Late-night shenanigans are back on the menu!

There was a while in 2005 when you knew that on Fri­day and Sat­urday nights you could go to Indigo, and they’d be open, and there’d be Nixx-Til-Sixx spin­ning everything from Bloc Party to Mot­ley Crue and you could drink until 6am. And then that stopped and it sucked. Fast foward to now though, and in 2008, Indigo is now San Fran­cisco Bath­house, and Nixx-Til-Sixx has been replaced by the fab­ulous DJ Doo­fus, but the same thing is hap­pen­ing.

All night long, baby. Just like Lionel prom­ised. 1 a.m til 6 a.m. All week­end. Every week­end. Cheap bever­ages. Rotat­ing djs. Open when oth­ers bars close. Hos­ted by djdooo­fus and the nice staff at San Fran. It’s a cel­eb­ra­tion, bitches!

Wel­come to your new favour­ite place to go when everything else has already shut. We’ll see you there.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

The Other Boleyn Girl posterAfter the excite­ment of the pre-Oscar rush it’s anoth­er quiet week at the cinema. Open­ing all over town (that’s Read­ings, Empire, Pent­house, Regent-on-Man­ners and Light­house Petone) is the his­tor­ic­al drama The Oth­er Boleyn Girl fea­tur­ing the dream team of Nat­alie Port­man and Scar­lett Johans­son along with Eric Bana as ‘Enery the Eighth.

Even more his­tor­ic­al (at least in terms of dis­tance if not accur­acy) is 10,000 B.C. which stars our own Cliff Curtis as a char­ac­ter called Tic’T­ic (I kid you not). Dir­ec­ted by Inde­pend­ence Day’s Roland Emmerich, 10,000 B.C. was par­tially filmed in New Zea­l­and last year and tells the story of a young mam­moth hunter­’s des­per­ate efforts to save his tribe. There’s no sign of Raquel Welch but Cam­illa Belle (When a Stranger Calls) comes off the bench to play eye-candy: Read­ings and Regent-on-Man­ners.

If neither of these take your fancy, there are sneak pre­views again this week­end of the Simon Pegg rom-com Run Fat­boy Run (dir­ec­ted by his good mate Dav­id Schwim­mer). You’ll find that at Read­ings, Empire, Regent-on-Man­ners and Pent­house today, Sat­urday and Sunday only.

All three of these titles will be reviewed at Funer­als & Snakes next Wed­nes­day (and in the Cap­it­al Times on the same day). Mean­while, tick­ets have gone on sale for the 2008 World Cinema Show­case which is an abso­lute doozy this year – a worthy com­pet­it­or to the main Fest­iv­al. And the Film Soci­ety got under way on Monday which must mean that Sum­mer is nearly over.

Rustic Mexican

Well we rushed down to the new ven­ue for Viva Mex­ico this even­ing and thor­oughly enjoyed that they’d almost com­pletely run out of stock!

Viva Mexico

Luck­ily they agreed to sell us what they still had… which was some pretty good enchil­a­das.

Hutty goodtimes

The Hutt is a seeth­ing mass of cul­ture (as if you did­n’t know), and at the moment there is a par­tic­u­larly splen­did out­door exhib­i­tion of sculp­ture, Shape Shifter. The art works are for sale, and we at the Wel­ling­tonista Towers feel a few would look just the thing in the foy­er. The exhib­i­tion is at the Civic Gar­dens, next to the Hor­ti­cul­tur­al Hall and oppos­ite the Dowse.

Why not make a real trip of it, and come out on Sat­urday for the Petone Fiesta. This street car­ni­val fea­tures a vibrant and eclect­ic mix of music, food, theatre, arts and crafts. A cer­tain shop may even be open espe­cially late for the fun , and a cer­tain shop­keep­er may be guzz­ling grog to make the fun fun­ner, but that is anoth­er story…

Petone Fiesta, Jack­son St, 6pm-10pm 8th March.

Shape Shifter, Civic Gar­dens, 22 Feb­ru­ary – 16 March.

Yes, you can has synth!


The L.E.Ds are play­ing Mighty Mighty on Fri­day night, and you should go along. But make sure not to party too hard and render your­self incap­able of attend­ing the offi­cial New­townista flat­warm­ing the next day…

3 things Miramar needs

  1. Mesh net­work
  2. The cinema open
  3. Statues of Pil­lars of Argonath either side of ‘the cut­ting’

Read why …

A city littered with poetry

Now, every­body has seen the poetry which seems to appear just about every­where down near the lagoon and around Te Papa, right?

This one took me by sur­prise though.

Fiona Kidman, Speaking with my grandmothers

It’s Fiona Kid­man, and is in such a com­par­at­ively out-of-the-way place I lit­er­ally stumbled across it.

The full text of the poem is here.

But can you guess where the pic­ture was taken?

Something fishy going on

Which water­front res­taur­ant, fam­ous for its sea­food, is unlikely to be telling its guests that their spe­cial fish de jour Sole is actu­ally frozen, not fresh?

Mo’ Ho?

Some have accused Mojo of becom­ing Wel­ling­ton’s answer to Star­bucks, but accord­ing to one blog­ger, maybe they’re more like Hoot­ers. Appar­ently, “All the female staff have their shirts buttoned down to the low­est feas­ible but­ton mean­ing that any move­ment will expose a little more breast than your aver­age cafe.” Is this a new mor­al low for cof­fee mar­ket­ing? Such a major incid­ent required fear­less invest­ig­at­ive report­ing, so a fly was dis­patched to Mojo to find out…

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

Just in time for the week­end, here’s a quick run down of the films open­ing this week in cinemas across town.

Lady Chatterely poster Return­ing from last year’s Film Fest­iv­al is Lady Chat­ter­ley, a French adapt­a­tion of an earli­er (“kinder, gentler” accord­ing to Ebert) ver­sion of D. H. Lawrence’s fam­ous erot­ic nov­el Lady Chat­ter­ley’s Lov­er. It sounds like it could have been titled There Will Be Sex: Rialto only.

Also return­ing, but from the more recent French Film Fest­iv­al is big-budget cos­tume drama Molière, about the great dram­at­ist played by Romain Duris.That one is a Pent­house exclus­ive.

Finally this week, 300’s Ger­ard But­ler romances Hil­ary Swank from the dead in P.S., I Love You. Described by one review­er as hav­ing a “high ick factor”. Read­ings and Regent-on-Man­ners.

All these films will be reviewed at Funer­als & Snakes by next Wed­nes­day (and in the Cap­it­al Times on the same day).