Reviews

Enjoyable coming-of-age saga from Joe Dante, set against the backdrop of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Huckster movie director Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman) arrives in a small Florida town to promote his latest gimmick-laden monster flick. Goodman's great as Woolsey (obviously based on William Castle), and Dante successfully evokes the era without being overly nostalgic.

Fundraiser featuring Public Enemy, Ms Dynamite and a reformed Crass

No Captain, but a Beefheartless supergroup assembled from various Magic line-ups

Debut album from London-based 24-year-old

First album in four years from survivors of star-crossed Southern rock behemoth

The Pastels always seem to find their wheelbarrow positively overflowing with acclaim, though some of us have struggled for over a decade to remember what they actually sound like. Here they wibble along, inoffensively enough, through a 25-minute accompaniment to the recent Brit road movie directed by David Mackenzie. It climaxes, if that's not too bold a word (it is), with a Jarvis Cocker collaboration, "I Picked A Flower", a parody of a pop hit which demonstrates that Cocker used up all his parody power a while ago.

Double CD featuring Velvet Underground chanteuse's solo comeback material from early '80s

New compilation in surround sound, plus unreleased Johnny Cash duet

Canadian fuckwit becomes God. The end is nigh

Wes Craven directed this fairly faithful adaptation of DC's horror comic muck monster: a scientist caught in a chemical explosion in a Louisiana swamp gets transformed into a vegetable superbeing. Sadly, the script's clunky and the make-up SFX are tatty beyond belief—notably, the rubber suit that makes ol' Swampy look like a giant walking turd. Result; a travesty.