Mel Parsons' sophomore album is like high quality aural chocolate - sweet, comforting, sometimes dark, full of subtle layers, and a treat for your ears.

The often disgusting and downright mean things rappers get away with really is something. On Game's fourth, star-studded album everyone from Erykah Badu to the cronies at Interscope records are in his sights.

Pitched somewhere between Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and the 80s Kiwi shaggy dog story Carry Me Back, this unassuming absurdist Israeli feature may have trouble winning hearts on this side of the world.

Atamira Dance Company's's beautifully crafted new Te Houhi - The People and the Land are One draws on intricately connected layers of dance, video imagery and narrated text to share poignant ancestral stories from the Ngai Tuhoe lineage.

It was a little disappointing really, only for the fact Alice Cooper - still the reigning king of gonzo shock rock after more than 40 years in the business - died just once, maybe twice, last night.

It would be nice not to feel the need to eviscerate yet another New Zealand Film Commission-backed local horror that isn't up to its genre job description.

The songs still ring out with trumpets and french horns, a wurlitzer and ukulele, among many other instruments.

Although the Stones were more profoundly influenced by black American music, the young Beatles certainly drew from that well.

The second feature by one of the superstars of contemporary French cinema is an ensemble comedy-drama that is entrancing and infuriating in about equal measure.

It's a little cheeky having the same song on consecutive albums. Soundtrack To Forever (featuring Tiki Taane) appeared on Bulletproof's 2010 album, and it also popped up on Tiki Taane's album from earlier this year - which makes it twice as cheeky.

Joe Nunweek's take on the APRA Silver Scroll Awards, the country's premiere songwriting awards ceremony.

What kind of historical novelist is Barry Unsworth? Despite his practised ear for the idioms of the mid-18th century drawing-room, and weather eye for the contents of the era's wardrobe, he is not a pasticheur.

The Rugby World Cup opening ceremony may have hogged the TV, but there was plenty of entertainment across town at The Winchester, writes Joe Nunweek.

A family history. Also a social and intellectual history, and a different take on the Australian Dream.

This new package from Australia's John Butler Trio includes a DVD of their June 2010 concert, and a double audio CD. The two-hour-plus set ranges over material from their five studio albums, with emphasis on last year's April Uprising.

Think of songs in the spirit of Weezer and Elvis Costello with a touch of The Strokes, though with a relaxed and youthful Kiwi attitude.

The ubiquitous Giamatti plays Mike Flaherty, a lawyer in suburban New Jersey whose practice is going down the drain.

These 18 songs are made up of selections of tracks taken from all of punk rock poet Smith's albums, starting from 1975 debut 'Horses', through to 2007's 'Twelve'.

You will go a long way to see a better piece of screen acting than the one Joanne Froggatt turns in here, as a British soldier returning from a tour of duty in Iraq.