Reviews

Fond farewell from first lady of country

In 1980 Diana Ross, Motown and Chic all needed each other. With Rick James' breakthrough still a year away, Motown were forced to hire their biggest competitors to provide Hitsville with some hits. In turn, Diana was the last of the original sequence of classic Chic albums, the real follow-up to Chic's 1979 milestone Risqué. Disc one includes the original "Chic mix" of the album (essentially demos, with slightly gutsier vocals) as well as the familiar one. We are reminded just how skilfully "Upside Down" orbits around its absent centre.

Artsy, twee, quietly mad label presents three collections of rarities

Standard war pic elevated by Bruce Willis

Originally re-edited and released in two parts, King Hu's lengthy 1969 spiritual kung-fu masterpiece here appears as the director intended. The first half is slow, as an underachieving artist meets a beautiful damsel in a haunted fort. Then the fighting begins. Less concerned with special effects than the communication of "zen" through the feeling of the film, it's a truly beautiful piece. DVD EXTRAS: Filmographies, director's notes.

There was life after prog for Utopia. After years of hi-tech bombast and electronic freakouts, the band and their music lost ballast. By 1980, they were playing new wave-inflected pop-rock and Beatles pastiches. Bassist Kasim Sulton wears a skinny power pop tie and synth whizz Roger Powell looks like a Buggle on acid. The highpoints are the extremes: Todd Rundgren crooning "Hello It's Me" and "Cliché" alone, and the group in full-tilt cosmic mode for "Initiation".

French director Chris Marker's short "film novel" from 1962, La Jetée, couples sequential still photographs with narration to tell the tale of a time-traveller from a post-apocalyptic future coming to the present day (Terry Gilliam remade it as Twelve Monkeys in 1995). Marker's feature-length philosophical 1983 travelogue Sans Soleil focuses on the subjects of Tokyo and the nature of memory.

Third album from young prog masters

Poll-winning singer-songwriter in his native Ireland, Rice is about to crack America

Ninth album by veteran Austin-based bard of disenfranchised America