DVD, Blu-ray and TV

Nashville Dreams

Ultra-obscure '70s country music doc resurfaces

City By The Sea

Inexplicably coolly reviewed, this Michael Caton-Jones thriller boasts Robert De Niro's best performance in years. As a New York detective estranged from his son, he's distraught when his boy (James Franco) is prime suspect in a case he's breaking. Frances McDormand's excellent as Bob's girlfriend; Long island is a lost Atlantis. A fine film. DVD EXTRAS: Commentaries by writer and producer, Caton-Jones short Mark Of A Murderer.Rating Star

The Lady Vanishes

A '70s remake of the Hitchcock classic, with Angela Lansbury as an English nanny kidnapped on a German train on the eve of WWII. Can dizzy US heiress Cybill Shepherd foil this Nazi plot with the aid of rugged news photographer Elliott Gould? It might have worked if they'd played it straight; instead, they go for screwball comedy, and it's a disaster.

Joni Mitchell—Woman Of Heart And Mind

It doesn't matter whether you're a fan. This study of Mitchell is a model of musical biography in DVD form. Over two hours we get her life story in perfectly matched words, music and images. The interviews with Mitchell are candid, the recollections from the likes of James Taylor, David Crosby and Graham Nash are fascinating, and the musical excerpts, which cover her entire career, are luminous.

Spider

Depressing study in madness, memory and murder from David Cronenberg, with Ralph Fiennes, recently released from a mental institution, setting up home in a halfway hostel in London's East End close to where he grew up, and the scene of a massive childhood trauma. Despite some typically creepy Cronenberg moments and universally impressive performances, the plot's predictable, and the relentless bleakness wears after a while.

Johnny English

John Malkovich slums it as the evil mastermind plotting to turn Britain into a giant prison camp, while Rowan Atkinson, as the titular rubbish spy, presses all the wrong buttons. Puerile, deeply unfunny and, as an advert for our country, downright treasonable. A crime, if memory serves, still punishable by death.

Who’s Been Talking?—Johnny Thunders In Concert

Recorded during a series of gigs in Japan with his band The Oddballs two weeks before he died of a heroin overdose in April 1991, Who's Been Talking offers a voyeuristic insight into the twilight world of Thunders. Gaunt and deathly pale, the wonder is how he played at all, for he'd been immediately hospitalised on arrival in the country. He summons a chaotic-narcotic energy during a set of more than 20 songs. But there's a ghoulish irony to hearing him sing "Sad Vacation", his Sid Vicious tribute.

About Schmidt

In Alexander Payne's wickedly mordant satire, newly-retired Warren Schmidt is forced to acknowledge the sheer empty horror of a wasted life that has left him with a ghastly marriage to someone he no longer recognises as the woman he fell in love with, a neurotic daughter who's about to marry an hilariously useless water bed salesman and a past he can't remember because in all the years now behind him he did little of merit and nothing of note. Dysfunctional families are currently all the rage, but About Schmidt has a dark individuality and coruscating comic edge that makes it uniquely compe

The Man Who Loved Women

Released along with four other François Truffaut films, this '77 piece is one you either love or hate. The auteur's autobiographical protagonist roves around Paris, picking up and ditching a stream of women, musing over what constitutes the perfect female ankle, and philosophising like Woody Allen on opium. Old-school; intense.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds—God Is In The House

A booted and suited Cave looks disarmingly like a door-to-door evangelist in this live French show from 2001. The intensity of his earlier work has of late been tempered by a more pensive, hymn-like calm and it's the latter which is to the fore in a set that concentrates on the No More Shall We Part album. Yet it's older material such as "The Mercy Seat" and "Saint Huck" which provide most of the highlights.
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