Go ahead..make my day off

Need more action - of the big screen kind - in your weekend? CATHRIN SCHAER explains where to find it.

Sick of your boring life in the suburbs? Wish something really exciting would happen to you? Or maybe your lover has left you for a rock-hopping Tom Cruise-lookalike. Well, all that is about to change, because it's time for you to make like James Bond.
Slick your hair back, kiss the kids goodbye and put on your best tuxedo.

Your so-called life is about to get one (a life, that is). Your weekend is about to become an action movie ...

CLIMB rocks like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible 2


What Cruise was doing in M:I2 was free climbing. This involves climbing without ropes and is the most dangerous, most glamorous and, depending on your personal opinion, most idiotic form of rock climbing.
Macho men and women with nerves of steel, a watertight will and no family commitments do this kind of thing.

It also takes years of climbing before you can even think about doing anything without safety gear.
However, you can still make like a movie star and do something pretty tough on your first or second rock-climbing trip, says Ian Philpott, who together with his wife runs Cliffhanger Adventure Tours, an outdoor travel and education company.

Philpott started climbing when, as a nipper, he saw Clint Eastwood in The Eiger Sanction.

"I borrowed my Mum's washing-line and threw myself off the nearest cliff face," he remembers. And still he finds people go climbing because of something they've seen at the movies.

"There's some good technical climbing and some amazing stunts in some action movies," Philpott notes. "But a lot of what you see in the movies is crap. There's a lot of theatrical licence."

Cliffhanger will take clients to several spots where it says the climbs are easy and the views spectacular.

"Out at Whangarei Heads there's a climb where you end up 460m above sea level — that's a half kilometre up — which is pretty extreme for most people, but we have taken novices up there. It's not a hard climb, just a high one."

Another option at Whatipu Beach on the West Coast takes you 100m above your vehicle — and you then abseil back down.

Closer to home there's the Mt Eden quarry, which provides all climbers, no matter what skill level, with a challenge.

To start: Visit your nearest indoor rock-climbing gym to see if you're going to like this. Phone Birkenhead Leisure Centre (09) 418 4109, the Rocknasium (09) 630 5522 or the Rock (09) 267 4321. After that, you might like to try climbing outdoors. Phone Cliffhanger Adventure Tours (09) 827 0720.

What you'll need: Comfortable clothes to climb in and shoes with closed toes. All other gear is provided.

Cost: Between $65-$200 for the Cliffhanger adventures. Indoor climbing gyms cost about $18 a visit — this includes all gear and an unlimited stay.

Just like in the movies? Sometimes. Indoor climbing is very safe, can be done anytime, regardless of weather, and an excellent way to get a taste. It's also the way most of the most dangerous movie scenes are filmed. For instance, The Vertical Limit (starring Chris O'Donnell and filmed in the Southern Alps) had its own rock-climbing wall on set.

Climbing outdoors is the real thing, and even just a small climb will probably scare you just as much as Tom Cruise's acting did.

FIGHT like Michelle Yeoh in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon


If you're a fan of martial arts movies, you've already got an idea of what a kung fu school looks like: ranks of disciples in ninja-style outfits practising their moves in a Chinese temple.

In a synchronised ballet of graceful moves, they chop viciously at an imaginary opponent and then turn to bow gracefully to their master. All the while Chinese classical music tinkles in the background ...

In New Zealand the scene at a martial arts class is more like this: about 40 twenty-somethings in baggy shorts and T-shirts trying desperately to master the complexities of a fancy kung fu kick in a school hall in Newmarket. Some of them are so uncoordinated they trip up and almost fall over.

But let's be fair — Michelle Yeoh was a ballerina-turned-actor who practised for 12 hours a day. Yeoh started learning her craft, including special techniques for the camera, from a variety of teachers and stuntmen in Hong Kong in 1985.

So clearly this is not something you're going to learn in a weekend. Yeoh also practises a variety of styles — one of which is called Wing Chun.

A Buddhist nun, who was a master of Shaolin Kung Fu, developed the original Wing Chun more than 300 years ago. She came up with a whole new system of fighting and the style was eventually named after her first student, a woman named Yim Wing Chun. It has been said that "Wing Chun is like a giant pool of water. The teacher leads you to the pool, but how much you drink is up to you."

Now if that ain't very Crouching Tiger, what is?
During a typical two-hour class you will do synchronised exercises in rows, then you'll spar with a partner. At the more traditional end of things you will bow to your "brothers and sisters" in Wing Chun and your master will teach you excellent names for all the moves you learn, such as: "tan" and "woo".

To start: Visit a martial arts class. Most allow you the first lesson free. For Wing Chun phone (09) 527 7735 or (021) 707 034.

What you'll need: No special kung fu outfits required. Just comfortable clothes and bare feet.

Cost: Between $45 and $85 a month.

Just like in the movies? Not really — that would take years. But you do get to fight with other people (albeit gently) and you learn combinations of moves that — just occasionally, when you get them right — make you feel a little like Michelle Yeoh.

SHOOT like Jude Law in Enemy at the Gates

In the forthcoming war movie, Enemy At The Gates, Jude Law plays a handsome, young Russian sniper, Vassili Zaitzev, who single-handedly kills more than 100 enemy soldiers during the infamous Second World War bloodbath at Stalingrad.

Believe it or not, your first step towards such cinematic glory lies in a small, wooden shack in outer Swanson. This humble shed, furnished with mismatching armchairs and chipped crockery, houses one of Auckland's only indoor shooting ranges and is the winter practice ground for various local smallbore rifle shooting clubs.

The shooters lie on the ground in the shooting gallery and aim for a small set of targets around 20m away on the opposite wall.

With New Zealand's tough gun laws, the closest most city folks ever get to a real gun is watching American crime shows. So when you first hold a real firearm, it's quite a strange experience. It feels, well, a bit dangerous. But apparently it's not.

"If you wanted to do damage to someone you'd be better off whacking them over the head with your gun," says the president of the Auckland Target Club, indicating his own very technical-looking rifle sitting on the table.

And as soon as you pick it up you realise he's probably right. It weighs a tonne.

And the bullets they use tend to be small calibre — .22, although you wouldn't want one in your eye.
That feeling of danger evaporates even faster when you take a turn at shooting.

Looking through the sight, you stop thinking about the fact that you're holding a weapon; all you care about is getting the bullet to the centre of the bullseye. As another club member says, "It's not so much about the guns. They are simply a means of getting the bullet to the target. It's all about accuracy, precision and discipline — and beating your own personal best scores."

In other words, it's a bit like playing golf or maybe pool on your own.

Smallbore rifle shooters are keen to emphasise the gentlemanly aspects of their game. They're not a bang-bang-shoot'em up kind of group — they'll leave that to the paintball players.

To start: Call the Target Shooting Association on (09) 833 9114 for a contact. They should be able to arrange for you to visit a shooting range and have a go.

What you'll need: Clothes you don't mind lying in on a wooden floor. A club can lend beginners the gear, but if you're serious you'll soon need to buy your own.

Cost: A rifle costs anything from $500 and a shooting jacket goes from $200. You'll also have to pay an annual membership fee which will cost $80-$150.

Just like in the movies? Sort of. There is no action posing or fancy shooting from the hip here. But, as we know from films such as Day of the Jackal, the sniper is a different breed — solitary, serious, cool and only concerned with the purity of his art. And that's definitely big out there at the Swanson shooting range.

LEAP out of a plane like Charlie's Angels

Apparently it doesn't even feel like you're falling.
"Even people who are scared of heights can do this," says Libby Lyver of Mercer Sky Diving. "Personally I can't even stand on the roof of a building. When I was at the top of Sky City I refused to stand on that glass panel," says the woman who runs a skydiving business.

"But in the aircraft you're not attached to the ground.
So you never get that sensation of dropping off something. And when you exit the aircraft you're already travelling at the same speed as it is."
The next part is best. You're out of the plane at about 3500m and on a clear day you can see as far as Mt Ruapehu or the Bay of Islands. For the next 40 or 50 seconds you're in free fall — you're just about flying.
It doesn't feel like falling. And because you're travelling at about 125 km/h all you can feel is the wind rushing past your face.

Then — pop — the instructor attached to your harness and who's been riding behind you the whole time opens your parachute canopy.

And that is the joy of tandem skydiving. Drive out to the airfield and within half an hour (after watching an explanatory video and getting safety instructions) you're airborne. The instructors also take care of the landing for you and Lyver says they've taken everyone from a 10-year-old to a 75-year-old grandfather.

To start: There are plenty of tandem skydiving operations around New Zealand, as it's proving very popular with tourists. Look under Parachuting and Skydiving in the Yellow Pages. Mercer Sky Diving can be contacted on 0800 865 867.

What you'll need: Overalls are provided, but wear sensible clothing. One woman who turned up in high heels had to do it in bare feet.

Cost: At Mercer it's $220-$250, depending on how high you go.

Just like in the movies? Apart from that person attached to your harness, yes, it's exactly the same. They'll even videotape you doing it, if you want.

SHAKE a martini like James Bond

Having done all that, you're probably going to need a cup of tea and a wee lie down. Actually no, that was the old couch potato you. The new daring and adventurous you wants a martini. Shaken, not stirred, of course.

James Bond himself gives the recipe for his signature tipple in the first Bond book by Ian Fleming, Casino Royale, published in 1953.

"A dry martini," he said. "One. In a deep champagne goblet."

"Oui, monsieur."

"Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel. Got it?"

Bond, being the rakish devil he is, takes both gin and vodka in his martini.

But a traditional martini is actually made with gin, dry vermouth (Kina Lillet is a brand of vermouth) and either an olive or lemon peel.

And a proper martini is stirred, not shaken.

A variant on this is the vodka martini, which as you might suspect, substitutes vodka for the gin and sometimes allows other ingredients.

And finally, to address one of the greatest movie myths of our time: why shaken, not stirred?

First, a shaken martini is usually colder than a stirred one, since the ice has had a chance to swish around the drink more.

Second, shaking a martini dissolves air into the mix; this is the "bruising" of the gin martini purists moan about — it makes a martini taste too "sharp".

Third, a shaken martini will more completely dissolve the vermouth, giving a less oily mouth feel to the drink.

Phew. Now where's that Aston Martin and the cute double agent?