Coupled

It’s been a bit quiet up here at Wel­ling­tonista Towers over the last few days, mostly because our two most recent and pro­lif­ic con­trib­ut­ors – Haydn and Tom – have been work­ing flat out on their entry for this year’s 48 Hour Film Chal­lenge.

Their hard work has has res­ul­ted in ‘Coupled’ – co-writ­ten by Hadyn and star­ring Tom, and which will screen at 5.45pm tonight (Tus­day 30 May) at the Regent Cinema.

No doubt the claims of ‘cine­mat­ic bril­liance’ are well foun­ded, so get along to enjoy this, and the oth­er qual­ity and not-so-qual­ity pieces of film-mak­ing whipped up in your fair city over the week­end.

For a full list of screen­ing times head over to the offi­cial 48 Hours web­site.

(And for more Wel­ling­ton-based 48 hours blog­ging action, check out Talula and Che Tibby (the lat­ter being anoth­er mem­ber of the Coupled team.))

Wir darn darn darn auf der Autobahn

Crocheted bunny - photo by ellipseOkay, so that’s a lame song-lyr­ic pun, but you try com­ing up with some­thing wit­ti­er when you’ve just spent 48 hours chained up in fluffy hand­cuffs and you’re writ­ing a post about a craft fair called “Craft­werk”. Since this is from the people who brought you Bitch­Craft, it’s not the usu­al raf­fia mafia and dodgy doil­ies: expect more along the lines of Cleav­age Girls but­tons, knit­ted posters for Dis­astera­dio, self-pub­lished ‘zines and ted­dies with entrails. Yummy.

I could try rewrit­ing the press release, but my brain is still busy recaf­fein­at­ing, and besides, I have to get the can­dle­wax and lip­stick off my tux. So, here’s the press release in its entirety.

…

Craft­Werk is a bi-monthly craft fair fea­tur­ing the best and bright­est of the Wel­ling­ton craft scene. The inaug­ur­al Craft­Werk launches at The Para­mount Theatre on the 13th of July from 5.30pm.

Craft­Werk will fea­ture a diverse range of: art, hand­made items, and indie design­er fash­ion, rep­res­ent­ing New Zeal­and’s hand­made revolu­tion. What sets Craft­Werk apart from any oth­er fair is our inten­tion to foster and inspire kiwi crafters without profit­ing at their expense. Simply think tra­di­tion­al fairs with a twist and you have Craft­Werk.

The Para­mount Theatre Wel­ling­ton’s old­est Cinema and now its hot­test events ven­ue is where Craft­Werk calls home. The Para­moun­t’s lounge bar is stocked with a wide range of beers and wines as well as soft drinks, snacks and Kapiti ice-cream. This relax­ing atmo­sphere, in the middle of Wel­ling­ton’s hub of enter­tain­ment and night­life, Cour­tenay Place, allows vendors and shop­pers alike a break from the bustle and a chance to absorb the Craft­Werk exper­i­ence.

Connan & the Mockasins @ Slowboat

The ‘next-big-thing’ out of Wel­ling­ton (if you haven’t heard that before, then you heard it here first) Con­nan & the Mock­as­ins have just released their debut EP ‘Uuu, It’s Teasy’, and are cel­eb­rat­ing with a free instore con­cert down at Slow­boat Records tomor­row (Thu 25th May) from 5pm. For those who have yet to wit­ness […]

The Hunt Brings Us Life

the hunt!More NZ Music month good­ness is upon us, with the release of the Phoenix Found­a­tion’s Samuel Flynn Scot­t’s solo album – ‘The Hunt Brings Us Life’.

Those of us lucky enough to receive sneak pre­view cop­ies were also amused by the very excel­lent accom­pa­ny­ing press release cour­tesy of ‘Prof’ Rus­sell Brown, which we recom­mend you go to and read in its entirety over at Pub­lic Address. If only all music­al acts could approach their PR with such good humour. (Tellingly enough, the last CD that had any­thing remotely as good was fel­low Phoene­cian Luke Buda’s PR for his also recently released ‘Spe­cial Sur­prise’ album, which fea­tured pho­tos of Luke as Rambo and Her­cules (although not, we were dis­ap­poin­ted to see, Benny from Abba (although, we did fix that))).

As if all this Phoenix Found­a­tion mem­bers doing their own thing was­n’t enough, we get the added bonus of a broad­cast of Scot­t’s oth­er ‘oth­er’ band – Bun­nies on Ponies – live at Bar Bodega, on Nation­al Radio tonight (web stream avail­able here). At 7:30pm. When … hold on … there’s some­thing else on .. around then? Any­way, Scott describes Bun­nies on Ponies as…
…hotch potch kind of folk band that com­bines gentle folk
songs with slightly aggress­ive impro­vised arrange­ments.
We know exactly what he means. And, for those who don’t, you can just tune in and find out.

Luxxury

Well, it’s all on tonight. If you’re not exhausted after see­ing the rug­ger at not-the-Cake-Tin, listen­ing on Nation­al Radio to per­form­ances by unlikely per­muta­tions of small anim­als, hear­ing the pipes call­ing at the Opera House or see­ing some obscure up-and-com­ing band at what I think is still called Indigo, then Sand­wiches has a party night for every­one. Elec­troluxxe is billed as “Tech­no­Elec­troRock­House”, thus pretty much cov­er­ing every genre oth­er than dub, jazz and coun­try. You know how it is: you’re with a bunch of people, all with dif­fer­ent tastes in music, and no-one can agree: someone likes 80s New Romantic, anoth­er one goes for dirty punky elec­tro, someone else likes indie rock and some sad bug­ger (prob­ably me) prefers 90s techno. So Elec­troluxxe comes to the res­cue with a play list that includes the likes of Dur­an Dur­an, Peaches, Bloc Party and Carl Craig. The word “mashup” does­n’t even begin to describe it.

Those with espe­cially capa­cious reserves of energy (and cash) could then explore the most dec­ad­ent dishes and deranged decor of culin­ary Wel­ling­ton or try to track down the latest mys­tery bar. Here’s a hint: one of the com­menters has already got it. Here’s anoth­er: this is pos­sibly the only bar to have actu­ally become classi­er when it was taken over by Bri­an Le Gros.

Gene pool deletion in progress

gene pool dele­tion in pro­gress, ori­gin­ally uploaded by max­ch­erry. Could­n’t help but draw more atten­tion to this par­tic­u­lar photo, spot­ted in the Wel­ling­ton Flickr Photo Pool today. Says max­ch­erry, the photo-taker… noth­ing wrong with tow­ing a motor­cycle – can be safely done. The rider has winds just one coil around the bar, and grips the […]

If the Earth were a Sandwich…

…our sand­wich part­ner would, give or take a few miles, be Sala­manca, Spain. We’re not sure if this is the rationale behind the nam­ing of the Kel­burn road that shares the name (a quick Google reveals that Lord Wel­ling­ton fought a fam­ous battle there – in Spain, that is, not up Kel­burn way – in […]

Miserable Jafas?

Today’s Domin­ion Post car­ries an insuf­fer­ably smug art­icle head­lined “The lonely misery of liv­ing in Auck­land”. Like all good journ­al­ism these days, this story is based almost entirely upon Google: in this case, the news that a Google Trends search for the word “misery” shows that Auck­landers search Google for this word more often than […]

The Bacon Sarnie Experience

A good name for a band don’t you think? Right then, back to my lifelong obses­sion, the hunt for the Great Bacon Sarnie. I missed the food show. And I’m not scared of being cuddly. So I invite all our read­ers to tell us where the Best Bacon Sarnie can be had. In Wel­ling­ton prefer­ably, […]

Overseas experience

This week­end, if you can tear your­self away from free bacon sarnies and aren’t too busy hav­ing a bit of a look-see behind the scenes of Wel­ling­ton’s art power­houses, pop into the Over­seas Pas­sen­ger Ter­min­al to get a glimpse of its pro­posed trans­form­a­tion. There will be a pub­lic open day on Sat­urday from 10am to […]