Entertainment picks: Comic warm-up before the Games begin

TV

If you prefer your Commonwealth Games coverage with toilet humour, and let's face it, there's nothing better than watching the floor gymnastics while making fart sounds, Game of Two Halves returns with a pre-Games special (tonight, TV One, 9.35pm). Also back is Dog the Bounty Hunter (tonight, Prime, 9.40pm), the bad mullet who polices the mean streets of um, Hawaii, and cop satire Reno 911 (tonight, Prime, 10.10pm).

It's also your last chance to catch Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee (tomorrow, TV One, 9.35pm), and TV2's Shock Treatment (TV2, 7.30pm), which brought us the joys of celebrity enemas. And if you ever wondered what happened to pop singer Lisa Loeb, she's now doing a reality show called Number One Single (tomorrow, E! channel, 11pm) where she tries to resurrect her once lukewarm career by going on the prowl. Hey, it worked for Tara Reid.

Maori Television has a new season of its music show, Coast (Thursday, 9.30pm), now an hour long.

You're invited to turn up to the recording the night before at the Newmarket studios any time from 8pm, as long as you don't have Tourette's. The first show features Nesian Mystik, Sola Rosa with live band and te reo band Iwi.

Music

At least you won't be the only poor, disappointed, restless fan wandering the streets of Auckland this Friday singing Beautiful Day in a sarcastic voice. And U-know-who will be back when the weather is cold and crappy and you can't get the next day off work and have no money left because you spent it all drowning your sorrows with Guinness.

But all is not lost. Kanye West is still upholding his end of the bargain, playing his sold-out gig at the St James on Thursday, and he may believe himself to be Bono anyway. The same night, Breaks Co-Op play the Kings Arms with Lucid 3.

But the pick of the week is Dinosaur Jnr, who play the St James tonight. If we're lucky, there may be a bust-up on stage, complete with flying instruments. This is J Mascis, Lou Barlow and Murph's first NZ gig together since their falling out in the late 80s, and they still haven't really kissed and made up. When it came time to reunite, Mascis simply strolled into the rehearsal room and plugged his guitar in. The power of music, eh?

Movies

A critic notes that David "Deprave" Cronenburg has built a reputation for films involving "mutilation, physical transformation, cloning, extreme gynaecology and strange prosthetics".

A History of Violence resists such shock tactics at the start but descends into a violent, thrilling climax, complete with disturbing gun-shot wounds. Viggo Mortensen plays a small-town owner of a diner leading a small-time life, until he kills a man in self-defence. For a while he's the hero until two baddies (Ed Harris and William Hurt) spot him on TV and turn up to expose his deep, dark secrets.

The film was nominated for two Oscars (best supporting actor and best screenplay).

Also opening this week: Pink Panther with Steve Martin as the bumbling inspector, Kevin Kline as the man who assigns him to the case and Beyonce as the token babe. New Police Story has Jackie Chan playing Hong Kong's No 1 cop, The Brothers Grimm has Heath bloody Ledger and Matt Damon playing con men who convince people to pay them for banishing creatures from their villages, and Monica Belluci as an evil queen who may be sapping blood from innocent young girls.

Kate Beckinsale plays a vampire in Underworld Evolution and Nicolas Cage plays a TV weatherman who gets a big break in The Weather Man.

Imagine Me and You (Rialto) sounds like Four Weddings and a Funeral meets Forces of Nature, Inside Deep Throat (Rialto) is a doco on the porn movie, not the Watergate saga and The White Countess (Rialto) has Ralph Fiennes as a blind American diplomat with a Russian refugee in 1930s Shanghai.