Reviews

Some imagined that by Avalon, Roxy Music had degenerated into non-ironic AOR. But the sounds on this, the biggest-selling album of their career, are as avant-garde as anything they'd ever done, just more subtle, Ferry having exchanged art attack for ambient seduction. Remember this came out in spring 1982, as New Pop was peaking—it's as if the Godfather had returned to show the rookies how elegant isolation should really be expressed. Throughout there are expressions of Ferry's uncertainty, plus evidence they'd been listening to Joy Division and Jan Garbarek.

Sicilian family saga

Veteran Georgian director Otar losseliani cobbles together this amiable slice of menopausal whimsy, following middle-aged factory worker and wannabe painter Vincent (Jacques Bidou) as he breaks his blue-collar routine and flees to romantic Venice. There he encounters other eccentric middle-aged men, spies on some skirt-lifting nuns, climbs a roof, drinks some wine, and then returns home, a wiser man. DVD EXTRAS: Interview with director losseliani, trailer, filmography.

So it's a musical, it won many Oscars, and it's got Catherine Zeta-Jones in it. But that doesn't mean it sucks! Anything that's influenced by Bob Fosse is bound to have a dark undercurrent, and this crowd-pleasing tale of man-murdering molls and the common craving for publicity is witty and slick. Renée Zellweger, Richard Gere and that Jones woman sing and hoof.

Brian De Palma's taken several critical and box office beatings in his erratically compelling career, but Femme Fatale's straight-to-video UK release must mark an all-time low for him. Not that the film deserves much better—it's glossy tosh, a supposedly erotic crime thriller about deceit and redemption in which De Palma lavishly indulges his stylistic obsessions to very little purpose. Painfully poor work from a great director.

Arguably (though there's no debate among the voices in this listener's head) the best album of 2001, Asleep In The Back must have been a tough (and tender) act to follow. Partly because the Lancashire-based band had around 10 years to write, record and re-record that debut, navigating a route through various music biz mazes. Required to deliver a follow-up with unaccustomed haste after gold discs, rave reviews and sold-out US tours, Elbow initially froze. "It was like rolling a boulder up a hill", Guy Garvey's said. They took a break, reflected, reconvened.

Best live band in the world according to Australian Rolling Stone

Inspired world music outing is first album in six years from former Specials frontman Hall

Journeyman blues veteran discovers conscience and musical diversity on 13th album

Graceful debut album from emotionally eloquent Manchester-based guitar band