TV & Radio Sunday October 16

A better-than-average teencom, and the second semi-final. You know what we're talking about.

TV

Easy A

Rugby League (Sky Sport 2, Sky 031, 5.30pm). Another league fixture that got a little lost in the RWC cup noise: the Kangaroos play the Kiwis in a one-off international in Newcastle. The test precedes the Four Nations series that begins on October 28 between Australia, England, Wales and New Zealand.

Rugby (TV1, 7.00pm; Maori 8.00pm; TV3, 8.30pm; Sky Sport 1, Sky 020, 8.45pm). Anxious times: a depleted-through-injury All Blacks face the Australians in the second RWC semi-final, who can play like geniuses one week and village idiots the next. Let’s hope it’s the latter tonight.

60 Minutes (TV3, 7.30pm). Tonight: Sarah Hall reports on the Christchurch families who moved to Australia after the earthquakes thinking they would have a better life; and Rod Vaughan reports on the rugby writers who delight in needling New Zealanders about the shortcomings of the All Blacks. Jealousy, we’d say. Plus, an American report on 26-year-old rock climber Alex Honnold, who scales walls higher than the Empire State Building.

FILM

Marmaduke (Sky Movies, Sky 020, 5.25pm). A dog. (2010) 4 – Diana Balham

Mission: Impossible III (TV2, 8.30pm). A noteworthy line-up of co-stars, including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Simon Pegg and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, joins Tom Cruise in this third M:I instalment, which concerns “a dangerous and sadistic arms dealer”. Perhaps he could get in touch with the bent cop’s huge arms racket from Lethal Weapon 3 (see Saturday). Silly, I know, but you can’t take this sort of frenetic fantasy too seriously. This is the best of the three to date, but that will count for naught if you can’t stand Cruise and his smug secret agent shtick. (2006) 7 – Diana Balham

Jaws 3 (Four, 8.30pm). By now, the franchise was as toothless as a geriatric gerbil and about as scary. David Brown and Richard D Zanuck, who produced the first two movies, originally pitched this as a spoof called National Lampoon’s Jaws 3, People 0, with a naked Bo Derek, shark-costumed aliens and author Peter Benchley being eaten in his pool by a great white. What they got wasn’t all that far from this: nominated for five Golden Raspberries: worst director, new star, picture, screenplay and supporting actor. (1983) 3 – Diana Balham

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Easy A (Sky Movies, Sky 020, 8.30pm). Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter gets a modern reworking in this teen comedy about Olive Penderghast, a nondescript girl with a stand-out name who decides to get herself noticed by pretending to be a slut. Oddly enough, this novel approach comes back to bite her – in a non-erotic way. A great comic performance by Emma Stone – who nearly killed her career before it had really begun with the dire Marmaduke. She has top billing for the first time, but fights for screen time with heavyweights Stanley Tucci, Patricia Clarkson, Lisa Kudrow and Thomas Haden Church, who all add to a better-than-average teencom experience. You wonder who else might have been included: everyone in the cast had to have an “a” in their name, so no chance for, let’s see, Vin Diesel, Bruce Willis, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, Toni Collette, Jennifer Lopez … The second feature for Will Gluck, who also directed the much-hyped current release Friends with Benefits. (2010) 7 – Diana Balham

Poltergeist (TV2, 11.00pm). Classic frights. Perhaps this is where Sting got his Ghost in the Machine: dear little Carol Anne communicates with spirits through the TV but then they turn nasty and shut her in a closet … in another dimension. The first film produced by Steven Spielberg. (He pretty much directed it as well, but a clause in his contract said he couldn’t actually sit in the director’s chair while he was still working on ET, so Tobe Hooper got the credit.) This is weird: the spooky clown that tries to strangle eight-year-old Robbie was a bit overenthusiastic during filming. Poor Oliver Robins started turning purple, until Spielberg realised what was happening. In real life, Dominique Dunne, who played teenager Dana, was strangled by her boyfriend the same year Poltergeist was released. She is buried in the same cemetery as Heather O’Rourke (Carol Anne), who died from an obstruction in her small bowel six years later. (1982) 8 – Diana Balham

RADIO

Composer of the Week (Radio New Zealand Concert, 9.00am today and weekdays, and 7.00pm Monday). This week, RNZ Concert focuses on Peteris Vasks (b1946), one of the most influential European contemporary composers working today. Born in Aizpute, Latvia, he learnt the violin at the Latvian Academy of Music, but had to go to neighbouring Lithuania to complete his musical education, studying composition and learning the double bass. This was because his father was a Baptist minister and at that time – the 1960s – Latvia was still part of the Soviet Union, which imposed repressive policies against certain religious groups. Vasks returned home and played in a number of orchestras before taking up a career as a teacher of composition in various Latvian institutions, which he continues to do. He also maintains an important presence as a composer, both at home and as a composer-in-residence in different parts of the world. He started to become known outside his homeland in the 1990s, particularly after Latvian violinist and conductor Gidon Kremer became a fan of his work. Vasks is best known for his choral music and his string, brass and piano works. He is a committed environmentalist and nature themes can be found in many of his pieces, as well as a keen sense of nationalism and echoes of his spiritual beliefs. He has said, “There has been so much bloodshed and destruction, and yet love’s power and idealism have helped to keep the world in balance.” Vasks has received a number of musical awards over the years and has been an honorary member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences since 1994 and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music since 2001. He has also written several pieces for the famed US-based Kronos Quartet. – Diana Balham

Opera on Sunday (Radio New Zealand Concert, 3.00pm). Telling their stories through song is what Australian Aborigines have been doing for 60,000 years and so it wasn’t such a big step for Deborah Cheetham – a member of the “stolen generation” – to compose an opera about her people. Today’s work is the world premiere of Pecan Summer, the true story of the 1939 Cummeragunja Mission walk-off, and the first opera written by an indigenous Australian and using an indigenous cast. More than 200 men, women and children left the mission in New South Wales, crossed the Murray River and camped out to protest at their treatment by the station’s manager. The work stars Cheetham as Ella and features the Dhungala Children’s Choir, the Short Black Opera Company and the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, conducted by David Kram. – Diana Balham