Entertainment picks: Plenty of time for Kiwi music

Music
And so begins Norwegian Music Month. Uh, Kenyan table-tennis week. Easter Island scallop-fighting day. Whatever. You know the drill: four weeks of patting our musically endowed selves on the back. It's not that I don't like NZ Music Month. It's a good branding exercise to remind us we sound hot. It's just, well, four whole weeks? Kiwi FM is no longer - what does that tell us? And if we're doing our jobs properly, you should hear about great Kiwi music every month. Still, here are some local acts to see this week before the novelty wears off: Juice TV has the biggest bash, broadcasting live for two nights from the Civic's Winter Garden. From 6pm, Tuesday it's Minuit, Lucid 3, Pluto, Donald Reid, One Million Dollars, Don McGlashan, Nesian Mystik and Aaradhna, and on Wednesday: Frontline, Open Souls, Stellar, Luke Thompson, Gramsci, dDub, Sarah Brown and Goodnight Nurse. Also on Wednesday, Che Fu plays the Sky City New Bar, Motocade, the Tutts and Shakey Hands play the Kings Arms, and at 11.15pm - I kid you not - there's a folk song singalong at the Blockhouse Bay Library. From 7pm, Thursday the Alleluya Noise Festival kicks off on K Rd (Artspace, Brazil Cafe, Wine Cellar) and the Steve Abel Band plays the Dogs Bollix on Friday. (See www.nzmusic.org.nz for more). Aussie singer Bernard Fanning picked a funny time to cross the ditch. He's at the Studio on Friday.

Social
Real Groove mag celebrates the season with a shindig at 4.20 on Thursday, featuring performances by bands-to-watch Connan & the Mockasins and the Tutts. The back-slapping continues on Friday for the Qantas Media Awards at the Hyatt.

Movies
Fresh from chowing placenta stir-fry, Tom Cruise is back as the wall-scaling Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible III (from Thursday). This time Lost and Alias creator J.J. Abrams directs in an attempt to make the third in the franchise "larger than life", and a little romantic.

Enter Michelle Monaghan (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) who gets to canoodle with Mr Katie Holmes. Watch out for Oscar-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman as the baddie.

This week we finally get to see Transamerica (Rialto from Thursday), featuring the anticipated performance by Oscar nominee and Desperate Housewives star, Felicity Huffman. She plays Stanley who wants to be Bree (not the housewife), only Stanley/Bree has a son he/she didn't know he/she had.

Worse, the kid shop-lifted a frog. The pair of them go on a road trip from New York to LA, with the son believing he/she to be a Christian missionary. What a kerfuffle.

TV
More on Tom Cruise: C4 is going ahead with South Park's Trapped in the Closet episode (Wednesday, 9.30pm), that led to Scientologist Isaac Hayes' (Chef) resignation. An animated Nicole Kidman, John Travolta and R. Kelly cajole Cruise out of the wardrobe, and Stan is thought to be the reincarnation of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Which would explain why Kenny keeps coming back after death.

Music quiz show Pop Goes the Weasel is also reincarnated (Tuesday, C4, 9pm).

I can't remember if I told you about this already: Expose: The Man with the Seven-Second Memory (tonight, TV One, 8.35pm). But I do wonder if the doco's subject, Clive Wearing, a once-renowned conductor and musician who contracted a brain-damaging virus, had enough wits about him to know he was being filmed for a documentary. Or if he's aware that Drew Barrymore made a movie called 50 First Dates. Extraordinarily, the only person he remembers is his wife Deborah, who he married 18 months before the illness struck. She divorced him then returned but the couple have lived in separate homes for the past 20 years.

Grey's Anatomy (tonight, TV2, 9.30pm) has a recap episode. I hate recaps, particularly if you have been loyally following the show. It's like the restaurateur of your favourite eatery asking you to move so that someone who has never eaten there can have your table. But if you're yet to get acquainted with the horny interns of Seattle Grace hospital, here's a 101, narrated by "Joe the Bartender".

Footballers' Wives star Zoe Lucker returns in Bombshell (tomorrow, TV One, 8.30pm), as a brunette Army captain having an affair with her boss. Wonder what kind of disciplinary action goes on in that relationship? There should be lots of bitching, care of the boss' venomous wife who is out to destroy his mistress - how d'ya like that Tania?

On a sad note, it's the final of Dragon's Den (Thursday, TV One, 8.30pm), the British reality show that brought scores of hapless entrepreneurs into contact with acid-tongued business-folk to try to persuade them to invest in their ideas. America gets its version of the show next, called American Inventor, co-created by Dragon panellist Peter Jones and produced by Idol's Simon Cowell.

Auckland's public service channel Triangle Television enters the current affairs fray with a new interview-based programme, Scrutiny, (Thursday, on UHF channels 41, 42 and 52, 7.30pm), hosted by ex-Central Leader editor Edward Rooney. In this short'n'sharp 15-minute format, Rooney will grill the city's decision-makers on pressing issues. We can think of a few. When are we getting a hydro-slide down Queen St?