The latest animated 3D offering from Blue Sky Studios, Epic, is about a magical world in which tiny inhabitants of the forest are threatened by an evil force.

I first saw this clowning classic several years ago, and remembered it fondly enough to want to take the resident 8-year-old this time around.

Five TV shows that will keep couch potatoes glued to their seats over the coming week.

Comparing Pacific Rim to Transformers because it also features giant metal things thumping about the planet is like comparing director Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy films to your standard superhero movie.

Chris Schulz reviews Jay-Z's new album.

Jonathan Bree was at the helm of twee pop group the Brunettes for more than a decade, releasing four albums, but he's now embarking on a solo course.

Cult comic book figure's first video game foray earns his R18 tag.

In Britain, this critically favoured, chart-topping 22-year-old pianist/singer has made no secret of his admiration for Elton John.

The reclusive British beat renegade is back. With Love is, like his 2010 sophomore album Dedication, dub step but not as you know it.

The grand final of the newly inaugurated Wallace National Piano Competition on Sunday offered three hours of memorable music-making.

Over time, Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra has shown a real nous for matching conductor and concert.

Ben Crawford predicts doozy arguments and high stress in a new home reno show.

'I liberate photographic fragments from their original snap-and-capture setting and reposition them in the space of art," is Peter Madden's description of how he arrives at his fascinating collages at the Ivan Anthony Gallery.

Has the year's best album already been released? Or is the best yet to come? At the halfway point of 2013, Chris Schulz asks the Herald's resident music experts to make their picks.

The Auckland duo of recording engineers/producers and sound mixers, Simon Gooding and Brendon Morrow (York St, television and film work, etc), craft the most unfashionable music.

There are few actors who keep your attention by just walking and talking their way through a film, but it comes easily to Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy - they have had plenty of practice, though.

If the quirky, zany, bumbling charms of Johnny Depp's performances in most everything else he's been in for the past decade are wearing a bit thin, then here's some relief.

The Transplants have always been a confused bunch of rockers, mixing up rap, dub, ska, punk and funk across their first two records.

At the ripe old age of 21, Pittsburgh rapper Mac Miller has lived a life full of hip-hop cliches.

Six TV shows that will keep couch potatoes glued to their seats over the coming week.

It's been a whopping 12 years since Jak and Daxter first debuted on the PlayStation 2 - a somewhat revolutionary game that paved the way for platform adventures starring oddball duos.

With more than four million copies sold in Japan and Korea since November, New Leaf has been a massively popular addition to the Animal Crossing series.