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

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.

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).

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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?