After creating a sensation at the previous Auckland Arts Festival, the creators of The Arrival have returned with an exquisitely crafted rhapsody of image and movement-based theatre.

After several flops, the Farrelly brothers (There's Something About Mary) try to reclaim their status as kings of the gross-out sex comedy with this scatological outing starring Owen Wilson.

Patrick Fabian is a confident leading man in The Last Exorcism.

The last time Roxy Music played in New Zealand it was in a Waikato field as the headliners of Sweetwaters 1981.

Programme of tasty morsels served with wonderful flair

On the run from ruthless enemies, teenager John Smith (Alex Pettyfer) must come to terms with his alien heritage to get the girl (Dianna Agron) and save the planet.

A sickbed obsession culminates in moving musings about the beauty of our world.

Though Sue Orr's new collection of short stories, From Under The Overcoat, references short stories by literary greats such as Nikolay Gogol (The Over Coat) and James Joyce (The Dead), don't hold that against it.

Heroes don't come much kookier than Xerxes. He may be the King of Persia but he opens Handel's opera by extolling the beauties of a plane tree; a man who, as one character comments, "is aroused by a rough trunk."

The latest piece of youth-oriented theatre from Massive Company adopts the admirably egalitarian but dramatically unsatisfying strategy of giving what amounts to a lead role to each member of the 14 person cast.

Rating: 4/5. Verdict: Another futuristic beauty

Rating: 5/5. Verdict: History recorded

Based on Posy Simmond's graphic novel, originally serialised in the Guardian's Review supplement, Tamara Drewe is a light and frothy satire on life and lust in a quiet English country village.

Rating: 4/5. Verdict: Setting their controls to the heart of the sun

A knockabout Kiwindian comedy with a light seasoning of pathos, this self-funded project does not exceed the expectations raised by its modest origins.

One of the pleasures of reading an essayist as eclectic as Geoff Dyer is that one can go within a few pages from regarding him as a fount of wisdom (when his opinions match yours) to thinking he's a pretentious phoney (when they don't).

For women of a certain (or uncertain) age, remembering nothing is not difficult. Remembering something is more problematic. Thus, women of a certain age will be enchanted by Nora Ephron's take on memory, or lack of it.

Confession time: I'd never read anything by Anne Rice before this. For a while, I thought she was another name for Stephenie Meyer. She's not (of course), but she could be.

I began this book when a William Lobb rose was in its first flowering in my garden. Every time I went out to get the mail the perfume hung in the air and I breathed it in and felt good about being alive.

It's been six months since the last Joyce Carol Oates, so it's not surprising to find she has another book out. Her productivity is astonishing, she's Barbara Cartland in black instead of pink.

Lynch fans will delight in her latest offering of love and heartache in the Italian hills. Sarah-Kate Lynch even helped smooth the reviewer's own path to love.

K Rd's Whammy Bar has hosted more than its share of full and sweaty nights over the last few years, a bit of communal congestion being something that regulars of this underground live music institution never seem to mind too much.

The avant-garde end of Fringe Fest spectrum finds an appropriate niche with a free event held at the base of the stairs that link Saint Kevin's Arcade with Myers Park.