Reviews

The Nanny – The Blue Lamp

The Nanny and The Blue Lamp? Just what these two anomalies are doing sandwiched together on DVD is anyone's guess. The former is a campy 1965 Hammer chiller about a bonkers nanny, played by Bette Davis in familiar kabuki make-up. The latter is a breathtakingly obsequious 1950 Ealing Studios tribute to the Metropolitan Police Force, which introduced the world to Dixon Of Dock Green.

Matinee

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.

Various Artists – Peace Not War

Fundraiser featuring Public Enemy, Ms Dynamite and a reformed Crass

Where’s The Beef?

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

Pedro

Debut album from London-based 24-year-old

Lynryd Skynryd – Vicious Cycle

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

The Last Great Wilderness – Geographic

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.

Nico – Femme Fatale: The Aura Anthology

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

Emmylou Harris – Producer’s Cut

New compilation in surround sound, plus unreleased Johnny Cash duet

Bruce Almighty

Canadian fuckwit becomes God. The end is nigh
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