Reviews

The pick of two near-simultaneous EP releases from the 22-year-old Swede, the four-track Maple Leaves is little short of astounding. While its counterpart, the Rocky Dennis EP, is all soft light and strings, this one swings moods with abandon. A droll miserablist of Smiths vintage, Lekman intones like a baroque Stephin Merritt on the Left Banke-filching "Black Cab": "Oh no Goddamn/I missed the last tram/I killed the party again/Goddamn Goddamn".

Gorgeous digital etherealism from Vienna

Second best-of for alt.rockers

Those infamous phone calls to the world's looniest fan

All singing, all dancing Spanish sex comedy

Like the preppy cousin of City Of God, this handsome crime flick from JoséHenrique Fonseca is set in Rio De Janeiro, but in the suburbs, where good-looking gringos kill out of curiosity rather than necessity. Unfortunately, it's also a world of paper-thin characters prone to morbid musings, and shot through with a non-descript pop-promo aesthetic.

This 1977 thriller—"All The Astronaut's Men", if you will—never delivers on its intriguing premise, infuriatingly. NASA fakes a Mars landing in a TV studio, then sets out to kill the crew to keep the truth a secret. James Brolin, Sam Waterston and OJ Simpson are the astronauts, Elliott Gould the journalist who comes to their aid.

Everyone's favourite investigative smoothie Nick Broomfield updates his 1991 doc Selling Of A Serial Killer by re-cataloguing the tragic, shambolic life of Aileen Wuornos (from homeless woodswoman to vagrant prostitute to multiple murderer) and finally interviewing a clearly demented Wuornos only hours before her execution. More sombre than the usual Broomfield outings, but effective all the same.

Listen to Kate Rusby's records and her brand of folk revivalism suggests a rather serious and high-minded young woman. Yet in concert she's a revelation, interspersing sublime versions of traditional folk ballads with rambling but engaging introductions full of homely Yorkshire warmth and wit. Rusby makes folk music seem like fun again, and the feeling never flags throughout this 90-minute set.

If 2002's wonderful Lost In Revelry was Blonde On Blonde rescrambled by Westerberg and barbed by Costello, the more buoyant Fortune thrashes to the classic American assembly-line rock of Springsteen and the choppy pop of early Nick Lowe/Joe Jackson.