise they’ve got a free­bie, and every­one wins (except the coun­cil rev­enue depart­ment, I sup­pose).

Might I also remind our read­ers that while the library does­n’t send out over­due reminder notices until after your books/cds/dvds/whatever are over­due (and thus already accu­mu­lat­ing late charges), you can use the Library Elf ser­vice to send you reminders before the due date. This has saved my fam­i­ly lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of dol­lars over the last few years.

Any oth­er sug­ges­tions for ways to save peo­ple mon­ey or, indeed, just to make their lives more pleas­ant, with a min­i­mal amount of effort on your own behalf? Pop ’em in the com­ments.

We got a great big convoy, filling up the streets

If you’re plan­ning on dri­ving to work tomor­row, or even if you’re plan­ning on tak­ing pub­lic trans­port, you should read the fol­low­ing press release about the great big moth­er-truck­ing protest that’s planned for tomor­row morn­ing in Welling­ton.

Ray of Light

Sure, I’m a nasty lit­tle insect that brings doom and pre­tense, but I like to think I also bring some small rays of sun­shine.

At a recent out­ing to the new Waga­ma­ma (along with hun­dreds of oth­er Welling­to­ni­ans I had a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence. As a quick aside Wagas was just how I remem­bered it from Lon­don (when I was a Anglo-fly-le, ha ha) aside from hav­ing more space here to swing a cat in.

But the real sto­ry begins when my main was late com­ing out, how­ev­er, the floor man­ag­er more than made up by:

1. spot­ting the fault in the line order in the kitchen and fix­ing it, and
2. offer­ing free extras — drinks and more starters to tide us over for the two extra min­utes it took for the mains to come out

Hope­ful­ly this isn’t just new-restau­rant dili­gence. Well done Waga­mana!

Analyse this!

I’ve been pok­ing around in our site stats which tell us every­thing about you, from the colour of your eyes to your home address, and whether any of you are scrawny with big noses, small chins and many issues or not, and I’ve realised that the Welling­ton­ista is fail­ing you in a cou­ple of areas.

1. We haven’t made any procla­ma­tions as to which is the best broth­el in town, or even done any reviews that we’ve writ­ten about.

2. We haven’t writ­ten any Flight of the Con­chords slash fic­tion. Well, out­side of our heads, any­way.

3. We can’t tell you how much Short­land Street actors get paid. I don’t think even the Auck­lan­dista could help with that one, although they’d like to.

Per­haps our love­ly read­ers could address or answer these issues in the com­ments?