Cinephilia: Opening This Week
As we approach the apex of the international awards season the biggest week for quality cinema releases in memory is upon us. With 8 Oscar nominations, the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men leads the pack and opens today at Readings, Lighthouse Petone, Paramount, Sky City Queensgate and the Embassy. Based on a Cormac McCarthy gothic crime novel, No Country reportedly sees the Coen’s back in their finest form since Fargo . Josh Brolin (American Gangster) plays a hunter who stumbles on a suitcase full of money and decides to keep it. He doesn’t realise that one of the biggest badasses in screen history (Javier Bardem) is coming to get him – and the money.
George Clooney as Best Actor is one of seven Oscar nominations gained for Michael Clayton, a paranoia-thriller about a corporate fixer who uncovers a plot that cannot end well for his clients – or for him. Written and directed by first-timer Tony Gilroy (co-writer of the Bourne trilogy), Michael Clayton brings to mind 70s classics like The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor (directed by Sydney Pollack who stars in Michael Clayton). Readings, Empire, Lighthouse Petone, Penthouse and Sky City Queensgate.
Flickr: Wellington is more than just a Group
Huh? “Flickr … Group” … what are you blithering about man!?!? It’s okay, you’re not alone as I had to have the whipper-snappers sit me down in my bath-chair and explain what the jolly Moses they were talking about. It seems that using this newly fandangled Internet we don’t have to store all our photos in a cardboard box under the spare bed any more. No, we can “post” them up to the Web and let the world* see our holiday snaps.
Flickr is one such place that lets you post your photos.
And, you can tell the world where the pictures came from by either popping them onto a map or adding the place name as a tag/label.
You can even join up with like minded folks and share your photos in “community photo albums” (groups) on any subject you care to dream up.
Aha, you probably saw where this was going a lot quicker than I did when the young uns were explaining it to me with the use of short words, diagrams and plenty of naps in the sun to recover.
Bloggers Predict: 2008
So last night, the good people of Unlimited Potential held their annual Bloggers Predict event, in which they get a bunch of guys (emphasis on the all maleness of the event) to say what they think is going to happen over the year.
The Bloggers
- David Farrar, of Kiwiblog fame
- Mauricio Freitas, Geekzone Guru
- Hamish MacEwan, local visionary
- Philip Fierlinger, turntable technologist
- Tom Beard, Wellurbanite
No doubt those nice people will post about what their predictions were, so let me instead tell you what my predictions are, and then after the jump, I will share with you my thoughts on the night in note form.
My predictions
- Hopefully they’ll try harder to get a woman on the panel. “They’re all at the Linux Conference” is not good enough, because while I do love Brenda, turns out that there actually are other females interested in technology in Wellington. I suppose they could argue that no women approached them in 2007 about doing it, but meh.
- Face to face contact will make a comeback, facilitated by internet arrangements, like Facebook Events, etc. The stigma of meeting someone over the internet will be almost entirely gone.
- All new workplace Codes of Conduct will specifically mention blogging
After the jump, my nonsensical (did I mention there was free beer?) notes from the night.
Bars and Bites
This is in the vein of The Wellingtonista Bar Fly-les, but I thought I’d give it another name since it’s about food & coffee as well as drink.
- Have I been unobservant, or has Offbeat Originals only just started offering lamb as an option in their famous burgers? And tapenade as an accompaniment?! [insert drooling noises here]
- The Buena Vista Social Club seems to have been successful as a certain mayoral campaign. It has closed (rather inconveniently for certain fringe shows), though it is apparently due to reopen as a gay bar called S&M. No comment.
- If you’ve been putting off enjoying Simply Paris’ excellent cassoulet, patisserie, Merguez frites baguettes or pain perdu by their bizarre choice of “Nespresso” in place of coffee, then rejoice! for they now have a proper espresso machine and Orb coffee. You’ll still have to put up with the twee décor and occasionally slow service, though the more than occasional hotness of their staff should make up for the latter.
- Forgive me for shouting, but … TIKI TIKI TIKI! It’s not quite the proper Tiki Bar that the Wellingtonista have long been gagging for, but Matterhorn are having a Tiki Bar weekend this weekend, complete with vintage tiki mugs, dry ice, special cocktails and silly hats.
Wellingtonista on the Wheels of Steel
Spinning the platters that matter on VBC from 7 to 9 tonight on behalf of the Wellingtonista will be… Dan S.
Hardy souls happy to be enraged or enlightened by some blasts from the past (many tunes will be conjured from actual vinyl artifacts) can tune in on 88.3FM or by visiting http://www.vbc.org.nz/ where they will stream the content direct to your PC speakers. I’ll try and make a recording of the show for podcast conversion but, in the likely event I am consumed by panic, I make no guarantees.
Stephen’s intro to version 2.0 still applies:
The show will go from 7 – 9 pm, NZDT (GMT+13). The studio line is +64 4 463 9994 if you feel like ringing up and abusing/encouraging me.
Summer city
For some of the smallest Wellingtonistas the most important part of the council’s Summer City festival has finished with the end of Fairy Trina‘s wildly popular run of Enchanted Tales on Saturday.
And this evening marked the end of a series of pretty interesting evening Gardens Magic events with a gig by OdESSA. But fear not – there’s still lots more excitement for everyone between now and the end of March when the festival wraps up.
We’d recommend picking up one of the guides from the library or other spots around town; or failing that, download a copy from the council’s event website.
Then, assemble your own programme of activities. Hmmmm… maybe those same small Wellingtonistas would like to see The Phoenix Foundation on Valentine’s Day? Because their parents sure as hell would…
(FTW) Wigs for Whigs
Let’s say that you have a dress-up party to go to, maybe with an ‘American Mistakes’ theme, and maybe you want a blonde wig to go with your red dress so that you can be Anna Nicole Smith. Where should you get that blonde wig from? Well, if you’re a public servant at the Molesworth end of town, you might head down to Creative Show Off Costume Hire on Thorndon Quay, and pay $20 for a wig. But if you’re smart, you’ll go to the Costume Cave on Wakefield Street instead, and only pay $10. Costume Cave for the win!
Cinephilia: Opening This Week
There are at least two crackers in this week’s line-up. Firstly, Johnny Depp re-unites with Tim Burton for faithful adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s acclaimed musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Depp is in his finest form (despite not having a Broadway-strength voice) and is joined by a wonderful cast including Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall and Sacha Baron Cohen. Readings, Empire, Sky City Quensgate.
“The West Wing†creator Aaron Sorkin returns to DC to script Charlie Wilson’s War: the true story of a renegade but principled playboy Congressman (Tom Hanks) who almost single-handedly funded the Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion in the 1980s. I was surprised to see this wasn’t nominated for an Oscar in the Best Adapted Screenplay category but Philip Seymour Hoffman is in there as Supporting Actor for his excellent turn as impolitic CIA operative Gust Avrakotos. You can see this one at the Embassy, Readings and Sky City Queensgate.
[The rest of this week’s new release summarised after the jump…]
Random Art Story, Two
Next in our series of overlooked Wellington public art is this beauty here to the right.
If you’ve not seen it before I’d be extremely surprised, because it’s plonked pretty much squarely opposite the Lido, somewhere seeming to always be awash with punters tipping the usual variety of liquids and solids into themselves.
As you can see, it’s a great piece, bronze, and textured in a marvelously subtle way. The slightly abstract lines just make it all the more curious to look at, and the complete absence of nose-hair suggests the model was extremely well-kempt.
So… what is it?
Cinephilia: Opening This Week
After a few weeks off listing new releases I’m returning to record a typically eccentric mix of blockbuster and art-house for you to while away those long, balmy summer evenings.
First up is Oscar-winner Ang Lee’s first film since Brokeback Mountain, an erotic espionage thriller set in wartime Shanghai. Already nominated in last week’s Golden Globes Lust, Caution is a Paramount exclusive.
New York gets yet another terrible pounding in Cloverfield, as a monster of some description rips the head off the Statue of Liberty among other atrocities. The catch here is that the entire tale is told by “ordinary people†with their camcorders, a little like Blair Witch a few years ago. It’s produced by J. J. Abrams (“Lostâ€) and directed by another t.v. alumni Matt Reeves (best known thus far as creator of “Felicityâ€). At Readings Courtenay Central and Sky City Queensgate.
Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan have been up nights devising yet more sadistic tortures for deserving and undeserving suckers and have come up with Saw IV. Jigsaw carked it at the end of Saw III but that doesn‘t appear to slow things down at all. You’ll find it at Readings, Sky City Queensgate and Regent-on-Manners: look for the teenage boys trying to sneak in on borrowed ID’s.
Bond villain Mads Mikkelsen crosses over to the side of the angels in Susanne Bier’s acclaimed After the Wedding (Paramount and Penthouse). He plays Jacob, an aid worker who returns to Denmark on a fund-raising mission but instead discovers a life-changing family secret. After the Wedding was nominated for an Oscar last year in the Best Foreign Language Flick category. Finally, a geriatric romance is on offer in Elsa and Fred, from Spain. Described by one critic as “simultaneously heartbreaking and heartening†this one seems tailor-made for the Penthouse.
Readings, in their wisdom, have decided not to offer the Capital Times any reviewer’s passes in 2008 which makes writing about their films very close to being more trouble than it’s worth. So, Cloverfield and Saw IV may not be reviewed there (and thus also at Funerals & Snakes) next Wednesday but the others will.