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Apr 14 2007
Love0

Upcoming events

By Cinema, Conflict of Interest and Wellington

Loath as I am to let the real world inter­vene in this little oas­is of semi-relevance (and as uncom­fort­able as I am about pimp­ing my com­mer­cial activ­it­ies here), I feel bound to let you know about a couple of import­ant enter­tain­ment options I have a role in.

Firstly, my com­pany, Miracle Pictures, is pro­du­cing the 6th Latin American Film Festival which gets under way with a Gala Opening Night at the Embassy Theatre on Wednesday night (18 April, 7.30pm). There are a lim­ited num­ber of tick­ets avail­able to the pub­lic and they will go on sale on Monday morn­ing from the Embassy Box Office. Sales will be made on a first-come, first-served basis and will be cash only (due to the Embassy not want­ing to mix my money with theirs for com­plex account­ing reas­ons). Tickets are $20 and for that you’ll get to par­take of some spon­sors product (Corona Extra and caipar­in­has cour­tesy of Scorpion Distribution) plus wine from Argentina and Chile and food from the region cour­tesy of the Latin American Embassies in Wellington.

Oh, and there will be a film screen­ing as well: The Sacred Family (La Sagrada famil­ia) from Chile. The film is rated R16 (Drug use, sex scenes and offens­ive lan­guage) which bodes well for a suc­cess­ful night, I’m sure you will agree.

This year’s fest­iv­al fea­tures 8 award-winning fea­ture films from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Peru (plus two pres­ti­gi­ous shorts). The offi­cial fest­iv­al site is here and there you will find details of all the films and screen­ings in each centre: Wellington, Auckland, Hamilton and Christchurch.

48 Hours logoI also want to let y’all know that regis­tra­tions are now open for this year’s “V” 48 Hours, offi­cially New Zealand’s largest film com­pet­i­tion. I am man­aging the Wellington end for the fourth straight year.

Shoot week­end is May 18 – 20; Heats are at the Paramount between 23 and 31 May; Wellington Grand Final will be at the Embassy Theatre on Thursday 7 June.

Following that, the final­ists from each par­ti­cip­at­ing city (plus the Peter Jackson-selected wild­cards) go head-to-head “live” on C4 on Friday June 22.

All the inform­a­tion you need to take part can be found here. We have space for a few more teams than last year but when they’re gone, they’re gone.

Mar 16 2007
Love0

The Return of the Spelling Police (Wellington Division)

By Cinema, Cricket, Food & Drink and Wellington

Over the last couple of weeks both the Penthouse and the Paramount have upgraded their web­sites – the Penthouse scores marks for hav­ing their ses­sion grid avail­able only a click away from the front page and the Paramount scores bonus marks for hav­ing the ses­sion grid right there on the front page – no extra clicking.

Paramount loses ser­i­ous marks because the film titles aren’t click­able! You have to go to anoth­er menu to read about the films. Counter-intuitive, dudes.

My favour­ite aspect (in a schaden­freude-y sort of way) of the Paramount’s new design is the lack of atten­tion to detail, as dis­played in the fol­low­ing image (snapped today, may have been fixed by the time you get there but it has been like that for more than three weeks):

paz_spelling.txt

Notice how they man­age to mis-spell the title of the film and all the mem­bers of the cast. Re-spect to Altman, though, as they got him right.

To prove that I’m not pick­ing on them, here are a couple of choice Wellington chalk-typos. The first from a couple of weeks ago out­side <for­get the name, on the corner of Cuba and Vivian>:

Duck Brest
(click to enlarge)

And my favour­ite, from out­side The Caledonian last Summer (the black­boards and fences have since been taken down by the new management):

Big Screen Cricet
(click to enlarge)

Feb 03 2007
Love0

Eagle vs. Shark clip

By Cinema and NZ

… can be found here. Warning: Music from The Phoenix Foundation plays on this page and there does­n’t seem to be a way of turn­ing it off. Grrr.
Also, the first reviews from Sundance have star­ted to appear.

On a related mat­ter, the trail­er for Black Sheep was play­ing ahead of Rocky Balboa on Thursday and I thought it was a bit dark. Not ‘dark’ as in depress­ing but ‘dark’ as in ‘absence of light’. Printed that way deliberately?

And, while research­ing this aside I see that a trail­er for The Devil Dared Me To is online here. With any luck we’ll see it in cinemas soon, there may be some over­seas sales, and the par­ti­cipants might get paid what they are worth.

Devil Dared Me To

Jan 29 2007
Love0

Film Society Programme 2007

By Cinema and Wellington

The pro­gramme for 2007 has been announced and lis­ted on the Society web­site. I’ll do a prop­er pre­view in a few days (for Capital Times and for here) but you can go ahead and invest­ig­ate now.

Featured dir­ect­ors this year are François Truffaut and Sam Fuller and there are sea­sons of films from Brazil and France.

Like last year, I have entered all the screen­ings into Google Calendar and you can have a look or sub­scribe to the feed by click­ing the but­ton below:

Funerals & Snakes heart­ily recom­mends mem­ber­ship of the Film Society, and if you use that mem­ber­ship to get all the avail­able dis­counts around town it’ll hardly cost you a bean.

Oct 07 2006
Love0

Friday Night at the Movies

By Cinema and Wellington

This Capital Times gig is prov­ing more fun than a bar­rel of mon­keys. I’m fall­ing in love with cinema all over again. What I’m not fall­ing in love with are cinemas them­selves – or should that be some cinemas. Or, more spe­cific­ally, some people in some cinemas.

Tonight at World Trade Centre in Readings 3 I had the mis­for­tune to sit next to three people who simply would not shut up. Supposedly witty com­ments sprinkled lib­er­ally through­out the film meant I would hap­pily have slapped them upside the head with my note­book. However, they paid for their tick­et and I did­n’t so …

And as for Brick in Cinema 7 later tonight: what is it with people tex­ting dur­ing a film? Little blue lights every­where, like little glow-worms in a cave. One young woman left to answer her phone but actu­ally answered it before she got out of the cinema!

It will be a while before I brave Readings again on a Friday night. I’m plan­ning a trip out to the new cinemas that have opened in the last 12 months (Village Queensgate and Lighthouse Pautahanui) so I can see wheth­er stand­ards are any dif­fer­ent out of town.

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