There are few bands, it seems, as disaster-prone as Shack. Ravaged by narcotics, crippled by debt (the sleevenotes to their third album HMS Fable infamously thanked Cash Converters) and nearly torpedoed by missing master tapes and missed opportunities, this Liverpool outfit clearly monopolise the anti-Midas touch. Matters were not helped three years ago when London Records pulled the contractual plug as well.

DIRECTED BY Ridley Scott STARRING Sigourney Weaver, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto, Hatry Dean Stanton Opened October 31, Cert 15, 115 mins Scott's franchise-launching 1979 future-shocker is one of those rare, pure, primal films that works as both highbrow modern myth and trouser-soiling midnight movie.

Flawed, fascinating, atypical Britflick

Re-emergence of jazz-folk classic from Chicago tunesmith

The best of compilation: a time to reflect upon a career, including even the early mishaps that eventually shape one's body of work. That's how it should be, anyway. It's telling reflection on the control freakery and uptight nature of Primal Screen that they've chosen, like some pampered footballer or insecure soap star, to relate a sanitised autobiography with Dirty Hits, ignoring their early but substantial first recordings as both fey indie janglers and one-dimensional rockers.

Elevated kiddie flick tackles grown-up issues

Second wave hip hop pioneers, unfairly best known for donating a little bit of that hip to Aerosmith

Fifth album from prolific, acerbic British singer-songwriter

Rowdy late John Ford comedy starring John Wayne and Lee Marvin as Guns Donovan and Boats Gilhooley, brawling Navy veterans who stay on in the South Pacific after the war against the Japanese ("bad, black days"). Contemporary audiences will probably find it crude, noisy and rambling—but it's ravishingly shot, and beneath the slapstick there's a sharp satire on class, race and friendship.

Live follow-up to 2001's Last Man On Earth with all-star band