22 May 2012

Little battlers, a good line-up

Dan Slevin

27/07/2011 9:57:00 a.m.

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At the movies with Dan Slevin
DESPITE the shocking and inexplicable decision to omit Patrick Keiller’s Robinson in Ruins from this year’s Film Festival (a disaster applicable only to me I think) the actual line-up is as good as everyone says. At least I think it is after surveying about 20 out of the 160 plus titles in the programme.
As usual, I asked the Festival to point me towards the less likely, the unheralded, the little battlers, the kind of film that is easily missed when skimming the 80 page programme. Any fool can tell you that The Tree of Life is going to be interesting. Capital Times readers want more than that.
Firstly music: two documentaries impressed me and they worked so well together I wish they were a double-feature. Merle Haggard: Learning to Live With Myself is a biography of the outlaw country star as he settles in to an uncomfortable old age. Actually old age to Haggard is no less comfortable than every other age - I can’t think of a great star less at ease in his own skin.
Compare that with Sing Your Song, the life story of the pop star, actor and activist Harry Belafonte. From a similar generation to Haggard, born with an equal lack of opportunity, Belafonte turned his talent and fame into a relentless drive to improve the lives of the people around him while Haggard seems to think that he is unworthy of his.
Aaron Schock’s Circo is a poignant look at the dwindling fortunes of a once proud Mexican circus, barely held together by ringmaster “Tino” as the rest of his family slowly drifts away. A beautiful soundtrack by Calexico completes the picture. Another, more succesful, side of the showbiz dream  can be found in Being Elmo: a Baltimore teenager falls in love with puppetry watching early morning kids TV and discovers a talent that takes him all the way to Sesame Street. Joyous.
This festival seems to be full of confused teenage girls: in Tomboy a ten-year-old girl would rather be a boy so ... chooses to be one. A delicate subject deftly handled by director Céline Sciamma, it could have gone very wrong. She Monkeys, from Sweden, isn’t nearly as successful. A seemingly self-contained fourteen-year-old (this time) tries out for the local equestrian vaulting team (like synchronised swimming on horseback) and falls under the spell of beautiful Cassandra. Or does she? It’s described on its own website as a modern Western. No, it isn’t.
Another teenager, struggling to come to terms with adulthood and, more specifically, sexuality is stunning newcomer Clara Augarde in Love Like Poison. Like all of the last three films, parenting (lack of) is the core of the problem but this film states its manifesto right there in the title. Augarde reminds me of a young Isabelle Huppert and that’s quite a career to aspire to.
There are a plenty of examples of international hits to choose from: Point Blank is a French thriller about a hospital nurses’ aid who is dragged into a police conspiracy and has to join forces with a brutal (and tactiturn) safe cracker in order to rescue his kidnapped wife. It’s a rare thing - a film with action sequences you can actually follow - so expect a less coherent Hollywood remake soon.
Brazil’s biggest hit in years was Elite Squad: The Enemy Within, the sequel to it’s previous biggest hit Elite Squad. Featuring even more police corruption, this time plucked from the Rio headlines, Elite Squad has plenty of action but not much subtlety - director José Padilha has definitely seen the final third of Scarface, you can be certain of that.
Two years ago in these pages, I recommended a Korean film called Daytime Drinking only to be scolded for it by my own mother. So, I wouldn’t dream of recommending the deadpan Mongolian “comedy” Winter Vacation which will drive many audiences mad with frustration but intrigued and delighted me.
A longer version of this festival preview is available on www.captimes.co.nz or www.funeralsandsnakes.cet.
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Cover Story

Best of Wellington 2011

Briefs

  • A question of nutrition

    Controversial Washington-based nutritionist Sally Fallon-Morell is to speak in Wellington on March 29.
    Fallon-Morell is the co-founder of the American food lobby group the Weston A. Price Foundation and the author of Nourishing Traditions. She advocates for the consumption of nutritionally dense foods such as lacto-fermented vegetables, stocks and broths, and whole raw dairy products.
    Fallon-Morell will speak at St Patrick’s College Hall on March 29.

  • Relay for cancer

    Organisers say Sunday’s Relay for Life is full to capacity with hundreds of Wellingtonians registered for the event.
    A total of 88 teams, made up of 10 to 500 members, plan to take part with a further 25 teams on the waiting list.
    The 24 hour relay, the Cancer Society’s biggest fundraising event of the year, takes place at Frank Kitts Park from 4pm on March 31.

  • Osteoarthritis awareness

    Arthritis New Zealand has launched a nationwide campaign raise awareness about osteoarthritis. 
    Arthritis is New Zealand’s leading cause of disability, affecting 305,000 adults, and osteoarthritis is its most common form.
    The campaign features television commercials and an interactive website.


  • Wild walk

    Take part in the Big Walk at Zealandia on March 31.
    Walkers can choose a two, five or 10 kilometre walk catering to all fitness levels.
    Money raised will go to the Foundation for Youth Development.

  • School pool

    The opening of the new Khandallah School pool this week means hundreds of children will be able to continue their swimming lessons.
    The pool was the first to receive a grant from Wellington City Council’s Schools Pools Partnership Fund, a fund set up in 2010 to help schools improve their pool facilities.
    Grants from the fund have also been made for pools at Wellington East Girls’ College, Barhampore School and Tawa School.

  • Easter bikers

    Motorcyclists are invited to get on their bikes and collect Easter eggs for families support from the Wellington City Mission.
    The charity run on April 1 is organised by motorcycle lobby group BONZ.
    Eggs can be donated at Red Baron Motorcylces in Alicetown. The registration fee for bikers is $10, plus the cost of Easter eggs.

  • Crafty

    Made on Marion opens on the site of the former Golding Handicrafts site in Marion St, from April 1.  They will continue to supply craft materials.

  • Ze upgrade

    Taranaki Street fuel users will notice that the Z Energy’s former Shell Service Station is closed.  Z are doing a “total revamp”.
    The job will take four weeks.

  • Newlands Moves

    Developer Ayal Aharoni has agreed to build only 90 instead of 220 houses on his six and a half hectares above Ngauranga Gorge in Newlands.  Only low density occupation will be allowed on the remaining 8.4 hectares.


  • Baring Head

    There's a new  draft plan out for what should happen at Baring Head.  It outlines how the Greater Wellington Regional council would like to manage the newest addition to its regional parks network. Grazing animals will go, motorised vehicles will be prohibited, predators will be controlled, and the lighthouse will be preserved. Submissions are invited.


  • It’s a wonder

    A new childcare centre in Newtown says it is dedicated to helping kids grow up healthy in mind, body and spirit. Little Wonders Childcare on Rintoul Street is an independent early childhood education and learning centre, the sixth centre to be opened by its Auckland-based owner. It caters to 100 children aged between three months and five years old and has been open for a little more than seven weeks.

  • Festival treats

    CHILDREN have not been forgotten by organisers of the New Zealand International Arts Festival.
    For a perfect first theatrical experience White tells the story of friends Cotton and Winkle who live in a world where there is no colour and everything is startlingly white. That is until a brightly coloured egg tumbles out of the sky and changes their world for ever.
    White plays at Capital E from March 7-11.
    The tale of Peter and the World also promises to be a magical night for all ages. Sergei Prokofiev’s classic children’s tale is told through film and live music from the NZ Symphony Orchestra at the Michael Fowler Centre on March 9.
    March 11 is Young Writers and Readers Day and readings from children’s writers and illustrators Lynley Dodd and Gavin Bishop.

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