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Celluloid architecture

These days it seem like there’s a spe­cial­ist film fes­ti­val for every taste and inter­est: human rights, veg­eta­bles, silent films and even Phoenix dactylif­era. There’s even one for archi­tec­ture buffs, and the Welling­ton sea­son starts at the Pent­house this Fri­day.

[Read on…]

Dear Fellow Bus Passenger,

…if you find your­self halfway down the bus, dur­ing rush-hour, with the entire rear of the bus’s aisle not only emp­ty, but with half a dozen seats still there for tak­ing, please don’t just stand there, act­ing as a dam against the ever-increas­ing human stream forc­ing its way up against your incon­sid­er­ate arse.

Mov­ing back, and up that one small step is all that divides you from a pos­si­ble seat, and from allow­ing anoth­er ten or so peo­ple onto this bus, instead of caus­ing them to wait 10 min­utes until the next (prob­a­bly also over­crowd­ed) bus arrives. Arse­hole.

Bar Wars

The Cap­i­tal Times has begun its 2006 Best of Welling­ton sur­vey (not online), invit­ing read­ers to vote for their favourite things under dozens of cat­e­gories.

How­ev­er, one cat­e­go­ry is glar­ing­ly absent: best bar. They have best bar­man, bar­maid, music venue and night­club, but no bar (or best Mar­ti­ni, for that mat­ter).

[read on…]

Newtown words

Tomor­row night, the New­town Com­mu­ni­ty and Cul­tur­al Cen­tre hosts New­town Spo­ken Word Win­ter 06, an open mike event organ­ised by the Word Col­lec­tive, the peo­ple who brought you Sk8board Poets, Karaoke Poet­ry and the Word Fes­ti­vals. It starts at 7:30pm at the cor­ner of Rin­toul & Colom­bo streets, and entry is by koha. For more infor­ma­tion, call Craig on 027 242 3453.

Snakes! On a plane! In Wellington!

Not that long ago, the Lon­don Time Out ran a fea­ture on pirates in Lon­don to cel­e­brate the release of Pirates of the Caribbean 2. Way to be hip, Time Out. Every­one who’s any­one knows that the actu­al most impor­tant movie this year is Snakes on Plane — or as some like to call it “Moth­er­fuck­ing snakes on a moth­er­fuck­ing plane”. So, in trib­ute to this movie that opens on Thurs­day, the Welling­ton­ista is proud to present this very spe­cial activ­i­ty guide to recre­at­ing snakes on a plane in Welling­ton:

Musique Non Stop

(right, that’s the oblig­a­tory Kraftwerk ref­er­ence out of the way)

This week­end’s a busy one for fol­low­ers of elec­tron­ic and dance music. Tomor­row night, Mod­ule’s live band (includ­ing Rhi­an Shee­han and Raashi Malik) plays the late set at Cabaret. From there, it’s just a quick jaunt along Courte­nay Place to Sand­wich­es for Rhom­bus, who will be start­ing at about … oh, when­ev­er gigs start at Sand­wich­es these days.

After a late night like that, on Sat­ur­day you might be in the mood for some­thing more laid-back, so try out While_you_were_sleeping’s explo­rations of ambi­ent and exper­i­men­tal sounds at Room 101 (under Bar Bode­ga) from 8pm. To get a pre­view of the sounds on offer, lis­ten to The Ses­sion on Radio Active tonight, fea­tur­ing tracks and inter­views from some of the artists involved (incld­ing Pang, Panoram­i­ca and Anaes­the­sia Asso­ciates).

So So Mod­ern, Dis­as­tera­dio and Chair­man Miaow, will be play­ing an Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al ben­e­fit show at Indi­go The San Fran­cis­co Bathouse from 9:30. And if you’ve any pills ener­gy left, Con­cord Dawn and Minu­it are play­ing not one but two gigs at Sub­nine: all-ages from 7pm to 10pm, and grown-ups only from 11pm.

It’s not my bag, baby!

Post­ed in the win­dow of a cer­tain shop in Cuba St:

I guess he won’t be try­ing that again.

Dancing in the streets

Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al are look­ing to recruit street per­form­ers to sup­port human rights as part of Free­dom Week 2006(their annu­al aware­ness and fundrais­ing week 31 july — 6 august)

Mon­ey col­lect­ed on the streets this year will sup­port their cri­sis cam­paign­ing work, in par­tic­u­lar their work to stop human rights abus­es in Dar­fur, Sudan.

To help raise the pro­file of Free­dom Week, and boost pub­lic dona­tions, for the first time this year, they’re ask­ing artists, buskers and per­form­ing arts stu­dents to give up half an hour or an hour of their time to busk on Free­dom Day, their street appeal day. In Welling­ton that’s Thurs­day 3rd August.

This is an invite to dance for love in the street to sup­port Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al’s Free­dom Day.

What: Free­dom Day street per­for­mance with Welling­ton Batu­ca­da (for Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al’s Free­dom Week)

When: Thurs­day 3rd August, between 5 and 6pm

Where: Cor­ner of Lambton Quay and Feath­er­ston St (in front of Old Bank Arcade)

Cos­tumes: To be advised

Oth­er: There will be no prac­tices, so you will need to be con­fi­dent in fol­low­ing carnival/samba reg­gae moves as lead by a teacher and freestyling as well.

Shake it for a good cause, or just go along and show your sup­port.

Tom’s Martini on National Radio

For those who missed Tom dis­cussing his Welling­ton Mar­ti­ni mis­sion on Kim Hill’s Sat­ur­day morn­ing Nation­al Radio, here’s a stream­ing mp3 link of the show. (Just click on it — it should fire up your default mp3 play­er and play the file. Don’t know how long the link will stay active, though.)

If win­dows media for­mat is more your thing (and, if it is, may we rec­om­mend you review your dig­i­tal media usage options), then head over the Nation­al Radio site and try chang­ing the set­tings there.

Williams Gallery

There is a great exhi­bi­tion at the Williams Gallery in Petone fea­tur­ing a range of prints by Michael Smither. Most of the art uses fair­ly abstract forms in a lim­it­ed palette. I rate them high­ly. Don’t be put off by the boat pic­ture on the Williams web­site, because frankly I think there are far stronger pieces than that.

Very appeal­ing too are the prices. Plen­ty to be had for under $1000, and if you’re in the mar­ket to spend more, you can get a love­ly big print.

And for the more sen­si­tive amongst you, I did­n’t notice any paint­ings by Patrick Williams star­ring lady bits. Praise be.