Reviews

Thirty-six-track best-of for bouffant boys

Clumsily named San Franciscans' beautifully arranged second album

Slick two-album set from R&B royalty

US travelling folkie's second album and inaugural UK release

New studio album and greatest hits package from "The Way It Is" man

Generation-bridging blues-gospel collaboration

San Francisco maverick's sixth compelling album

Redundant remake of Michael Caine classic

It's 1988 and rising features writer at New Republic magazine Stephen Glass has charm, style, modesty and good looks. Trouble is, his reportage is pure fiction. Billy Ray's film, based on a true story, juxtaposes two fine performances from Hayden Christensen, who plays Glass as a passive-aggressive manipulator, and Peter Sarsgaard as his editor Chuck Lane.

Provocatively, one of the most eloquent feminist film-makers extant is an Iranian muslim, Samira Makhmalbaf. Her latest entrancing— and most expansive—movie is set in the rubble of Kabul, where a young woman dreams of becoming Afghanistan's first female president. Men—Taliban mullahs and foreign invaders—have ruined this country, is her subtext, but Makhmalbaf is too artful to be merely polemical.