With Doug Liman's name poised Tarantino-ishly as executive producer above the credits, this debut feature by Mongolian-born Chinese advertising whiz-kid Wuershan presents itself as an east-west hybrid.

Carlos Santana is in love with a black magic woman. Really, he is, and she's got a wild afro, saucy style, and plays drums.

It was 1956 and Eric Newby, the man who would become one of Britain's most admired travel writers, was stuck in a fitting room with a designer, a model and a lady with a mouth full of pins.

Link between the plot and Tim Finn's songs is tenuous, but it's a striking piece of theatre.

Stories of young, attractive women desperately trying to escape their small-town roots by allowing themselves to be seduced by older, apparently more worldly men, are not new.

Richie's voice matched the fabric of his shirts - satin and velvet - and his moves rivalled his frenetic back-up musicians.

When Douglas Wright sets his stage with a big grey wall, it's a wall with an enigmatic, palpable life of its own.

You hear of performers playing their audiences, but Bobby McFerrin really did use his Auckland audience as a musical instrument last night.

Russell Baillie reviews the first night of Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly's Auckland Arts Festival season.

Graham Reid is left wanting more from San Francisco's Jason Robert Quever.

Lest I be labelled a seal-clubber and eater of endangered species, I say at the start that no sensible person could disagree with any assertion in this film.

With the three members of REM now all into their fifties, it would be nice to report that they've fixed whatever stopped their Noughties albums being as vital as the ones which got them there.

This remix album is a collaboration between Jamie Smith of hushed electronic rockers The xx and Gil Scott-Heron, the 1970s street poet and revolutionary rapper.

Rajendra Prasanna comes from generations of Indian master musicians. On Tuesday, thanks to him and his three colleagues, a rapt audience fell under the spell of a music in which time itself seemed almost to stand still.

As she grows older and hones in on the big issues of life, Joanna Trollope just gets better.

Charlotte Randall is an award-winning New Zealand author whose novels reflect someone utterly in love with the potential of language.

Scarlett Thomas has penned a chatty, delightful easy read about friendship, love, and making those hard, life-defining choices.