Reo Journeys: Te Pou Herenga Tai is a new five-part RNZ podcast debuting this afternoon, following documentary makers Eugene Bingham and Adam Dudding as they cycle the 90km Twin Coast Cycle Trail in Northland, with sound recordist and composer James Dansey recording the land, the people and the korero along the way. Dansey came to the project through te reo Maori class with Eugene and Adam, and describes it as the first time two worlds he thought would never coexist, sound and music on one side, te reo and tikanga on the other, came together for him. He joins Culture 101 ahead of the first episode airing at 3pm.

Production designer Ashley Turner and costume, hair and makeup designer Lissy Turner are the pair who built the world of Mum, I'm Alien Pregnant, the local body-horror comedy now in cinemas. They set the film in what they described internally as aspirational Invercargill, a deliberately familiar semi-rural New Zealand brick-and-tile apartment that makes the alien elements land harder when they arrive. They also took the alien foetus hero for a ride through the streets of Park City in a pushchair at Sundance, where the mounted police obligingly stopped for a photo. Ashley and Lissy join Culture 101 to talk about building the contrast between the mundane and the outlandish, and why every costume had to be made in multiple copies.

Michelle Langstone reviews three new releases: The Rivals of Azmiah King, Andrew Patterson's film with Matthew McConaughey as a beekeeper and bluegrass musician reconnecting with his former foster daughter while fending off threats to his honey business; The Weight, in which Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe star in a Great Depression survival story about smuggling gold through a hundred miles of wilderness; and Practical Magic 2, Susanne Bier's long-awaited sequel reuniting Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as sisters trying to protect the next generation from the love curse that has followed their family for generations.

Michelle Langstone reviews three new releases: The Rivals of Azmiah King, Andrew Patterson's film with Matthew McConaughey as a beekeeper and bluegrass musician reconnecting with his former foster daughter while fending off threats to his honey business; The Weight, in which Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe star in a Great Depression survival story about smuggling gold through a hundred miles of wilderness; and Practical Magic 2, Susanne Bier's long-awaited sequel reuniting Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as sisters trying to protect the next generation from the love curse that has followed their family for generations.

Auckland's City Rail Link opens today, and two of the artists whose work now fills the new underground stations joined Perlina for a guided walk-through. At Karanga-a-hape Station, Reuben Kirkwood designed a vaulted ceiling made from metal sections inspired by the pupurangi, a large snail that lives in the trees, alongside carved kauri lunar discs and a sun-and-moon installation tracking the tides. At Maungawhau Station in Mt Eden, Tessa Harris, who is Reuben's cousin, created a water wall installation shaped around the mountain, its triangle form representing strength, purity and the tupuna.

Jess Reiner Reed is the senior project director for Wolverine at Insomniac Games, the studio best known for its Spider-Man series. She's visiting New Zealand for the game's release and joins Culture 101 to talk about what you have to get right when you take on a character that exists across decades of comics, films and cartoons, how her team landed on a specific vision rather than trying to please everyone, and why a woman who plays video games every day still doesn't think of it as work.

Karl Puschmann joins Culture 101 with his picks for September. He recommends Good Bones on Three, Josh Thompson's new mystery dramedy about a procrastinating home renovator who discovers a body behind a wall, calling it frighteningly good; A Killer Story on HBO Max, a three-part true crime about a true-crime-obsessed couple who spend years emailing a sceptical New York Times journalist with evidence to exonerate a convicted murderer; and A Remarkable Place to Die on TVNZ+, Chelsea Preston Crayford's Queenstown-set cozy crime drama, which he watched with a cup of tea and found quite satisfying.

Mama Moo is a new absurdist comedy from Prayas Theatre, New Zealand's largest South Asian theatre company, in which a widowed butcher who can see his dead wife's ghost slaughters a cow that then becomes a spiritual matchmaker and life coach, setting him on a course to win the heart of an animal rights activist. Writer Nimish Tanna started researching the ethics of vegetarianism after being embarrassed at a work drinks when he couldn't articulate why he was vegetarian. Six months of research later, he found a story in the conflict. He's a vegan; his wife is a meat lover. It is, he says, largely working out. The show runs at TAPAC from 21 to 26 September, with a live band on stage.

Mike Allen has spent his career in retirement planning and financial advice, but music has always run alongside it. He put down the saxophone as a child and picked it up again in his 40s. This Sunday he'll be one of more than 300 community instrumentalists joining the Auckland Philharmonia for their annual Community Bash at the Auckland Town Hall, alongside 134 singers and 74 orchestra musicians performing O Fortuna and Peer Gynt. Perlina headed to his Grafton office to find out more about both worlds.

Dan Slevin reviews three new releases: Mum, I'm Alien Pregnant, a New Zealand indie gross-out comedy about a slacker still living at home who finds herself carrying a fast-developing alien foetus after an awkward hookup with her neighbour; Fall 2: Deadpoint, in which the sister of one of the two women from the 2022 surprise hit is dared to walk an off-limits ancient plank walk around a terrifying mountain in Thailand, only to find it more dangerous than advertised; and The Runner, a Prime Video thriller in which a London prosecutor is forced to shoot her own star witness when her diabetic son is kidnapped by a mysterious caller who can track her every move, starring Gal Gadot and Damian Lewis.