Waitangi Day coverage on television and radio, and James Cameron's special-effects juggernaut Avatar.
TV
Avatar
Mini-series: Treasure Island (TV2, noon). Oops, slightly missed this in the schedule, due to the fact that it was bunged in at noon, unloved and unheralded. Yet this 2012 adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic was praised in the UK as “delightfully salty” (the Guardian‘s Andrew Collins), and “lavish, colourful, ambitious and very expensive” (Sam Wollaston). Comedian Eddie Izzard is Long John Silver and says he wanted to make a “Goodfellas-y version“. This is the second part of the mini-series (sorry), but you know the story so far anyway.
Nga Taonga Whitiahua (Maori, 2.00pm). Maori Television continues the tradition of all-day Waitangi-related coverage, beginning with this series, which showcases the New Zealand Film Archive’s Te Kohinga Taonga Maori moving image collective. Today’s episode: Waitangi 1934. Full schedule here. – Sarah Barnett
America’s Next Top Model: All Stars (Four, 7.30pm). Otherwise known as cycle 17 of the poutiest, flakiest, catfightiest, most addictive show on TV. Tyra(nt) Banks rounds up her favourite non-winners from previous seasons for another attempt to out-skinny one another. – Sarah Barnett
Becoming Santa (Arts Channel, Sky 079, 8.30pm). Follows long-time showbiz production assistant Jack Sanderson as he spends a Christmas season as Big Red. The charming, family-friendly (though not for children who still believe) doco won an audience choice award at the SXSW Film Festival in 2010. Sanderson, likeable enough to play Father Christmas, also makes for hilarious company as he attends Santa School, learning how to deal with tricky requests such as reuniting separated parents; dyes his hair and beard white; and interviews veteran Santas, many of whom profess an addiction to their seasonal pastime. Might just win over the most diehard of Grinches. – Sarah Barnett
FILM
Avatar (TV3, 7.30pm). Feeling a bit blue? It’s safe to say that even if you don’t enjoy James Cameron’s magnum opus, you’re going to be impressed by it. Avatar is the biggest special-effects juggernaut ever to hit the highway: it makes all that has gone before look like a Noddy car that’s out of gas. From the beautiful execution of the pastel world of the Na’vi to the over-the-top shoot-’em-up wizardry of the bad humans who try to destroy them, this is two hours and 41 minutes of eye-straining sensory methamphetamine. Cameron chucks it all in – an environmental issue, corporate greed and a love story, wrapped around an old-fashioned space adventure. Some crap dialogue, but an artwork to marvel at, nonetheless. (2009) 9 – Diana Balham
Sweet Home Alabama (TV2, 8.30pm). Louisiana-born Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon is so gosh-darned purdy you won’t care that this is a steaming pile of been-there-done-that. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s still the old “left my perfect life and found a better one”, even if in this case the new life is in fact the old one. Our Melanie Lynskey plays Lurlynn – a chick so larded in Southern anti-ambition she can probably get pregnant just by thinking about it. (2002) 5 – Diana Balham
Stuck on You (Four, 8.30pm). Conjoined twins – “We’re not Siamese. We’re American!” – get plenty of Farrelly brothers laughs as two extremely close brothers who want to pursue different interests. Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear are quite sweet, and Cher is a good sport. (2003) 6 – Diana Balham
Kaikohe Demolition (Maori, 8.30pm). Florian Habicht might be New Zealand’s most charming and cheeky filmmaker. He has a knack for doing the opposite to everyone else and getting away with it: his recent success with the offbeat Love Story, where he asked New Yorkers what they thought should happen next, is a perfect example. Here, he was supposed to be making a tourism doco, but he only got as far as shooting the Kaikohe demo derby, then somehow forgot to make the original film! The characters are strangely delightful: the best scenes are candid pieces to camera of the locals up to their necks in the steaming stink of the Ngawha hot pools – a weirdly seductive tourist attraction on their own. There’s Uncle Bim and his clapped-out Super Minx: “I want to thank my uncle for leaving me this legacy. Wish it had been a Subaru Legacy, eh!”; huge doorman Ben Haretuku who runs anger-management courses; family man John Zielinski … Lovely stuff; endearing and hilarious in places. (2004) 8 – Diana Balham
RADIO
Waitangi Day Special (Radio New Zealand National, 8.10am). Kim Hill and Paul Diamond are hosting a four-hour special for our national day, which this year falls on a Monday, so we actually get a holiday. They’ll be broadcasting from Te Puke Ariki (the museum, library and information centre) in New Plymouth. Then at 12.12pm, we get the five hours of mayhem we deserve, in the form of Matinee Idle, with those Bolsheviks of the Beat, Phil O’Brien and Simon Morris. – Diana Balham
Music Alive (Radio New Zealand Concert, 8.00pm). The 2011 Adam Chamber Music Festival continues with a highly appropriate concert called Waitangi Winds, recorded live in the Nelson School of Music Auditorium last February. It features works for woodwind by New Zealanders, including Te Hau o Tawhirimatea for flute by Philip Brownlee, Ken Wilson’s Wind Quintet, Douglas Lilburn’s Wind Quintet and Ross Harris’s Jazz Suite for Wind Quintet. Performing them are the Zephyr Wind Quintet: Bridget Douglas (flute); Robert Orr (oboe); Philip Green (clarinet); Edward Allen (horn) and Robert Weeks (bassoon). Richard Nunns (nga taonga puoro) also features, with an improvisational piece. – Diana Balham
Waitangi Rua Rau Tau Lecture 2012 (Radio New Zealand National, 9.05pm). Another chance for you to ponder the meaning of your day off as you dehydrate among the hydrangeas. This year’s lecture on the Treaty of Waitangi and its place in the social and constitutional history of New Zealand takes an unusual direction: there are two lecturers, not one. Today, Victoria University physicist and New Zealander of the Year 2011 Professor Sir Paul Callaghan offers a scientific perspective. And in the year of the 50th anniversary of Samoan independence, he is joined by former Labour MP, now Assistant Vice-Chancellor Pasifika at Victoria University, Luamanuvao Winnie Laban, who explores the connection between the two Pacific nations. – Diana Balham