In the relentless search for new and challenging viewing experiences, I turned to Good Morning, a television show with one of those titles that says it all.

Local playwright Victor Rodger has followed up last year's revival (Sons) and premiere (At the Wake) with a new play that brings a light touch to tragedy.

Michele Hewitson writes: Aside from the infuriating filler games, Our First Home is hokey and insincere and has more holes in it than the floorboards in the crappy do-ups on offer.

The media and public fascination with Stephen Hawking has, it seems to me, always been driven by a mixture of infantilising sentimentalism and morbid curiosity.

Given the civil rights subject matter, the greatness of Martin Luther King as the man at the centre of the story, and relevance today it's surprising Selma isn't a bigger, flashier film.

No one should be surprised by this 36th studio album from 73-year-old Dylan being standards.

The sweeping, swooning, beautifully melodramatic world of Father John Misty's latest album is quite a thrill.

As french as croissants aux amandes and so extravagantly theatrical that you can practically smell the greasepaint in the cinema, this small and goofy French comedy follows the struggles of a young teenager to come to terms with his sexual identity.

Entertainment is a funny business, especially when it's not that funny at all. Take, for instance, The Missing, a new British television drama series that launched on TV One on Sunday night in both terrific and dreadful style.

Paul Simon and Sting sound like a somewhat unlikely pairing. But more than 40 years on, their musical ideas seem to be easy bedfellows.

Great drama speaks to any day in which it is performed. The second-most famous play by the great Arthur Miller deals with the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, in the late 17th century.

Feisty Bette Davis was memorably photographed by Roddy McDowall in 1981, holding a cushion inscribed, "Old Age Ain't No Place for Sissies".

Some things in life need not be messed with. Fairy bread was perfected ages ago and kids are probably happier for it, the developed world knows what happened when Coca-Cola went "New", and Pokemon's still Pokemon.

Chief Waterboy Mike Scott said after his last album - musical settings of poems by W.B. Yeats - that he wanted to return to rock 'n' roll, hence these nine often rambunctious, sometimes soulful, occasionally thoughtful and mostly engaging songs.

Remember Kriss Kross? Those two-hit wonders who wore all their clothes backwards and wanted to "warm it up" and "make you jump, jump" in 1992? Get ready to meet 2015's version.

Didn't get enough at Laneway? Flying Lotus kept the party going with his very own sideshow at Auckland's Powerstation. Rachel Bache was there.

In his early days, Lupe Fiasco was billed as a mini-Kanye, full to the brim with self-aware raps and smart social commentaries, with an ego to match.

Unassuming and amiable, this road-trip buddy comedy, which played in the festival last year, belongs squarely in the sub-genre of very-low-budget American indies with untrained actors and improvised dialogue that has been dubbed mumblecore.

The challenge of putting on Dido and Aeneas is usually to find a suitable short opera to complete the evening. Last night, at Te Uru Waitakere, there were no such worries.

Dave Dobbyn, Don McGlashan, Supergroove and Anika Moa deliver a enjoyable mix of musical fireworks and song power on this year's Winery Tour.

Delightful show about marriage that's funny without trying too hard.

The recent movies that have looked at the impact of dementia - Away From Her, The Savages, Aurora Borealis, A Song For Martin, Lovely, Still - have tended to focus on the effect on those left behind as the light dies.

Sages and songwriters have warned us of judging books by their covers; the same holds true for a recent CD of Richard Strauss.

What's a shock rocker to do when he can no longer shock, or rock?

Two movies in and Angelina Jolie the director seems to have already developed a speciality. Her debut In the Land of Blood and Honey was about a Bosnian prisoner of war.

A patient watchfulness and an often exquisite visual sensibility distinguish the first film outside his native Norway by writer director Poppe.

A searching examination of middle-class complacency and gender roles in an age of us-or-them individualism, this assured Swedish drama is the kind of film that's hard to watch and harder still to tear your eyes away from.

Mark Ronson is a peculiarly modern musician, whose talents in twiddling knobs and selecting the perfect collaborators are just as important as his magpie-like ability to pick out half-buried musical jewels from the past.