Cinephilia: Opening This Week
In 2006 the New Zealand Film Commission announced a new ultra-low budget feature film scheme called Headstrong and asked for submissions. The Headstrong team (including the Incredibly Strange Ant Timpson, director Paul Swadel and producer Leanne Saunders) went through the 300 scripts to select 10 to develop in the hope that four would go in to production. The first completed film gets a large scale national release today: The Devil Dared Me To (in which legendary stuntman Randy Campbell attempts to jump Cook Strait in a rocket car).
The Devil is screening at Readings, Empire, Regent-on-Manners, Sky City Queensgate
At Readings, Lighthouse Petone and the Penthouse, Angelina Jolie plays Marianne Pearl, widow of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, in the true story A Mighty Heart. Directed by the great Michael Winterbottom, A Mighty Heart has been described as “moving and frighteningly real†by the LA Times.
[The rest of this week’s new releases after the jump]
Pink Ribbon Day Street Appeal, Friday Oct 12
The Pink Ribbon is the international symbol for Breast Cancer awareness.
This Friday is the Pink Ribbon Day Street appeal.
Collectors, including at least three of the Wellingtonista, will be fetchingly clad in pink sashes, and will be found lurking on streets & street corners accepting your kind donations towards breast cancer research.
More details, including how to volunteer & wear your own pink sash, can be found at the NZ Breast Cancer website
here
For Sale – One Ticker Tape Parade, Unused
Includes:
25 shipping containers multicoloured shredded paper,
Day’s hire of novelty vehicles & floats,
2000 dancers & street performers,
50,000 black flags.
Speech from the Prime Minister*
Population of one small city looking for something to celebrate.
Make a loved one’s birthday celebration, or anniversary, unforgettable.
Ready to go for October 26.
*Late change, Peter Dunne Subbed for the PM.
From the Archive: Gavin Soper, Cabin Steward and Ratepayer
With my usual excellent sense of timing I have decided to make my contribution to the Intenscity event some days after it has been dismantled but I hope Wellington history aficionados will appreciate it anyway.
This short video features Brian Sergent playing his well-loved character Gavin Soper (Air New Zealand Cabin Steward) for TV3’s Nightline in (I think) 1992 or 3. Gavin is celebrating the impending completion of the refurbished Te Aro Park, the cost of which was a source of some local controversy at the time. The other great contemporary issue he alludes to is the number of glue-sniffing street-kids predominating around the Te Aro area. Simultaneous with the beautification of Te Aro Park was the WCC scheme to house these “poor glue-addled kiddies†in a couple of converted shipping containers on waste ground south of the Basin Reserve.
Written by Brian Sergent; directed by Jonathan Brough; produced by Jonathan Brough, Gordon Harcourt and myself.
Wellingtonista Celeb Vista: Figwit shops!
You know that we love Zoomin technology. And that we love talented people from and/or in Wellington. And that we love gossip. And that we love Gawker Stalker. Well, now we’ve gone all Web2.0 on you and brought all those elements together to create the Wellingtonista Celeb Vista. Join it and add your celeb sightings and stories to the map. To boost our search results for everyone looking for Flight of the Conchords get things started, find out where Bret McKenzie does his grocery shopping…
Easy instructions on how to participate follow after the jump
Sandra Schmidt: Hinterland II
Hinterland II
Sandra Schmidt
Michael Hirschfeld Gallery
(at City Gallery)
10 October — 18 November 2007
The crystalline shapes and icy-coloured forms of Sandra Schmidt’s Hinterland II make up the sequel exhibition to her 2006 hot-hued Hinterland which appeared at Mary Newton Gallery, Wellington. The earlier spiky-shaped works in Hinterland expressed ideas of fire, heat, pressure and friction. In Hinterland II the focus is on cool colours and references to ice and water. Both extremes of temperature represent inhospitable areas, the back country or underdeveloped place, either metaphorical or real.
(more after the jump)
Cinephilia: Opening This Week
Edith Piaf’s life was full of drama, drama that poured out of her when she sang. Born into poverty in WWI-era Paris, raised in a brothel when both parents abandoned her, discovered singing on street corners, she became one of the biggest stars of the 20th Century and died of liver cancer at the age of only 47. Her life is given the big screen treatment in La Vie En Rose, a big budget French production that opened the Berlin Film Festival this year. La Vie En Rose is playing almost everywhere from today: Reading Courtenay Central, Rialto, Lighthouse Petone, Penthouse and Embassy.
Also opening today is a Michael (Heat) Mann produced thriller called The Kingdom, starring Jamie Foxx. A bomb explodes in Saudi Arabia, targeting Americans working there. The US Government offers the locals an elite team of FBI investigators to support the investigation and they rapidly find themselves culturally out of their depth even though they have the skills and technology to locate the terrorists before they strike again. Also starring Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper (Breach) and Jason Bateman. The Kingdom plays at Readings, Regent-on-Manners and Sky City Queensgate.
Finally this week, Scarlett Johansson stars in The Nanny Diaries, adapted from the smash hit novel by the people who brought you the wonderful American Splendor (Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman). Star of American Splendor, Paul Giamatti, also features as one of the poisonous parents entrusting their offspring to decent hardworking Scarlett (the other is Laura Linney). Readings Courtenay Central and Sky City Queensgate.
La Vie En Rose has been reviewed at Funerals & Snakes and the other two will show up in due course.
The Phoenix Foundation – Bright Grey
With a shiny US record deal under their belts, The Phoenix Foundation are getting ready to take over the world with their upcoming third album entitled “Happy Ending” (which dispenses with – disappointingly – the equine-themed nature of their previous two releases: “Horse Power” & “Pegasus”).
Here’s the first single and video from the album, shot, I’m told, in Island Bay, and directed by fellow Wellingtonian and Oscar-nominated film-maker, Taika Waititi.
Intense, man!
I’ve been blathering about it all over the place, but the Wellingtonista has thus far remained staunchly unblathered about IntensCITY week, which started yesterday.
Downtown Wellington is full of exhibitions, posters, shipping containers, lunchtime talks and video installations, all celebrating and/or critiquing our urban spaces. The official site is on the WCC website, and brochures are available in cafes, libraries and council places, or as a big juicy PDF.
Craftwerk finishes natiowide tour in Wellington
The ever-edgy Craftwerk is wrapping up a tour of our fine country with bands, mix tapes and craft galore at the Wesley Methodist Hall on Taranaki Street this Saturday 5pm – 9pm. Be there or miss out on crocheted vaginas, fort building and tonnes of sugary goodness.