With this triple-pronged DVD release, GN'R are freeze-framed forever: caught in a moment, celebrated and finally tucked away as a fond memory. The video collection tops and tails an extraordinary achievement while, live, the band are at their most untouchable and preposterous. Surely Axl must have sacked, then sued, the stylist for the lycra micro-shorts...
Timely release for Otto Preminger's gripping and surreal Zionist propaganda that casts blue-eyed Aryan poster boy Paul Newman as Israeli agitator Ari Ben Canaan, espouses terrorist attacks as a legitimate means of nation-building, and reveals how, in 1948, the bloodthirsty Arabs were in fact commanded by, er, German Nazis.
With swashbuckling swordplay now back in style thanks to Pirates Of The Caribbean and Master And Commander, what better time to revisit a creaking, many-times-remade, 1959 classic of the genre? Directed by André Hunnebelle and starring Jean Marais, it throws us into the crazy court of Louis XIV, where the cut and thrust of rivalries and flirtations matches that of the duelling blades.
The musical side project of Jack Black and his guitar-playing sidekick Kyle Gass, Tenacious D are a pomp-rocking hybrid of Spinal Tap, South Park and The Darkness. This meaty double-disc set contains a live Brixton concert, the duo's original HBO series, scatological short films and tons more. It's all strong stuff, with cameos by Spike Jonze and Dave Grohl as the Devil. A cult worth discovering.
Philip Seymour Hoffman—in faint danger of over-exposure recently—does a Michael Moore, fronting a hand-held, ramshackle documentary which asks why Bush is so bad and the Democrats only marginally better. He hits those hanging chads and Supreme Court sinners with the help of Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Jesse Jackson, Courtney Love and Eddie Vedder. Lively.
Beautifully played, smartly directed low-key change of pace from Ridley Scott. Nic Cage plays a neurotic compulsive-obsessive grifter who has to deal with the unexpected arrival of his teenage daughter (Alison Lohman) as he and his partner (Sam Rockwell) prepare to pull off an elaborate con. It failed to ignite at the box office, but is well worth catching now.
Respect, of course, to Grohl and co for the consistency of their earnest and industrious take on rock, presented with typical reliability throughout these selections from their 2002/2003 world tour. But three hours of electric, acoustic and—oh dear!—audio-only music is enough to bore the denims off all but the most besotted worshippers.
Imagine Ghost replayed as a slow, spiritually-charged polemic set in the bleak housing complexes of martial law-era Poland, and you're close to Krzysztof Kieslowski's 1984 drama. The spirit of a dead lawyer watches over as his young wife descends into grief and one of his former clients is pushed toward compromise to save his neck. In cinema terms, food for the soul—but it really needed Whoopi Goldberg and a potter's wheel to make it a hit.
The Merchant-Ivory formula finds a few new flavours in this picturesque cultureclash comedy. Naomi Watts and Kate Hudson play American sisters in Paris, stumbling as they try to adapt to the French mores regarding love, sex, family and money. Subplots include Matthew Modine cracking up convincingly. Elegant and urbane.
If you had Mötley Crüe down as vacuous poodle-rockers who never stumbled across an original idea in two decades, Nicky Sixx and Tommy Lee are here to put you straight on the interview section of this 21-track retrospective. What do you know? Turns out they were always punk visionaries who pushed the envelope of rock. Yeah, right. It should be funny, but the relentless sexism and homophobia eventually grates. Witless pricks.
