we pause for some pretty

It’s Academy Award day in LA and we know the answer to the fash­ion ques­tion of the day “what are you wear­ing?” for two Wel­ling­to­ni­ans, Jana Bar­rett and Jen­nifer Bloom­field. The answer  = Voon. Jana’s hus­band, Weta Digit­al’s Daniel Bar­rett (who will be wear­ing a Merino wool tuxedo), was the Anim­a­tion Super­visor and Jen­nifer­’s hus­band […]

Review: Michael James Manaia

This solo show starts with a wel­come and karakia. After a ser­i­ous start it flips into a mad­cap story.  As the action pro­gresses we hear a man telling us the story of his life –  what his par­ents were like, why he went to Viet­nam, what happened there, and what happened when he came back […]

New Zealand International Arts Festival 2012

The New Zea­l­and Inter­na­tion­al Arts Fest­iv­al opens tonight with a live event in con­juc­tion with the launch of First Con­tact. It’s FREE, fam­ily friendly, and starts at 8:30pm out­side Te Papa. There are visu­als by Linecheck­er and music and dance from the Whitireia Per­form­ing Arts School, The Nomad, Horomona Horo, Rhom­bus in Dub and Rayjah45. First […]

We also have ‘opinions’ – a protest against transphobia

If you’re on the Twit­ters, you would have seen yet anoth­er digust­ing piece of bigotry and bull­shit churned out by Rose­mary McLeod about how trans­gender people should­n’t be par­ents. The @dompost rebut­tal? “The column is her opin­ion.”. Yes, and they’re the ones who paid for her to have that opin­ion pub­lished. Luck­ily, the Queer Avengers […]

It’s Shrove Tuesday, let’s talk religion!

Ha ha ha, of course we’re kid­ding. Let’s talk about pan­cakes instead.We wanna know where Wel­ling­ton’s best pan­cakes are at. Today for lunch I went to Cafe Panama (in fact, I am still there. Woo!), and this is what I ate: I thought I was order­ing stand­ard pan­cakes with banana and bacon for $11.50, but […]

It was a very good beer

After hav­ing a great even­ing at Fork and Brew­er last week for the Offi­cial Wel­ling­tonista Unof­fi­cial Web­stock Wed­nes­day War­mup, where large num­bers of loc­al beer and large plat­ters of deli­cious nibbles were placed before us like the Web Roy­alty we wish/pretend/believe ourselves to be, I was extremely excited to hear about the event they are […]

NZ Fringe Festival 2012 into week two

The New Zea­l­and Fringe Fest­iv­al presents emer­ging artists in a fest­iv­al of weird and won­der­ful per­form­ances around Wel­ling­ton. The shows are are reas­on­ably priced (or free) and are held in ven­ues all over the city. The pro­gramme is full of shows, con­veni­ently divided in the pro­gramme into genres –  Com­edy, Dance, Music, Theatre, or Visu­al […]

International hipster attraction

Air New Zea­l­and have recently launched a cam­paign to per­suade reluct­ant Aus­trali­ans to choose New Zea­l­and as a hol­i­day des­tin­a­tion. It turns out there are actu­ally some people who aren’t aroused by the thought of scenery, sheep and extreme sports. As part of this cam­paign, there’s a Rhys Darby-nar­rated series of videos, each smash­ing a […]

Incoming: Supermodel and Sleeping Dogs

Wel­ling­ton rock­ers Super­mod­el are team­ing up with Christ­ch­urch wave-makers Sleep­ing Dogs and kick­ing off the year with a North Island tour. They’ll be back in Wel­ling­ton later this week. Both bands are pro­mot­ing their UK-pro­­duced albums which were released in 2011. The Wel­ling­ton show is the eighth of eight shows, so they’ll be niiiice and […]

Should they stay or should they go?

We receive a lot of press releases here at the Wel­ling­tonista, but few are as charm­ing as this one: Brad and Nancy are act­ors who are also a couple, and they’re try­ing to decide if they should live in Eng­land or New Zea­l­and. Nat­ur­ally, they’ve decided to do a show in the Wel­ling­ton Fringe Fest­iv­al […]