While the Film Fes­ti­val dom­i­nates the screens at the Embassy, Para­mount, Te Papa, the Film Archive (and par­tial­ly takes over the Pent­house) there are still main­stream releas­es being flung to the four winds.

As a writer, Mike White has been respon­si­ble for some of the weird­est (Chuck & Buck), the straight­est (The Good Girl) and the fun­ni­est (The School of Rock) films of recent times. Year of the Dog is his first film as a direc­tor and is about a decent, sin­gle, sec­re­tary (played by peren­ni­al sup­port­ing actress Mol­ly Shan­non) and her quest to replace her deceased pet. It’s a roman­tic com­e­dy and the sup­port­ing cast is pret­ty flash: includ­ing John C. Reil­ly and Peter Sars­gaard. Pent­house exclu­sive.

The uplift­ing sto­ry of William Wilber­force (Ioan Gruffudd) and his quest to out­law slav­ery (inspir­ing — or inspired by — the hymn) is told in Amaz­ing Grace. Also star­ring the won­der­ful Romo­la Garai who will be here in less than a month to star with Ian McK­ellen in “King Lear” and “The Seag­ul­l”. Pent­house, Read­ings, Light­house Petone and Rial­to.

Knocked Up is the sto­ry of an unlike­ly cou­ple who, after a one-night-stand, are forced to deal with the preg­nan­cy that binds them togeth­er. It’s by the team that made The 40-year-old Vir­gin and stars Seth Rogen (pro­mot­ed from sup­port­ing actor in the pre­vi­ous film) and Kather­ine Hei­gl. A hoot by all accounts. Read­ings, Regent-on-Man­ners, Light­house Petone, Sky City Queens­gate.

Final­ly, prob­a­bly co-incid­ing with the Dowse’s “Making of” exhi­bi­tion, King Kong gets anoth­er trot out at Queens­gate at 2.30pm on Sun­day.

It’s Film Fes­ti­val time of year, that two and a half week peri­od when watch­ing three films a day becomes more than shame­ful self-indul­gence, its almost oblig­a­tory.

Like life itself, prepar­ing for the Film Fes­ti­val is all about choic­es. You start with a vir­gin pro­gramme and then, over a peri­od of weeks, notes are scrawled, dates are checked, friends are con­sult­ed and pre­views like this are read and then dis­card­ed. You check the timetable won­der­ing whether you can leave work to, er, post a let­ter for a cou­ple of hours on Fri­day morn­ing; you find your­self at lunchtime check­ing how long it real­ly does take to walk briskly between Te Papa and The Embassy, and you try and for­get those moments dur­ing past Fes­ti­vals when you come out of a dis­ap­point­ing but wor­thy Finnish dra­ma at the Para­mount and pass hordes of hap­py peo­ple who saw the extra­or­di­nary Japan­ese ani­ma­tion at The Embassy instead.

The whit­tling is relent­less as the forces of time and space require choic­es to be made. To add an oth­er lay­er of com­pli­ca­tion to your per­son­al process here’s my list of the less obvi­ous options, some of which I’ve been lucky enough to pre­view, but most­ly I’m hang­ing out to see them like every­one else.

The rest of the pre­view, after the jump.