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.
Are we a modern city?
Case in point … why do we not have broadband access to everyone in the (wider) city?
This from Singapore:
Singapore gets free wireless connectivity with Wireless@SG while no one gets left behind in the digital revolution. Find out about how the Singapore Government is reaching out to more Singaporeans and equipping everyone to take full advantage of the digital opportunities that are opening up.
So why don’t we do that?
Is it a case, as some think (in the comments), that the Government should stay out of providing infrastructure and leave it to the private industry (to which I assume they are referring to Telecom or TelstraClear)?
To be fair the Council is doing something about it – read their broadband plan
Wellington City Councillors have agreed to a vision that could see affordable, high-speed broadband access throughout the city by 2012.
But we all know how fast technology moves (have you seen the just announced, 2cm deep Apple MacAir?) and so this promise for 2012 by our Council seems, at best, limited in vision and at worse, a huge missed opportunity. For instance, what we’re promised for 2012 South Korea has had for 3 years.
A possible solution for you after the jump …
Wellingtonista Radio Show ep 02
Last week saw the quiet but confident debut of the Wellingtonista Radio Show on The VBC. You can listen to an edited version of the show here Wellingtonista_Show_EP01 (right-click, save as), and hopefully we’ll get our podcasting steez together and start publishing the shows as umm.. podcasts.
I’ll be presenting the second show, same time: 7pm – 9pm, tonight.
Tech info after the jump…
These are the fixtures of your neighbourhood
One of the things about living in a great city like Wellington is that there are a hell of a lot of things to take for granted.
I mention this because while listening to Don McGlashan in Civic Square the other day he mentioned that Auckland doesn’t really have any civic art. I’m not sure that’s entirely true… But, in the spirit of parochial one-upmanship I thought I’d bring you some of Wellington’s oft-overlooked art and sculpture.
Why oft-overlooked? Well, we have the Wellington Sculpture Trust and its glamourpuss art all over the blimmin place, but there’s also a lot of smaller, less noticed stuff that we here at the Wellingtonista want to celebrate.
So with no further ado, here is a sculpture. And ain’t it a little cutie?
The real question is of course whether you recognise it. And you probably don’t. This of course being the problem with a place like Wellington, sometimes there’s so much bloody public art you can’t walk three feet without tripping over the latest “abstract something”…
But I digress. So what is it?! More after the jump!
The Wellingtonista events calendar – you know you want it
The Wellingtonista has a calendar of events that we think you really REALLY want to know about. We also know that you want this vital information delivered into your own calendar – easy peasy, just follow the instructions after the break …
Tui hooligans
The recent flap (no pun intended) over noisy tui may seem like a typical silly season non-story, but believe me, it’s a real problem. I live above a major central city intersection, and people sometimes ask whether I’m disturbed by road noise. “No,” I say, “but those bloody birds wake me up at 5 in the morning!” A small patch of harakeke eight floors down is enough to attract hordes of juvenile tui flitting around and chattering and generally carrying on like kids in Manners Mall. Tsk tsk, youth today!
It’s probably just the morning-averse urbocentric biophobic grump in me, but does anyone else notice it? And what is the best collective noun for tui? A disturbance? A larrikin? A raucous?
Wellingtonista Radio Show
Just a wee heads up: I’ll be presenting the very first Wellingtonista Radio Show on The VBC tonight. The VBC is the student owned and operated/community LPFM radio station broadcasting on 88.3FM, based at the Kelburn Campus of Victoria University of Wellington, in New Zealand.
