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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.

New and Improved

By Cinema and meta

I’ve just got the gig as Film Reviewer for Wellington’s Capital Times and will post full ver­sions of of all the pub­lished reviews here, start­ing tomor­row. My word lim­it there is slender so I’ll also post on films watched in ser­vice of Capital Times read­ers but not pub­lished. I’ll also be adding col­our to the prin­ted ver­sions by com­ment­ing on screen­ing con­di­tions, cof­fee and oth­er items only semi-related to the film itself.

The first review appears in the paper itself tomor­row and will be pos­ted here first thing in the morning.

Hopefully, this will res­ult in this little endeav­our get­ting more atten­tion (from me and an audi­ence) than it has man­aged so far!

2 Quickies

By Food & Drink and Personal

One of the chees­iest ads of all time – for cof­fee! (via Coudal)

Suggested by Kottke (via Rivers Are Damp):

Go here and look through ran­dom quotes until you find five that you think reflect who you are or what you believe.”

Here are my five:

Our greatest pre­tenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our empti­ness. The hard­est thing to hide is some­thing that is not there.
Eric Hoffer (1902 – 1983)

I can­not say wheth­er things will get bet­ter if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 – 1799)

No one is use­less in this world who light­ens the bur­dens of another.
Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870)

People are people, messy and mut­able, com­bin­ing dif­fer­ently with one anoth­er from day to day – even hour to hour.
Elizabeth Moon, The Speed of Dark, 2003

I’m bet­ter than dirt. Well, most kinds of dirt, not that fancy store-bought dirt… I can­’t com­pete with that stuff.
Matt Groening (1954 – ), The Simpsons

Tuesday Allsorts #3

By Asides, Cinema, Magazines and Music

Trying to get back to a reg­u­lar post­ing sched­ule. Here goes:

Holy Hell, pos­sibly the fun­ni­est thing in the world: Some deranged geni­us adds James Earl Jones dia­logue from oth­er movies to Star Wars. I shit you not!

The Be Good Tanyas live at The Barbican in London (reviewed in The Grauniad);

A.O. Scott in the NY Times (reg. req.) pon­ders why crit­ics and pub­lic respond so dif­fer­ently, so often (I just watched POTC:DMC and can see both sides “com­plete shit” v “a $9 diver­sion with a few laughs”;

Amazon are in big trub for selling cock-fighting magazines – but that’s not all they sell… (thanks Gawker);

Bob Geldof gets a hard time for can­cel­ling in Italy when 45 people turn up to the 12,000 seat sta­di­um (“Harden up, Sir Bob!”) but let us not for­get that he helped organ­ise a bene­fit con­cert in Auckland when the Neon Picnic was can­celled in 1988 so he’s alright by me – the $1,500 a plate shindig in Auckland the oth­er week is much harder to excuse.