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Golden Bay local Levity Beet has just taken out the Best Children’s Music Artist title at the 2023 New Zealand Children's Music Awards. He previously won the award in 2018.

Levity Beet is a stage name that has become permanent –“Levity is light and fun, and beet is earthy and grounding. It’s also a joke because it’s spelled wrong. If it was correctly spelled [as beat] it would be an uplifting rhythm, but instead it is a flying vegetable,” says Levity, whose real name is Nick Hollis.

Levity and his partner Gabby have lived in the Bay for 18 years and were first attracted to the Bay as a place to raise children. “We value access to oceans, rivers, mountains, and forests, and thought it was more important than anything that the city could offer our kids.”

Growing up in a musical family, Levity drew inspiration from his uncle, who was a professional musician. “He inspired me never to get serious. He would make up funny songs and do improv comedy songs for the neighborhood kids. My uncle, dad, and grandparents played together in a skiffle band in the 1950s.”

As a professional musician, Levity is involved in music production and mixing for other projects, playing in the Levity Beet band, mentoring a five-piece band, and giving music lessons.

Says Levity, “I started practicing music when I was 13, when I played the guitar and did lessons. I did it all through school. Then in my early 20s, I got a 1973 Bedford campervan. Everything on it broke, and I had a friend who was a mechanic and helped me to fix things on my van, and it made me realise how much I liked fixing things – which led to making things. I started making musical instruments out of stuff that had been thrown away. I made balloon pipes, and began inventing instruments like a ‘fizzunkafone’.” For the uninitiated, a “fizzunkafone” is a drainage pipe tutu (worn by the player), supporting plastic bottles with car tyre valves inserted in the caps. This enables varying air pressure and relative pitch differences.

In the late-90s, Levity was playing in a band but was less keen on late nights, drunken adults, and cigarette smoke. “As a joke proposition, we wanted to play in daytime to sober people. Then we thought, why don’t we play to kids in schools?”

This led to a career creating, producing, and performing children’s music. Until recently, Levity would travel New Zealand as a solo artist for three months a year, “I would perform three shows a day,” he says. Audiences included early childhood centres, libraries, festivals, private events, and house parties. But for now, he is taking a break from performing.

Next up, Levity is creating a 14-track album, collaborating with 14 New Zealand kid’s music writers. This is funded by a grant from NZ On Air, and when it’s made it will be streamed on 80 different platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music.

What Levity likes best is primitive technologies, such as fire, and making stuff from his hands from base materials, like charcoal. “I am intrigued how we create stuff from base materials. I find when I am curious about something, I am excited and calm and I want to communicate that – the best way I have found to communicate this is via music and I want to share in my music an appreciation of simple things, connecting to other people and the elements around us.” FULL

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Review: 80 for Brady

Screening Schedule - May to June

Fri 19 4:00 Super Mario Bros Movie 2D (PG) ENCORE

7:30 John Wick: Chapter 4 (R16)

Sat 20 2:00 RAINY DAY ONLY MATINEE

7:30 80 for Brady (M)

Sun 21 4:00 Met Opera: Fedora (M) $35/$30

7:30 Shackleton: The Greatest Story of Survival (PG) FINAL

Wed 24 5:30 Guardians of the Galaxy 2D: Vol 3 (M) ENCORE

Thu 25 7:30

Cinema is capable of serving up some outrageous fantasy to enable audiences to escape the everyday world. Whether we are trudging after hobbits in Middle Earth, or co-piloting spacecraft in a distant galaxy, most moviegoers seem able to suspend their disbelief and be carried along for the ride.

But when the scenario presented is four women on the cusp of octogenarian-hood (who somehow possess the figures and dance moves of teenagers), partying, gambling, and smooching homogeneously attractive young extras who cheer them on with dewy-eyed adoration, your mileage may vary. And yet, somehow by the end of this fable, wrapped in the incomprehensible paraphernalia of American football, you just might find yourself cheering for them too. Admittedly with a hint of self-reproach.

Screen legends Jane Fonda (Trish), Sally Field (Betty), Lily Tomlin (Lou), and Rita Moreno (Maura), play four lifelong friends obsessed with the NFL Superbowl in general, and New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady in particular. Their enthusiasm began while celebrating Lou’s successful chemotherapy completion, and 15 years later, they decide to attend the Superbowl in Houston. But America’s biggest sporting event is also outrageously expensive, even beyond the means of these clearly privileged folk. So, when they win a competition for four free tickets, the first nail in this film’s credibility coffin is squarely hammered home.

A series of somewhat ridiculous capers ensues, including bookish Betty winning a spicy chicken eating competition (I kid you not). The unlikelihood of unfolding events is somehow only matched by their sheer predictability.

Just when you are wondering what this quartet of superb actresses are doing in this film, or indeed, what you are doing watching it, around the halfway mark everything changes. Some truly unexpected revelations transform what has been a lightweight, superficial story, into something with real heart.

The characters’ annoying foibles finally become endearing, and once they finally gain entry to the stadium, the film really gets going. To the point where you might actually find yourself leaning forward in your seat, engrossed in the arcana of American football for the first time in your life.

Like so many sporting events, this film really is a game of two halves, and if you can get past the problematic opening, you’ll find your patience amply rewarded by the closing play. For a story bereft of any surprises in its first half, they come thick and fast in the second. One of these is retired quarterback Tom Brady. When his producer credit opens this film, it is difficult not to conclude that it will be an expensive and dubious vanity project, doomed to be soured further if he attempts to act. So, it is quite a revelation to discover that Brady possesses a humble magnetism and charisma that radiates from the pitch and screen, particularly without dialogue, but he also confidently handles the few lines given. Especially when one of these might just be the most appropriate and rousing uses of the “F-bomb” ever committed to cinema. His interactions with Lily Tomlin are a highlight and their characters’ connection the secret key to the film.

The final surprise: this is (very loosely) inspired by a true story, demonstrating yet again that nothing is more unbelievable than real life.

80 for Brady screens tomorrow night at 7.30pm at the Village Theatre, and the following night is an opportunity to see Shackleton: The Greatest Story of Survival. It might be a familiar story to some of us, but modern cinematography and drone footage make this epic story more visually spectacular than ever before.

Next Saturday night will see Golden Bay’s red carpet event of the year, the new and improved Allshorts short film festival. Every effort has been made to source the very best entries from across the world, and locally, so don’t miss this very special night out.

Air (M)

Fri 2 4:00 Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Pt 1)

7:30 Polite Society (M)

Sat 3 2:00 RAINY DAY ONLY MATINEE

7:30 Air (M) FINAL

Sun 4 2:00 Jos (E)

(Whispers of Gold will play as prequel)

4:30 Driving Madeleine (M) (subtitles)

7:30 Living (M) ENCORE

Wed 7 5:30 Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Pt 1)

Thu 8 7:30 Jos (E)

(Whispers of Gold will play as prequel)

Fri 9 4:00 Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Pt 1) FINAL 7:30 Polite Society (M) FINAL

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN THIS PROGRAMME:

ALLSHORTS FILM FESTIVAL: 7.30 Come along & get dressed up for our red carpet event for a great entertaining night of short films from around the world. Tickets $20/$15 includes complimentary drink/nibbles. Rated M & PG. Doors open 6.30. Book online now!

NT LIVE: THE SEAGULL (M) 2hr50m

A filmed performance of the play by Anton Chekhov, in a new version by Anya Reiss, in which a woman leaves Moscow to visit her terminally ill brother. Filmed live in London’s West End.

Encores

ENCORE SCREENINGS:

We are encoring 3 very popular films on this programme. If you missed them the first time, get in quick before they disappear! See programme for details.

Movie Descriptions

WHISPERS OF GOLD (E) Documentary 45m

Whispers of Gold tells Waiuta's story from its beginnings to current day. Archive film and photographs give a rare glimpse of 1900's mining town life. This will play as a prequel before Jos

AIR (M) Drama/Sport/True Story 1hr50m

Ben Affleck directs and stars in this sports biopic that reveals the game-changing partnership between a thenrookie Michael Jordan and Nike’s fledgling basketball division.

SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE (Part 1) 2hr15m

Miles Morales returns for the sequel to Sony Animation's 2018 Into the Spider-Verse. There's a third film in this series set, Beyond the SpiderVerse due for release in 2024.

LIVING (PG) Drama 1hr40m

Bill Nighy stars as a veteran civil servant in 1950’s London. Buried under paperwork at the office, lonely at home, his life has long felt empty. Then a shattering medical diagnosis forces him to take stock.

Action/Adventure /Science Fiction

JOS & WHISPERS OF GOLD: 2pm

Come along to our first screening of these two NZ documentaries which follow the story of Jo Divis, the forgotten photographer who saved Waiuta. Whispers of Gold, which will play as a prequel, gives a rare glimpse of 1900’s mining town life in Waiuta.

JOS (E) New Zealand Documentary 45m

For nearly 100 years Jos Divis, who saved a town, was missing from histories of NZ photography. He pioneered techniques to capture images of ordinary people and their working lives.

DRIVING MADELEINE (M) Comedy/Drama (subtitles) 1hr30m

A seemingly simple taxi ride across Paris evolves into a profound meditation on the realities of the driver, whose personal life is in shambles, and his fare, an elderly woman whose warmth belies her shocking past.

POLITE SOCIETY (M) Action/Comedy 1hr40m

Martial artist-in-training Ria Khan believes she must save her older sister Lena from her impending marriage in this action-comedy. She enlists the help of her friends to pull off the most ambitious of all wedding heists.

ALLSHORTS FILM FESTIVAL (M) (PG) 2hrs

A selection of short films from around the world. Something for everyone with music, docos, dramas, comedy, fantasy, adventure & animation, plus more. Doors open at 6.30. Tickets $20/$15.

EMPIRE OF LIGHT (M) Drama/Romance 2hrs

Olivia Coleman & Colin

Firth star in this love story set around a beautiful old cinema on the South Coast of England in the 1980s. It follows Hilary a cinema manager and Stephen a new employee.

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