Author and screenwriter David Nicholls likes to get the most out of his novels; he's adapted all three for the big screen himself; Starter for 10 and The Understudy, and now One Day.

Even though instrumental prog rock metal is a specialist genre of music, when this Auckland trio released their 2009 debut, Vilayer, they were the finest exponents of it on the planet. It was a monumental and thrilling slab of sound.

It sometimes feels that a band with such huge worldwide presence and such mighty success as Coldplay have a disproportionate responsibility to blow your mind when they release an album.

Sort of "what I did on my vacation, part two" from this fine singer-songwriter who began so well with albums like Dressed Up Like Nebraska, Under Cold Blue Stars and Nashville, which took him from the late 90s into the middle of the last decade.

Raw, melancholic and powerful in its unsettled grace, Metals proves that an 18-month break was exactly what Leslie Feist needed to rediscover her musical direction.

The world doesn't need another vampire flick, but when it's as entertaining as this remake of the 1985 comedy horror Fright Night, then why not?

The thought of a play about the Rwandan genocide may make you uneasy, but don’t let it put you off this excellent, sensitive, unusual production.

Reading this very long book is deep immersion in the horrors of the Holocaust, and after a prolonged session readers may have to lift themselves from a state of depression about the human condition.

Now in its 31st year, New York’s annual CMJ festival is an opportunity for industry types and musicians from all over the globe to perform, peruse and participate in a week of musical frivolity.

The last Bats’ release on Flying Nun Records was 2000’s Thousands of Luminous Spheres compilation, and a lot has happened since then.

If I describe this memoir of life on the Kaipara as “charming”, it instantly sounds as if I’m sending it down the Damn-With-Faint-Praise chute. I’m not.

The Fabulous/Arabia project, which finds James Milne, aka Lawrence Arabia, writing saucy, witty lyrics over the top of some fine, fruity music by Mike Fabulous aka Lord Echo (and also The Black Seeds), began as a musical penpal relationship.

If he's gone soft for his umpteenth album since 2000's solo debut Heartbreaker, it's perhaps not surprising.

Just as Wilco and Billy Bragg teamed up in the 90s and set to music unrecorded lyrics by Woody Guthrie (the Mermaid Avenue albums), so here, unrecorded songs by country legend Hank Williams (1923-53) are given life.

No matter what DJ Shadow does he will always have 1996 classic Endtroducing ... as his benchmark. It's one of those albums that you imagine will never be beaten. So, at least on his latest album, he topples his patchy previous effort, The Outsider.

A festival atmosphere pervaded the Aotea Centre as Sacre: The Auckland Dance Project showcased the achievements of 190 youngsters under the direction of British choreographer Royston Maldoom.

Mark Lynch does love his rugby. I remember once when Lynch and I and a few stragglers went to see the Waratahs play the Stormers in Sydney.

To state the bleeding obvious, we can be a nation of blunt-ended rugby fanatics. As 1987 All Blacks captain David Kirk quips in his foreword of Ian Grant's book Having A Ball, "it's part of the rhythm of life, and long may it remain so".

Dan Cleary is one clever guy - actor, writer, producer and someone who doesn't mind poking the borax.

When the sumptuous Great Gardens of Italy series recently screened here, you couldn't help but notice quite a few shots of its host, British garden guru Monty Don, staring pensively out at the scenery, chiselled chin on hand.

The most recent addition to the Late Night Tales stable is a typically pyschedelic, dreamy, and occasionally niggly collection of songs pulled together by New York electronic rockers MGMT.