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 […]