Entertainment picks: Auckland celebrates the arts

The Bangarra Dance Theatre bring an Australian Aboriginal flavour to AK'05.

Television

What's with the gross stuff on TV at the moment? Did anyone else nearly lose their dinner watching that cyst-removal operation on Nip/Tuck last week? It was cool but I'd rather see The 4400 (TV3, 8.30pm tonight, tomorrow and Wednesday), the mini-series that brought America to a standstill when 7.4 million viewers tuned in last year. The title refers to the number of people who are mysteriously plonked back on Earth by their extra-terrestrial captors, years after they were taken. None of them has aged, and not surprisingly, some of them are finding it hard getting into the swing of things on the mother planet. As for the gross-out factor, let's just hope there aren't abduction scenes showing sharp instruments going where the sun doesn't shine.

Music

Local artists do their bit to raise money for Asian tsunami victims at Western Springs this Sunday. And it's a seriously good line-up. On the bill: Scribe, Salmonella Dub, the D4, Che Fu, Misfits Of Science, Shapeshifter, Nesian Mystik, P Money, Pluto and the Mint Chicks, plus - wahoo! - a licensed bar and food stalls. Gates open at 11am, show starts at noon and it runs until 7.30pm. Tickets for the all-ages event are $20 and kids under 10 get in free. Proceeds go to Unicef and the Red Cross. Good karma goes to those who attend.

Social circuit

Another charitable cause worth supporting is the annual Celebrity Debate. This year, they're arguing whether Auckland is the true capital of New Zealand. Proceeds from the SkyCity $100-a-seat affair will go to Busting with Life, an all-women dragon boat team of breast cancer survivors raising money to compete in Canada at the international Abreast in a Boat regatta in June. Hosted by Oliver Driver, the debating teams are Oscar Kightley, Jeremy Corbett and Kerre Woodham who take on Tom Scott, Jason Gunn and Tim Shadbolt. Yawn. If they wanted a real debate, they should have made it, hmm, Paul Holmes, Nicky Watson and Mareko against Kim Hill, Marc Ellis and the Briscoes woman.

Auckland arts festival

If Auckland doesn't turn out to be the capital, it won't matter because we all know it is anyway - AK'05 arrives on Saturday. The opening celebration at Aotea Square is free and a good opportunity to get a taste of highlights from the annual arts festival. Aside from local performers King Kapisi and the perennial Jackie Clarke, you'll get a snapshot of New Zealand's Stalker Theatre's acrobats, Michael Hurst's latest production, Jack and the Beanstalk, Australia's Bangarra Dance Theatre, Kiwi choreographer Michael Parmenter and Canada's Les 7 Doigts de La Main circus troupe. The event starts at 8pm and runs for 90 minutes, ending with a fireworks display, then it's up to you to get tickets to the shows. AK'05 is on until March 13.

Art exhibition

Finally, something to ponder. Remember when Pavement published a photo of a Japanese schoolgirl with no knickers on? Talk about a kerfuffle. Some readers were so appalled retailers had no choice but to shove the magazine in a plastic bag and stick it in the porno section. Indeed, there's a fine line between erotica and smut, and it's one the Mondo Pop Gallery is inviting you to find. The X Show opened on Valentine's Day and features more than a dozen international artists specialising in erotic, cheesecake and shock images. Among them, Japanese bondage photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, stockings fetishist Elmer Batters and former porn star Annie Sprinkle, who was once photographed emerging from, um, whence she came. So if you aren't planning a family outing or first date, the gallery is at 3/57 Pitt St, Newton and the exhibition runs until Sunday.

Movies

It may be a week before the Oscars but the only title opening this week you'll see in the nominations is Vera Drake, English director Mike Leigh's movie starring the much-lauded Imelda Staunton as a compassionate, backstreet abortionist. Also opening on Thursday is the Meet the Parents sequel Meet the Fockers, Australian drama Somersault, Brit chick flick School for Seduction, and Head in the Clouds, a pre-World War II drama of romance, Paris and politics, starring Penelope Cruz, and real-life couple Charlize Theron and Stuart Townsend.

But if it's action - and especially hydro-action - you want, there is always the Billabong Jack McCoy Surf Film Festival, which starts its New Zealand tour this week. Headlining this year's festival is world number five Taj Burrow's new film

Fair Bits - dubbed by him as a journey of "loose dreams and discoveries from around the globe". The festival shows in Auckland at the Rialto on Wednesday and the Berkeley Takapuna on Thursday before heading around the regions.