Reviews

The mighty Nyman's 60th birthday has been marked by six remastered re-releases. One, Decay Music, was produced by Brian Eno in 1976 and has never been available on CD before. Eno's written sleevenotes. It was one of the first significant contributions to 'minimalism', a word which Nyman, writing in The Spectator in the late '60s, was the first to apply to music. After mastering this means of expression, Nyman decided: "I don't believe that the best film scores are the ones you don't notice. I refuse to provide just background.

Demos for Fay's eponymous 1970 Decca LP and rarely-heard late-'60s outtakes

London muso's rise from mod-bod to jazz-head across two CDs

The director of Get Carter gets back with the British mobsters

Written as a student project with future Alien writer Dan O'Bannon, John Carpenter's ingenious no-budget directorial debut, named after a Grateful Dead song was the first stoner sci-fi pic. On a scuzzy spaceship far away, four furry freak surf dude astronauts are bored out of their skulls on a long-haul mission to destroy unstable planets, and plagued by troubles when their talking bomb gets ideas of its own and the alien "pet" O'Bannon has smuggled aboard escapes. Sideswipes at Kubrick's 2001 are entirely intentional; the attack of the munchies the movie brings on pure coincidence.

Fritz Lang's seminal 1922 thriller unleashed cinema's first modern criminal, Mabuse, a shadowy underworld figure with a thousand faces. Combining technological genius with an almost occult ability to terrify, Lang's Mabuse is a sinister, manipulative mastermind. The 1933 sequel, The Testament Of Dr Mabuse, is even better, with Mabuse as a demonic Hitler figure. Everything from Bond to Blue Velvet starts here.

In its 1946, Hays Code day, this adaptation of James M Cain's novel was provocative and erotic, although it was later out-raunched by the '81 Jack'n'Jessica version. This drips with textbook noir, and echoes Double Indemnity in both story and style. Femme fatale prototype Lana Turner tempts John Garfield to off her husband, but their comeuppance is inevitable. "He had to have her love—if he hung for it!"

There's a saying in the pubs of Dublin that there are only two kinds of musician—the Irish, and those who wish they were. The likes of Emmylou Harris, John Prine, Richard Thompson and the Everly Brothers prove it by lining up alongside some of Ireland's finest in 20 performances designed to showcase the global influence of Celtic music.

With 2002's Shiny Things, the Sacramento quartet seemed to have lost the pizzazz that made predecessor Weightless such an unfettered, sardonic joy, frontman/songwriter Rusty Miller's lyrical suss seemingly having lost its bite. Thankfully, here he's back on form, an acute diarist of smalltown suffocation, whether he's daydreaming of Stevie Nicks ("When We Get Together"), making out in the bushes ("Adventures Galore") or jacking off in a hotel room ("Charlie Watts Is God").

Even the director of this film, recounting the tale of how road manager Phil Kaufman stole and burned Gram Parsons' corpse, was surprised when Parsons' wife and daughter okay-ed the use of his music. Parsons' "A Song For You" and "Love Hurts" and The Flying Burrito Brothers' "Wild Horses" evoke the era, along with Country Joe and Eddie Floyd. Gillian Welch tackles "Hickory Wind", and Starsailor handle "Hot Burrito No 2" bombastically. But The Lemonheads, Wilco and trend-whores Primal Scream just seek cred by association. Twangy.