Michael Bonner

Welcome to the new issue of Uncut! John’s on holiday this week – he was last seen disappearing into darkest Gloucestershire – so it falls to me to show you around this month's edition instead.

For a time, both Nicolas Cage and filmmaker David Gordon Green have separately been drifting away from what they do best. Joe, however, reminds us what both men are capable when the gears are shifting in the right sequence.

After an otherwise mediocre start to the year, the second half of 2014 looks set to be more promising for aficionados of music films. For a start, fans of Big Star who’ve been waiting for Nothing Can Hurt Me to arrive on UK screens will finally have their patience rewarded when Drew DeNicola and Olivia Mori’s film about Alex Chilton and co finally gets a UK release next month.

When Mick Jagger recently appeared in a promotion sketch, dryly describing these Monty Python reunion shows as "a bunch of wrinkly old men trying to relive their youth", it demonstrated that the Pythons still have the rock star heft of their ‘70s pomp.

There is a telling scene early on in Boyhood that gets to the heart of what makes Richard Linklater’s new film so remarkable.

Last week, the BFI hosted a Q&A session with director Richard Lester, as a prelude to the 50th anniversary re-release of A Hard Day’s Night.

In this month's Uncut, I reviewed the deluxe edition of The The's Soul Mining, which has been reissued as a box set with additional material. I was fortunate enough to speak to Matt Johnson for a Q&A to run with the review. In the end, we ended up talking for about an hour, so I thought I'd post the full transcript of my interview here. I hope you enjoy it. I'll endeavour to post the review itself in the next week or so; better still, you can find it in the issue on sale now... (apologies for the shameless plug...)

For anyone with even a passing familiarity with the work of Belle and Sebastian songwriter Stuart Murdoch, God Help The Girl – his debut as a writer and director – will hold few real surprises.

“Welcome to an evening of country and eastern,” smiles Robert Plant as he gestures expansively round this fabled Paris venue, taking in not just the lively capacity crowd gathered here tonight but also to his latest musical collaborators, The Sensational Space Shifters.

Clint Eastwood does Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons...