Lights, Camera, Action...

One of the first things I was curious about here is how/where to get my movie fix. There seems to be a ton of theaters around town and almost all of them are playing 100% Hollywood blockbusters currently. We did find one other theater that has a more "arty" flair to it and had all the artistic films in the area and around
the world. The biggest theater chain here seems to be Sky City Cinemas.

So far I have seen 2 movies here. The first was Harry Potter at the Queen Street Sky City cinema. It was a pretty good flick and even though we were in the second row, I still felt that every seat in the house was great. They design theaters here a bit differently and despite the weird padded wall on the way out, the biggest change is that they don't cram the front row up against the screen. They leave a bit of breathing room up there which is nice.

The second thing they do at "some" theaters or showings is do reserved seats. We had assigned seats (B4 and B5) and were expected to sit in them. I know in England they do this as well and there are different tariffs for the various parts of the theater. Here I think it is one price and first come/first serve regarding preference for seating. I am not 100% sure on that.

The second show I saw was Fantastic 4, Rise of the Silver Surfer. The only reason I even saw it was for lack of anything else to see. I had seen EVERY other movie playing here for the last few weeks. This time I went on a Sunday and paid full price ($14.50). Harry Potter was also full price and I think they charge even more on the weekend and 15% more on the Holidays I think. Tuesday is bargain day it seems with a $9.50 price tag. Students and other groups get a small discount but NOT for blockbuster films. I am not sure what they call a blockbuster as every single movie seems to be one.

We found a great site, www.flicks.co.nz, that lists all movies playing and even shows every movie being released and the release date for the rest of the year and includes listings for all over New Zealand. I have been using this to plan out some of my future shows. It seems that movies come out here at either the same time as the US, in the case of the biggest blockbusters, or they can be delayed for a month or two usually. Sometimes a movie will come out even later than that. "Because I Said So" is opening in August and I swear I saw that like 4 months ago. Most of the movies in the next week or two are things I didn't have time to catch in the states and of course the Simpsons!

One other cool thing here is they have a thing called Gold Class. Tickets are about $35 or so. Gold Class is basically the ultimate movie watching experience. Picture being in a room with 30 lazy-boys with a wooden stand next you, a personal assistant to get you drinks and snacks and a big screen with great sound! Now you are starting to get the idea of Gold Class. They have a lounge outside that serves food and alcohol! as well. I can't wait to see a movie this way. Sounds like a great time. I bet the food and alcohol are very expensive though, so Jen and I may "prime" at home a bit, and enjoy a drink in our seat while watching the film. I think I may see the Simpsons this way, but if not, maybe the next big blockbuster.

Outside of the theaters, there is now 2 Netflix style companies which I may have mentioned. One is www.fatso.co.nz and the other is www.movieshack.co.nz - Both are your basic Netflix business model and they charge $19.95 for 1 movie out at a time, $29.95 for 2, $39.95 for 3, etc... So far we have watched V for Vendetta (which was awesome) and The Aviator (pretty good). We also watched a Bollywood movie called Bride and Prejudice which was a lot of fun. Our DVD player keeps choking on the discs though.

We just recently purchased a multi-zone/region free DVD player that is supposed to be able to play movies from any Region. For those that don't know, Hollywood some how insisted on having special Region coding added to all DVDs manufactured. Region 1 is the US (we're number 1, woot!) and New Zealand is Region 4. All geographic areas have a Region code and 6 and 7 are reserved for future use (the moon?). The goal of all this craziness is to make it so that DVD players only play 1 region and DVDs are released with a single region code. Ultimately this makes it so you can't buy a "cheap" disc from another country and expect to play it or have relatives ship you a DVD from another country where it gets released first. The main reason is that since movies can take a long time to come out in some places in the world, Hollywood doesn't want you getting your hands on a DVD (even though you bought it) from another region as it can jeopardize a ton of their local theater ticket sales. Region free DVD players basically take advantage of the fact that it is only a software change in the actual players and hack them to allow you to change regions as easy as selecting a menu. I have heard that Hollywood is adding new special region protection software to the DVDs now to prevent region free players from playing them. And the game goes on and on... don't people have anything better to do? Why don't they just release everything worldwide within a few weeks and be done with it. Any ways, our player has been skipping like crazy on stuff and I am worried it is having problems playing some of these DVDs. I may return it as it may be defective even... hard to say. Usually if you mess around with it enough it will play.

There is also a company called movielink.net that we noticed recently and that allows you to "rent" movies over the Internet and download them. Basically broadband video on demand. Much to my chagrin, they sensed that I was in New Zealand from my IP address and said that they will only digitally rent movies to the US apparently? Does anyone smell a conspiracy here? I suspect Hollywood is behind this as well. I still need to check if our old Netflix account will serve up on demand videos or if Itunes will let us buy a season's pass still...

So in conclusion, it's great to have a Netflix style service here and great to be able to not miss any of the movies that I want to see. The price is a bit more, but all the more reason to try out Gold Class!

See you at the show!

Matthew

The high price of cutlery

Greetings all,

Well it has been a whirlwind few days and I haven't had a chance to post much. We viewed a small house in Remuera last Wednesday night and another group was also viewing the house just after us. They wanted it and were even willing to pay more than us, but I guess the landlords thought we would be a better fit for the place so they gave us a shot at it. We had to decide under pressure wether to get it or not. Jen was kind of opposed due to the cost and the pressure and I was a tiny bit leery of the location being down a 4 block hill from the main road and having spotty bus service. The neighborhood is beautiful though and we have a park across the street, a Kwik-e-mart (not the real name) around the corner and a bus stop 1 block away (although it runs rarely and doesn't go directly where we want). If we walk the half mile hill we are about another half mile from New Market which is a HUGE shopping district and if we go the other direction we get to Parnell which is a ritzy boutique style area with cafes and restaurants.

At the last minute we decided to go for it since the place is just gorgeous and deceptively close to everything.

I will post some pictures shortly and address information. We have spent the last few days shopping to get the essentials for the place. Everything is VERY expensive here. For instance we went into a discount plastics store and the cheapest garbage pale was $30. They go up to $100+ We also found a small plastic chest of bins (think Target for $20 to put your kids toys in).....$399. We went to a fancier home store and found cutlery sets for $1000.00+, A $69 can opener (cheapest was $20) and many other things to blow your fiscal mind. For reference the US dollar is only about 21% ahead of the NZD so 21% off $1000 worth of spoons is still $790 USD. Also I am not picking the most expensive things we found at really expensive shops. Everything is this price. For instance a trip to Alaska at one of their discount travel places was quoted at something like $18,000. I am sure it included lodging but still... wow!

If you are moving to New Zealand keep in mind that things are quite expensive here, especially manufactured stuff and electronics. TVs go for $1500 +, nice furniture is about $1000+ per piece and simpl things like a set of measuring spoons can run $20-80. I recommend filling box after box of EVERYTHING you think you might use here. Shipping a few large boxes of small stuff might cost around $300 vs. buying that stuff for $3,000-10,000.

We have found that almost everyone has specials and sales constantly and if you shop around you can find these deals. For instance groceries and meat seem to be affordable and even though cafes are expensive, there is often a special on the menu that is about 1/2 price. Things like paperback books might run $15-30 a piece but you can get DVDs for around $20 I think. We packed all our DVDs in a case logic case and left the boxes in storage and we converted all our music to MP3 and will probably just I-tunes anything new we want. There is a company called www.Fatso.co.nz that we were going to check out and it is like a www.Netflix.com service. We need to get a TV still and a Multi-Zone? (Region Free) DVD player that will play our US DVDs as well as the ones here. We found a used TV/DVD combo for $200 which is amazingly cheap, so we might grab that.

For everything else we have been using www.trademe.co.nz (think www.Ebay.com) and have gotten a nice futon to sleep on until our bed arrives. The futon will double as our guest bed after that. We also are looking for a desk and won some nice kitchen stuff. It is expensive to pick this stuff up without a car and taxi's don't like to lug a bunch of stuff around. We found a company called www.taxitrucks.co.nz that will rent you a burly man and a truck at $60 an hour + $30 call out fee. This is nice for our refrigerator that we need to get still. Also another company is www.moveit.co.nz with cheaper rates but less flexibility.

Our place doesn't have a fridge and although it has 3 bedrooms and a parlour, doesn't have a dining room and the kitchen only has space for stools at the counter breakfast bar. We plan to eat at the counter and get a nice table for our deck to eat outside when the weather is nice. Weather is similar to San Francisco in the winter, so you can still go outside, although this week was really wet and cold and our place was freezing. No central heat here, so we had to go buy our own. We bought 2 oil electric 5 blade heaters which don't do much at all. One is in the hallway and one in the living room. We have our own fireplace though and have been running it a lot. We actually burned a bag of coal yesterday. I feel so old school all of a sudden. We also do not have a dryer, but do have a washer. People hang their clothes out to dry here almost exclusively and we have some lines on the porch for this. It took my clothes over a day to sort of dry in this weather though, so you have to plan ahead and make sure the stuff is out in time for the sun in the afternoon.

Well definitely some stuff to get used to, but some simple shifts are enough to enjoy the lack of glutenous comfort we were used to. Everything here is very conservation based. All the outlets even have on/off switches which people actually use. The toilets have 2 flush modes, half/full. People just generally try to use less, plan out exactly what they need and buy that and schedule things more. We are used to doing anything we want exactly when we want. Need a taxi, there it is, need a bus, one will be by every 3 minutes, need an ATM or a Starbucks, no problem, 2 on every corner. I think in the long run I will appreciate the fact that things are a tiny bit more spread out here and you have to think about what you want to do more and pay for what you use.

Till next time,

Matthew