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wellington film festival

Jul 12 2011
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Feeling upbeat

By Audio, Cinema, Radio

I just got in from a blustery jour­ney to Radio New Zealand to appear on (what we used to call) the Concert Programme to talk about this year’s Film Festival. Concert FM has an excel­lent daily magazine show called Upbeat, hos­ted by Eva Radich, and I sus­pect this is the first time that Merle Haggard has been played on that earn­est station.

[audio:http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/upbt/upbt-20110712–1242-dan_slevin-048.mp3|titles=Dan Slevin reviews films show­ing at this year’s NZ International Film Festival. (14?13?)]

For radio nerds like me this was a very enjoy­able vis­it. The Concert FM booth is just like the old ZM one I worked at in the late 80s, very manu­al, faders and CD play­ers, etc. The Nine to Noon booth at Radio New Zealand National is for voice only and Kathryn Ryan has an oper­at­or in anoth­er room push­ing all the play­back but­tons. I want the Concert stu­dio in my own home. Swoon.

Jul 04 2011
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Contempt

By Asides, Cinema

Godard’s Une femme mar­iée from the Masters of Cinema collection

For those read­ers who, des­pite my clues in the “About” box to the right, are still in the dark about Godard’s Contempt, A.O. Scott from the New York Times has a short video primer on the film here. It’s at the Times’ site thus no embed­ding (and no watch­ing on an iDevice) either.

I’m promp­ted to men­tion it not because I have a copy of Contempt now, I don’t. But my pack­age of delights from the Eureka! Masters of Cinema blu-ray sale just arrived and it includes Godard’s Une femme mar­iée (the film he made in 1964, two films and one year after Contempt), Fritz Lang’s M (Lang played the film dir­ect­or in Contempt and, of course, coined the name for this blog), plus Make Way for Tomorrow, For All Mankind, Profound Desires of the Gods and La plan­et sauvage.

If only the Film Festival was­n’t around the corner. I would be able to wal­low in some rare cinema clas­sics (only one of which I have seen before). Instead, I have a pile of pre­views to get through so I can pro­duce my annu­al guide to the Festival’s more obscure corners as well as talk for fif­teen minutes on Radio New Zealand Concert’s Upbeat pro­gramme on Friday lunchtime.

Apr 19 2011
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Archives

By Cinema

Here in New Zealand we can cel­eb­rate the open­ing of the new “climate-controlled haven” for our cine­mat­ic treas­ures, newly con­struc­ted in seis­mic­ally unchal­lenged Plimmerton. This is a good thing.

But in the UK the BFI are in the middle of a strik­ingly sim­il­ar (though scaled rather dif­fer­ently) devel­op­ment in Warwickshire, only their pro­ject is being doc­u­mented by Patrick Keiller. I say again, the great Patrick Keiller has spent four months wan­der­ing around the build­ing site with a cam­era. The BFI are hope­ful that the foot­age “will be edited into a new artist­ic work”.

Patrick Keiller shooting the BFI Film Store project in Warwickshire.

Patrick Keiller shoot­ing the BFI Film Store pro­ject in Warwickshire.

On the sub­ject of Mr. Keiller, I reit­er­ate my hope that his new film Robinson in Ruins will be a centre-piece of this year’s Film Festival.

Apr 12 2011
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Preview: World Cinema Showcase 2011

By Cinema

For this year’s World Cinema Showcase pre­view I star­ted with a list of all the films I wanted to see and then real­ised that I had used up my entire world lim­it. So, for­give me if these briefs are brief but this year’s Showcase is as heavy­weight as it’s ever been (and runs for three days longer so everything can fit).

I’m not sure why one Festival would need two films about New York street pho­to­graph­ers but if you have to choose between them, skip Smash His Camera – about the paparazzi self-publicist Ron Gallela – and tune in to the delight­ful Bill Cunningham New York instead.

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Mar 07 2011
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Wellington Film Society - new season starts tonight

By Cinema, Wellington
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“Wellington Film Society opens tonight? You don’t say!”

All over the world it is volun­teer organ­isa­tions like the Wellington Film Society that keep the flame of film art alive so that cinephili­acs like me can get a decent pal­ate cleanser every Monday night after a week­end of Hollywood tosh.

I can’t recom­mend Society mem­ber­ship highly enough. Your mem­ber­ship fee equates to around three bucks a screen­ing (33 Mondays!) and your mem­ber­ship gets you enough dis­counts (at the Film Festival and par­ti­cip­at­ing cinemas) that it doesn’t take long to pay for itself.

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Dec 30 2010
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Review: Toy Story 3, The Twilight Saga- Eclipse, Marmaduke & Me and Orson Welles

By Cinema, Reviews

For those read­ers tuned into these things, clear evid­ence emerged this week of the ‘end of days’ and our impend­ing anni­hil­a­tion – cul­tur­ally at least.

Simply put, Twilight: Eclipse is play­ing around three times as many ses­sions in Wellington cinemas this school hol­i­days as Toy Story 3, des­pite the lat­ter being demon­strably super­i­or fare in every con­ceiv­able way. It was pretty depress­ing to check the papers last week to see that TS3 was only get­ting one Embassy ses­sion (in the mat­inée ghetto) as opposed to Eclipse’s four. It’s enough to make one wish for a friendly wall to bang one’s head upon.

Toy Story 3 posterIs Toy Story 3 that good? Yes, it is. In fact, I would ven­ture the slightly dan­ger­ous opin­ion that if there’s a film in the Film Festival this year as good as Toy Story 3 then I will be very, very surprised.

The last couple of Pixar films reviewed in these pages have been gently chided for fall­ing away in the third act – fail­ing to main­tain their geni­us right through to the end. No such prob­lems occur with TS3. It stays on course, con­tinu­ing to illu­min­ate char­ac­ter and action with deft, sur­pris­ing and eer­ily appro­pri­ate plot turns.

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