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Wellingtonian of the Year, 2006, how’s he doing now?

Time to take a quick look at how last year’s Welling­ton­ista Welling­ton­ian of the Year is get­ting on in the wake of a full year of pro­mo­tion­al engage­ments & speak­ing gigs.

Get your shopping on

Sun­day, this sun­day from 11am till 2pm Craft2.0 is on at The­New­Dowse.

If you want to get all your Christ­mas presents in one place, Craft2.0 is the place to attempt such a feat. Plus buy­ing local­ly hand­made presents allows you to feel a lit­tle smug.

And did i men­tion the 123 FREE gift bags being hand­ed out at 11am?

Auckland vs. Wellington

A dif­fer­ent long week­end away pro­vides anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to reex­am­ine the age-old bat­tle. After our first chap­ter, Secret Agent Robyn came down from Auck­land to check out our city. This is her report…

Get­ting there: The air­port bus runs past my place every 20 min­utes. I wait­ed for 30 min­utes, but there was no sign of the bus. I start­ed to pan­ic and called a taxi. $50 lat­er I was at the air­port, but too late for check-in. Oh no! But fate smiled upon me — due to ‘weath­er’ in Welling­ton, the plane was late, so they could check me in after all. In Welling­ton, the taxi to my hotel was cheap, but slow in a way that proves the bypass was a dumb idea. Welling­ton wins this one for delay­ing my flight.

2007 AWAs Photos

Yeah, that’s our boy Hadyn hangin’ with Gio­van­ni Ribisi at last week’s AWAs held at the mighty Mighty Mighty. Flight of the Con­chord’s Bret was there as well, to accept the Welling­ton­ian of the Year award, and Blam Blam Blam played and were awe­some.

Oh yes, the Trendy Urban Class* were out in force to cel­e­brate all that is good (and a lit­tle bad) about our fair city at last week’s Annu­al Welling­ton­ista Awards.

For more pho­tos, head over here, where offi­cial pho­tog­ra­ph­er Mike has uploaded his pix from the evening.

* © Domin­ion Post.

Wellington vs. Auckland

A long week­end away pro­vides the per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to re-exam­ine the age-old bat­tle. In our first chap­ter, our agent goes to Auck­land. In our next chap­ter, an ene­my agent will come here…

Air­port access: Get­ting to Welling­ton Air­port, from Thorn­don via a quick stop in Hataitai to pick up my suit­case took less than half an hour, and the only cost was some grov­el­ling to my moth­er. Get­ting to the CBD of Auck­land via a shut­tle took an hour and cost $26 — that’s 15 min­utes longer than the actu­al flight, and only $13 less than the tick­et. Welling­ton 1, Auck­land 0.

Air­ports: Welling­ton air­port has only one ter­mi­nal, which is bliss­ful­ly fast food chain-free and it’s a sexy big space. You can get Fuel cof­fee, and Wish­bone food (which caters to a wide range of dietary require­ments) but it’s loud and bust­ly, and the stools they have at coun­ters are shiny met­al and you slip off them. Mean­while, Auck­land Air­port may have Burg­er King and Mac­Don­alds, but they also have a juice bar with those posh award-win­ning recov­er­able design style chairs. A tie.

Awards results…

• Best Drink in Town: Negroni at Hawthorn Lounge with man­darin-infused gin
• Best Late-Night Venue: Mighty Mighty
• Best Cheap Eats: Satay King­dom
• Best un-Cheap Eats: Mat­ter­horn
• Best Sub­ur­ban Venue: Karori Wildlife Sanc­tu­ary — Karori
• Best Break­fast: Epic
• Best Local Cof­fee Beans: Mojo
• Best Non-Drink­ing Venue: Welling­ton water­front on a sun­ny week day
• Best Appar­el Store: Madame Fan­cy Pants
• Best Shop: Uni­ty Books
• Best Build­ing: Welling­ton Cen­tral Library
• Best Cul­tur­al Venue: Film Archive
• Best Pub­lic Space: The Botan­ic Gar­dens
• Best Pub­lic Art: The instal­la­tions along the way to the Air­port
• Most Need­ed: Light rail to the air­port
• Hottest Hospo of the Year: The staff at Mighty Mighty
• Welling­ton Supervil­lain of the Year: Ker­ry Pren­derghast­ly
• Best 2007 Welling­ton-based Event: Cuba St Car­ni­val
• Best Dub Dub Dub­ber: “Crack­er” — Dami­an Christie
• Welling­ton­ian of the Year: Jemaine and Bret aka. Flight of the Con­chords

Hearty con­grat­u­la­tions to all our win­ners

See The Darjeeling Limited for FREE

MySpace Black Cur­tain is hold­ing a spe­cial screen­ing of The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­it­ed in Welling­ton at the Para­mount The­atre on Tues­day 18th Decem­ber at 8pm.

Come along to the screen­ing and be in to win a pack of 5 DVDs includ­ing Rush­more and The Roy­al Tenen­baums, plus a Dar­jeel­ing Lim­it­ed sound­track and offi­cial movie poster!

The screen­ing is FREE! Your MySpace pro­file is your tick­et. It’s a first-come first- served basis so turn up ear­ly to avoid dis­ap­point­ment.

www.myspace.com/blackcurtainnz

An emo­tion­al com­e­dy about three broth­ers who have not spo­ken to each oth­er in a year who set off on a train voy­age across India with a plan to find them­selves and bond with each oth­er. Their “spir­i­tu­al quest”, how­ev­er, veers rapid­ly off-course (due to events involv­ing over-the-counter pain killers, Indi­an cough syrup, and pep­per spray), and they even­tu­al­ly find them­selves strand­ed alone in the mid­dle of the desert with eleven suit­cas­es, a print­er, and a lam­i­nat­ing machine. At this moment, a new, unplanned jour­ney sud­den­ly begins.

Direct­ed by Wes Ander­son (Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums) and star­ring Owen Wil­son, Jason Schwartz­man and Adrien Brody.

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

First up, I think my nor­mal­ly metic­u­lous research went astray last time and I missed that Shane Mead­ows’ new film This is Eng­land was open­ing at the Rial­to. So, not only did I fail to men­tion it in this space last week but it did­n’t get a review at Funer­als & Snakes or the Cap­i­tal Times and it was such a slow week too… This is Eng­land has instant appeal to me as it’s about my manor and my gen­er­a­tion: Thatcher’s pro­to-fas­cist Eng­land and the dis­af­fect­ed, aim­less youth run­ning wild on the ground. Mead­ows is one of the UK’s finest young film­mak­ing tal­ents (Twen­ty­Four­Se­v­en and A Room for Romeo Brass are the best) but he lost his way for a while. Rial­to exclu­sive.

Sky City Cin­e­mas real­ly don’t know how to pro­gramme the Embassy: block­buster then art-house then bol­ly­wood, etc. Now they’re try­ing a bit of both with ultra-vio­lent video-game adap­ta­tion Hit­man and nature doc­u­men­tary The White Plan­et. What a dou­ble-fea­ture that will be. Hit­man is also play­ing at Read­ings and Regent-on-Man­ners. The White Plan­et is in the same mode as the huge hit March of the Pen­guins: this time the focus is on polar bears and the nar­ra­tor is Queen Lat­i­fah (sor­ry, wrong Arc­tic movie). Also screen­ing at the Para­mount and the Pent­house.

UPDATE: Sky City don’t even know how to pro­mote their Embassy ses­sions either! Miss­ing from their cor­po­rate web site on Wednes­day was any men­tion of the dai­ly screen­ings of This Is New Zealand, the sen­sa­tion­al wide-screen epic that show­cased New Zealand to the world at the Osa­ka Expo in Japan in 1970. Not to be missed. Ses­sion times can be found at the old Deluxe site which I thought had died.

The rest of this week’s new releas­es after the jump…

Jealous Girls and Bad Kids

I keep mean­ing to post about all the fan­tas­tic inter­na­tion­al gigs that are about to hap­pen in Welling­ton as sum­mer kicks in, but what with the 2AWA and Blams fever, the launch of CHOICE mag­a­zine, the gold­en weath­er and the par­ty sea­son, I’ve been a bit slack.

So it is with some urgency that I draw your atten­tion to two shows com­ing up in the next week:

Gales­burg presents The Gos­sip and Palomi­no presents Black Lips

The Gos­sip play this Sat­ur­day night (8th) at the San Fran Bath­house with locals Corti­na, and Black Lips at the same venue next Tues­day the 11th with Knife Fight.

Tick­ets avail­able from Slow­boat Records, Cuba St.

Read more after the jump about both bands and sup­ports…

Who’s going to drive you home tonight?

So by now, you’ve vot­ed (you have right? Vot­ing clos­es today!) and picked out what you’re going to wear to the awards (and if you wear a magen­ta dress too, I might just have to cut you), so have you set­tled upon your pub­lic trans­port options as to how you’re going to get home after­wards? If you’re going to be drink­ing, you of course can’t dri­ve. And we’re not rec­om­mend­ing you leave before mid­night, so that means the bus­es are out. Unless you’re plan­ning on walk­ing (which we advise you to do in pairs, nat­u­ral­ly), you’re prob­a­bly going to get a taxi. How about you try out a Green Cab? Their all-Prius fleet and com­mit­ment to plant­i­ng trees to off­set their car­bon, along with their “ ‘ethics first busi­ness sec­ond” mantra sits hap­pi­ly with the dirty lefty hip­pies of the Welling­ton­ista. Plus, their cabs stand out, so if you take one home in a less than awake state, you’ll know who to call in the morn­ing if you leave some­thing in the cab, and their police-checked dri­vers should mean you’ll get safe­ly home.

Dis­claimer: I’ve nev­er actu­al­ly riden in a Green Cab. Yet. But I like the idea. And they have a free num­ber to call — 0508 4 47336 (0508 4 GREEN), which is great for those who are cred­it­ly chal­lenged!