Entertainment picks: Inside view of parallel concept

TV

As America spews out shows about murder-solving mediums, alien abductees and modern miracle-investigators, a local drama has a more interesting take on the parallel universe concept.

The Insiders Guide to Love (TV2, 9.30 tonight) is the prequel to last year's excellent The Insiders Guide to Happiness - and, just so we're clear, it spends more time exploring human quirks and relationships than what some inquisitive ET might have stuck up someone's rear end. Happiness had Tibetan monks, a stroppy carwash and a text-messaging foetus. Love has a philandering travel writer, a lovelorn baker and a nympho wild chick (Kate Elliott). Award-winning actor Will Hall returns - albeit earlier in time - as James, the Wanganui country boy who flies the coop for Wellington and winds up with his folks on his doorstep. A bizarre incident ties all the characters together.

Also this week: Snoop Dogg and Rosanna Arquette guest star on The L Word (TV2, 11.30 tonight); Jeremy Wells is still Eating Media Lunch (TV2, Tuesday, 10pm); Ali G's Kazakhstani alter-ego hosts the MTV Europe Music Awards (C4, Wednesday, 8.30pm); former "asshole" comedian Denis Leary is a messed-up fireman on Rescue Me (TV One, Wednesday, 9.30pm); the No 1 Kiwi of all time is revealed on New Zealand's Top 100 History Makers (Prime, Thursday, 7.30pm); Family Guy's Seth McFarlane has a new cartoon called American Dad, (TV3, Thursday, 10pm); and intrepid reporter Morgan Spurlock eats McDonald's every day for a month, then shows us his liver on Super Size Me (TV One, Thursday, 8.30pm). And for his next film, he stabs himself in the leg to see if it hurts.

Event

This year at Big Boys Toys (Friday to Sunday, Auckland Showgrounds), we have professional stunt-riders, cheerleaders, radio-controlled helicopters, a V10, 600hp Porsche Carrera GT, fishing boats, mountain bikes, air hockey, jet skis, Sky TV PVR recorders, golf-simulators, GPS, power tools, the Xbox 360 and - what the hell? - a "Girlzone" with hair and nail styling, massage and spray tanning. Gosh, won't the blokes look pretty afterwards.

Music

The piano is cool. Officially. Module, the piano man from Fly My Pretties, aka Jeremiah Ross, will confirm this when he performs his man-meets-machine electronica with a live band featuring Paul McLaney (Gramsci), Darren Mathiassen (Rhombus) and Tim Beals (Sequoya) at Rising Sun on Saturday.

He's already done it on his very nice solo album, Remarkable Engines, a collection of noodly, ambient, downbeat, 80s synth pop which comes with a bonus disc featuring him on the keys. Joining Module will be Pitch Black's Paddy Free and Rhian Sheehan plus some freaky visual installations.

Also this week: the moody, vocal-less sounds of Hawkes Bay's Jakob with guests the Body Corporate and the Kingsland Vinyl Appreciation Society, (King's Arms, Friday), Cheap Thrills with the Boxcar Guitars, the Rainy Days and the Whipping Cats, (Friday, Masonic), tech-house, techno and electro German DJ Tom Clark (Friday, Fu Bar) and some dude called Joe Cocker (Friday, Civic Theatre).

Movies

Jodie Foster's new thriller, Flightplan, is already getting air stewards around the world a bit ticked off. Groups of flight attendants in the United States boycotted the film, saying it portrayed the profession in a negative way.

Anyway, the fictional story: a bereaved woman (Foster) and her daughter, Julia, are flying home from Berlin to America when, at 9000m, Julia vanishes and nobody believes she was on the plane in the first place.

Also opening this week: Serenity, the big-screen, futuristic version of the short-lived TV series Firefly; The Constant Gardener, a murder thriller set across three continents from City of God director Fernando Meirelles, starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz; and Must Love Dogs, a romantic comedy starring Diane Lane.

For something a little different, check out Look At Me (Lido from Friday), a French comedy from this year's film fest that won Best Screenplay at Cannes. It's the story of an egotistical writer (I'm definitely going to see this) and the daughter who craves his attention.

And from Thursday, the Academy is screening the documentary feature, In the Realms of the Unreal: The Mystery of Henry Darger, about the reclusive American painter and novelist who died aged 81, leaving behind a 15,000-page novel, an eight-volume autobiography and hundreds of paintings.

Art

New Zealand painter Piera McArthur has been wildly entertaining canvases with shocks of colour for years now. Her latest collection (at the Studio of Contemporary Art, Newmarket, today until November 18), is an extension of The Holy Ghost Among the Fantails, a theme she explored in a Wellington exhibition last year. Inspired by the missionary Jean Baptiste Francois Pompallier, this includes 28 new canvases on the bishop's early days in New Zealand. Social Tomorrow we're invited to a TVNZ soiree - what a time for the broadcaster to be celebrating! Anyway, we'll get to find out what is coming up programme-wise in the new year and Ian Fraser is supposed to make a speech, a very well-paid speech. Ooh, apparently The O.C. is coming back.