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.
Well, hi there sailors
Ahem.
Hi. I’m new. I’ve been recently invited to write for this fabulous website, so here’s hoping I don’t make a complete dick of myself in my first post.
Introducing yourself to hundreds, possibly thousands of readers is a tough one to pull off. Even though I’m a writer by trade – a features journo for the Dominion Post – I figure who needs actual sentences when summing yourself up is best done by a list:
Things I like:
– Craft
– French food
– Red things.
Things I may post about in the future:
– Why bus drivers have PMT at the moment
– The chronic shortage of decent maternity wear in this city
– Suburban cat politics
– Best hairstyles for windy weather
– Why living in a cul-de-sac is the coolest thing since red shiny shorts in the 1970s.
I usually have a home at Special K where I make lists, talk about my cat, ponder my gradually expanding body, and wax lyrical about the people I meet through my awesome job. Hopefully, what I write on here will be much, much more interesting.
Look forward to meeting y’all. K
The Hollow Men at BATS
Just a quick note to recommend Dean Parker’s theatrical adaptation of The Hollow Men, which is on now at BATS. My position in the theatre industry prevents me from doing a proper review which means I can’t tell you how funny and pointed it is, nor how expertly directed it is (by Jonathan Hendry) or how good many of the performances are (particularly Stephen Papps as Brash).
Several reviews are online at John Smythe’s excellent Theatreview resource so you can get the full down-low from there.
The Hollow Men plays at BATS until Thursday 11 October and then travels to Centrepoint in Palmerston North for a season.
Cinephilia: Opening This Week
Fully 60% of all the opening films this week are at the Paramount: first up indie thriller Unknown has a great ensemble cast including James Caviezel, Greg Kinnear and Barry Pepper. It’s a riddle of a thriller as five guys wake up locked in a deserted warehouse unable to remember what happened or which of them are the good guys and which are the baddies. A gas leak has caused multiple amnesia and the race is one to work out who is the kidnapper and who the kidnapped. By all accounts there are plenty of twists which make this a thriller to get the old brain box going.
The rest of this week’s new cinema releases after the jump.
White Fungus Issue 8 Release Party
Come see the new mag for the first time and enjoy a night of off-beat entertainment.
(details after the jump)
Time to veg out
October 1 is World Vegetarian Day, so we’d like you to comment and tell us about your favourite vege-friendly places to eat in Wellington.
We’d also like to encourage you to check out the Wellington Vegetarian Food & Lifestyle Festival on Saturday Saturday September 29 at St Johns in the City, Cnr Willis and Dixon Streets.
Join us to celebrate World Vegetarian Day with an exciting range of stalls covering everything from vegetarian cookery demonstrations and tastings, lifestyle products, cruelty-free beauty products, to nutritional information. View documentaries played on a big screen being run throughout the day, and hear informative speakers talk about human health, the environmental effects of food production, new education initiatives in schools, animal health, and animal rights.
Or if that all sounds like too much hard work, here’s a really easy recipe for dhal.
Jason Kahn and White Fungus
Jason Kahn is a sound and visual artist based in Zürich whose work includes drawing, sound installation, performance and composition. He was born in New York, grew up in Los Angeles and relocated to Europe in 1990. Kahn has been exhibiting his sound and visual works since the late 1990s, and has had solo and group exhibitions in museums, galleries and arts spaces pretty much everywhere in the damn world.
And he’s playing in Wellington on Sunday night.