Auckland Chamber Orchestra looked good on stage at the Raye Freedman Centre, the group's new home for the 2011 season.

With the reliably stoic Aaron Eckhart (The Dark Knight) in the lead and a cracking trailer, this alien invasion flick had a decent amount of promise.

R'n'B star Chris Brown says his latest album is more "grown up" than his last, Graffiti, a record he oddly put out just months after pleading guilty to assaulting Rihanna.

Grotesque parodies - and a lack of laughs - leave Deborah Hill Cone dismayed at the latest offering from Little Britain duo Matt Lucas and David Walliams.

Starman captures only some of pop icon David Bowie's intrigue.

When Robert Duvall first looms into sight here, a menacing silhouette whose reputation scares children sick, it's impossible not to think of his first big-screen role almost 50 years ago.

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.

Some albums are more important for what they are than what they deliver. So it is with this double-disc, the final concert Bob Marley ever played: September 23, 1980 in Pittsburgh.

Duran Duran must have felt pretty slick when they returned to the studio to record their 13th studio album. They had Mark Ronson - the guy who produced Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen and Adele - behind them.

Having helped make the world safe again for garage rock on 2001 debut Is This It and its 2003 follow-up, the Strokes seemed to lose their way on 2006 third album First Impressions of Earth.

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.

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.