Over several mixtapes and two New Zealand live appearances, Joey Bada$$ has proved an incendiary talent.

It felt like Mikky Ekko had come out of nowhere when he featured on Rihanna's 2013 hit Stay. Now the American singer-songwriter is introducing his own music with debut album Time.

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.

There are times in this brilliantly acted and understated psychological drama when it seems very little happens at all, but when the lights go up you're left reeling by the culmination of events that have quietly unfolded.

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.

Fed up with a lack of stimulating female leads in Hollywood, Reese Witherspoon formed a production company and started making her own work. She's created herself a doozy (and a deserved Oscar nomination) playing Cheryl Strayed in Wild.

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.

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.

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

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.

When it comes to career resurrections, Fall Out Boy's recent resurgence is nothing short of miraculous.

In the 1994 original Dumb and Dumber there was something endearing about Lloyd and Harry's idiotic, crude behaviour.