Entertainment Picks: No sleep 'til Auckland

Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving star in Little Fish, a must-see movie.

Music
Motorhead are passed off as dumb, mindless, gonzo metallers by many non-believers.

Ah, you fools. Even though they were not a formative band for me, Motorhead are still legends as far as I'm concerned. Yes, songs like Killed By Death, Eat the Rich, and of course Ace of Spades, are pretty basic, but it's the loud, raw, mongrel nature of the songs that makes them so blood-curdling and invigorating.

Lead man Lemmy is 60 this Christmas Eve - crikey, imagine that party - and he's still going hard, craning his neck to hoik up and into that trademark raised microphone.

Who knows if Lemmy will have enough gas in the tank to pull off a performance like the one captured on 1981's No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith when Motorhead hit the stage at Auckland's St James Theatre on Thursday night? One doubts it, but who cares, because like James Brown, Lee Scratch Perry, and those aging Irish rockers who play a gig here on March 17 next year, it's simply a chance to see a music legend.

Come and have a Jack Daniels and Coke - or 10 - with Lemmy. You know you want to.

On a more tranquil note, Bic Runga celebrates the release of her third album, Birds, with a show at the Civic in Auckland tonight.

Tomorrow night South African musician Johnny Clegg comes foot-stomping and sweating his way back to New Zealand for a show at the Aotea Centre in Auckland. For energy you can't get much better than rock'n'roll crossed with wild Zulu rhythms.

On Thursday, old-timer John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival, kicks off two nights, also at the Civic.

At the the same venue on Saturday Dave Dobbyn winds up his You Got Heart nationwide tour with support from Little Bushman, a band fronted by former TrinityRoots and Fat Freddy's Drop member, Warren Maxwell.

On Friday a bunch of punk bands, including Cold By Winter, Kitsch, Streetwise Scarlett, Tomorrow Comes In Silence, and Sidecar Fury play an all-ages gig at the Ellen Melville Hall in Freyberg Place.

On Saturday the D4 play an all-ages gig at the Transmission Room in Mayoral Dr with proceeds going to help orphaned youngsters in Nepal.

And finally, to round off your weekend, British punk rocker Wild Billy Childish and the Buff Medways play the King's Arms on Sunday night.

Billy, who also does a poetry reading at the Odeon Lounge on Saturday night, has released more than 100 albums so that has to make him more punk than any punk rock band ever. Plus, he's mates with Jack White. Check him out.

TV
There is nothing at all on the major free-to-air networks at a decent time this week. But here are three worthwhile things at off-peak times to check out. First, The Freedom Flat (TV2, Wednesday, 11.20pm), a local documentary by Bianca Zander and Wallace Chapman, about a Dunedin flat set up in 1988 with only one rule: "There are no rules". The six inhabitants painted their door pink and 17 years later the flat remains a Dunedin landmark. Pop on over.

On Saturday TV2 screens the Smokefree Rockquest documentary at midday, so you can play "pick the future rock star of New Zealand".

And finally, this week's Classic Albums on C4 (tomorrow, 9.30pm) looks at Ace of Spades by Motorhead, the perfect build-up to Thursday's gig.

Movies
Starbucks thinks it has its hands full here with striking staff. Well, the company should think itself lucky it hasn't had a movie made about it like US retail behemoth Wal-Mart.

The American documentary, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, directed by Robert Greenwald, digs good dirt on the retailer that is worth $283 billion. The movie gets a one-off screening at the Academy Cinema in Lorne St on Wednesday at 6.15pm. It must be good - it scared the hell out of Wal-Mart.

The company took this doco so seriously it sent a spy along to an advance screening in New York to find out more about the film so a damage control plan could be put in place.

Meanwhile, a must-see is new Australian film Little Fish which stars Cate Blanchett in one of her best roles as Tracy Heart, an ex-junkie getting her life back on track. Throw in a bit of Aussie humour, provided mainly by Kiwi Martin Henderson as Tracy's brother Ray; a gay, junkie, ex-professional league player called Lionel (played masterfully by Hugo Weaving), and Sam Neill as a bisexual drug-dealer, and you have a rip-roaring yarn.

Although the film is too long - it gets a little bogged down in Blanchett's transient strolls - this is one of the best Australian movies I've seen, and one of my movies of the year.

On the less-essential list of films starting on Thursday (actually, just consider them at the DVD shop in about two months) are Devil's Rejects, The Family Stone, and Shop Girl.

Devil's Rejects is the follow up to musician/director Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses and takes place a few weeks after the events of the first movie. It follows the serial-killing Firefly family who are being pursued by Sheriff John Wydell, intent on avenging his brother's murder.

In The Family Stone Dermot Mulroney stars as a son who returns home with his prissy girlfriend, played by Sarah Jessica Parker. The family steps around her like a puddle of sick, so she gets her sister (Claire Danes) to come and support her.

Shop Girl also stars Danes, this time as Mirabelle, a struggling artist who makes a crust working on the glove counter at Saks, Beverly Hills. When she starts dating rich, 50-something bachelor Ray Porter (Steve Martin), all her problems are solved, surely? No. She's still going out with Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman), a young slob.

Definitely stuff for a rainy Sunday night and the DVD player.