News Blog @ Wellington City Libraries

Wellington City Libraries has a monthly radio show on Radio Access. For an upcoming show (7 August, 4.00 – 4.30) we recently interviewed Edmund McWilliams (Ed Cake) writer of brilliantly skewed pop gems over the last 15 or so years.  (Grab a preview of this show below)

His most recent release, The Fearsome Feeling was the last CD to be featured in Nick Bollinger’s ‘100 essential New Zealand albums.’

Here’s how it’s described on Pie Warmer’s Myspace page,

‘The album features songs about love, not love songs as such, but songs that blend ideas about love with fear, insanity, talkback radio, violence against children, death of a loved one, indecision, abandonment, fame, Michael King/motorcars.’

Listen to the entire interview – covered are 2 songs from each of Ed’s 3 albums so far and Ed’s views on his songs, music and the potential of percussive tap dancers!

Below are the albums featured in the show:

Downtown Puff by Edmund Cake

Bressa Creeting Cake by Bressa Creeting Cake

The Fearsome Feeling by Pie Warmer

Library staff have been remembering films from previous festivals:

When we were kings (1997 festival)
I bought tickets to this one for all my family in a fit of righteous movie mania and my brothers and in-laws and mother and sister, thankfully, enjoyed it. Muhammed Ali has bucket loads of carisma. There’s a witch doctor sub-plot, a govenment dictatorship and blood on the steps of the stadium, groovy music from James Brown and hope, sweet, hope. It didn’t seem to matter that we were in the back row in the old Embassy’s uncomfortable seats – we still talk about this film.

Ringu, (2000)
I saw [this film] (later remade by Hollywood as The Ring) at the festival before Japanese and Asian horror became huge, and all the decent ones got remade. It was the first horror film I had seen in a long time that actually scared me. I could not look at a TV set after dark for a long while after seeing this film.

Hana-bi (Fireworks) by Takeshi Kitano (1998)
Basically a Japanese cop film with surprising swings in mood. Takeshi Kitano drew the wonderful colour-spotted pictures that provide the hope and upside to what is often a brutal, tragic film. One of those seminal festival films for me in that it seemed to extend my idea of what film could do and so many things about it linger still – the music, the cinematography, the understated acting, the suprises – probably Kitano’s best.

Kung Fu Hustle (2005)
This Kung Fu concoction knocked me out one late, late winter’s night. Stephen Chow’s unevenly brash mixture of broad slapstick humour, brilliant stunts, CGI effects and a seemingly endless string of super humanly endowed villains sent me back to a childhood of similar movies. Similar, but in no way as good – Kung Fu Hustle made me feel like a Kung Fu kid again…

Helvetica (2007)
I sat in the theatre surrounded by Massey students watching this captivating film about a typeface. And not just any typeface – Helvetica was shown to be symbolic of its era, ubiquitous in government signage, and even possibly the cause of the Vietnam War (ok, they were stretching). I’ve never looked at typefaces the same way since seeing this film – it’s well worth watching.

Drowning by Numbers (1987)
Quirky and strange, but very entertaining, I saw this film amongst three others on the same day, as you do during the Festival. It really stood out with its cleverness and baudy humour: 3 women all named Cissie Colpitts drown their husbands. I liked it far more than Greenaway’s other films – in fact I bought the script months later (and no, it wasn’t just to find out where each of the numbers had been shown).

My Mother’s Smile – The Religion Hour
My favourite must have been in 2003 (when I was younger and everything seemed newer).  They had a film that had been banned by the Vatican called “My Mother’s Smile” a.k.a “The Religion Hour”. It was about an athiest who opposes the canonisation of his mother, who was killed by his mentally-disturbed brother.

What films would you recommend from filmfests past? Feel free to add them in the comments below…

The Girl who played with Fire is the second movie to be adapted from the late Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy novels following the very popular The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Like that earlier film, this new release stars Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander, a woman on the run and Michael Nyquist as the journalist Mikael Blomkvist, who is desperate to find her. This movie promises to be as dark and action-packed as the previous movie.

To win a 2 for 1 voucher just answer this simple question:

What is the title of the third book in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy? Send your answer to Linda before 15^th August 2010 to be in the draw.

Agora (imdb page) recounts the events around and subsequent to the destruction of the library at Alexandria in 391AD, telling the story of Hypatia, a notable female mathematician, philosopher, astronomer and teacher. After Emperor Constantine declared Christianity legal, Alexandrian society was shaken to the core, with the political and religious machinations of Cyril, Pope of Alexandria, and Orestes, Prefect of the Diocese of Egypt, leading to a tragic climax.

Read the review of Agora in Sight and Sound here (you’ll need your library card number). Director Alejandro Amenábar was also responsible for The Others (2002), starring Nicole Kidman, and The Sea Inside (2005) with Javier Bardem.

The Library at Alexandria features in Library: an unquiet history, by Matthew Battles and also Libraries in the ancient world, by Lionel Casson

(Incidentally, the new library of Alexandria is an impressive building. Visit the website here, or have a look at the architecture here.)

If you would like to read more about Hypatia try these titles:
The book of dead philosophers, Simon Critchley
Doubt: a history: the great doubters and their legacy of innovation, from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson, Jennifer Michael Hecht

Search for books on the history of astronomy, and early Church history.

Hypatia is also the subject of the novel Hypatia: New Foes with an Old Face by Charles Kingsley, published in 1894. The library has a copy, or you can download it for free from Project Gutenberg here.

Certified Copy (imdb page) netted Juliette Binoche the Best Actress award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Not too much happens in this story of an antique shop owner (Binoche) who has the chance to show a writer and art historian (played by William Shimell, who is actually an opera singer), around a village (Lucignano) in the Arezzo Province in Tuscany for a day. At least that’s on the face of it: the film also talks about what it means to be an original and what it means to be a copy. Is being a copy less worthy?

The slow, conversational nature of the film suggested a Before Sunrise for another generation, swapping out Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke, and Vienna (even down to the pressing nature of train timetables, which wait for no existential discussion).

Some random facts and links:

Read about the background to Certified Copy in ‘Reality Check’ by Jonathan Romney in the October 2009 issue of Sight and Sound (you will need your library card number to access it).

This is director Abbas Kiarostami’s first non-Iranian film: if you’re interested in his previous work, the library has got several of his films, including The Wind Will Carry Us, for example.

Arezzo, the home of “She” (Binoche) and also incidentally of the poet Petrarch, also features in Roberto Begnini’s 1997 film Life is Beautiful.

The Cannes Film Festival website has a detailed archives section dating back to 1946 (which included, for example, Brief Encounter (which the library has), based on the play Still Life by Noel Coward).

If you would like to do a retrospective viewing of Juliette Binoche films, the library can offer you this selection.

Wishing you could be in Tuscany? The library has many titles to tempt you, from a collection of aerial photographs (Tuscany: Flying High), through guidebooks, to Frances Mayes’ latest effort, Every Day in Tuscany, the sequel to Under the Tuscan Sun (the book is nothing like the romantic comedy film of the same name starring Diane Lane, apart from the renovations). Have a look in the geography and travel sections at a branch near you.

The likelihood of us being the only intelligent life form in the known universe has always been hotly contested and when astronomer Frank Drake began to “listen in”, it led to SETI — Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Millions of hours detected nothing but author Paul Davis’ book The eerie silence: are we alone in the universe discusses potential reasons why we may still find life forms and what the repercussions could be if E. T. did phone!

Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend but these pieces of carbon have a mixed history. Diamonds: one small item: one giant impact by Nikki van der Gaag reveals the dark side of this sparkling gem.

Finally, for anyone interested in learning about the night sky, Patrick Moore’s astronomy: teach yourself book will be a great place to start. This is a comprehensive guide, complete with star charts.

Read these books and others about the brief history of the universe, how amber preserves our history, plus quantum leaps all in this month’s Science Recent Picks.

We wish we could get to Auckland for this! The High Seas, a record/book/zine gallery in Auckland, is currently exhibiting the work of Susan Te Kahurangi King, who we blogged about earlier.

The exhibition runs until the 24th of July, so you’ll need to be quick!

Tavi, the coolest thirteen year old in the entire world ever, has a sweet round-up of the latest and greatest zines right here.

We especially love the idea behind First Kiss,  where people (including Tavi!) recount their very first kisses.

Look out for it in the zine collection soon!

Most of  the items you can borrow from Wellington City Libraries are free for members, as library use is pre-paid by ratepayers.   You can also attend library programmes, such as ‘Law for Lunch’ or pre-school storytimes, for free.

How much would you pay outside our libraries for the same services?
Have you ever wondered how much you are saving by using library services?

If you’d like to find out , try out the new Library Value Calculator. Just enter the number of items you borrow or reserve per month, as well as the services you use, and the spreadsheet will automatically calculate how much you have spent and how much you have saved by using library services.   We’d love to hear your results!

Join three of New Zealand’s finest writers, Fiona Farrell, Kate De Goldi and Emily Perkins, and hear them talk about the writers and books that have inspired and influenced them, while discussing their own work. It should be a fascinating session.

When: 6.00 pm, Wednesday, 28th July 2010

Where: City Gallery Wellington – Civic Square

Tickets are now available from Wellington Central Library.  Ticket price is $15  ($12 for Book Council Members).

For more information, please call (04) 801 4068.  Ticket purchases must be made  in person, no reserves.  Payments accepted are cash, cheque or eft-pos.