Farm

Blanche come here haunted by associations— chiefly leader Dan Miller's with fellow Detroiter Jack White. The pair shared several bands before Jack's vault to fame, and moonlighting Blanchers made up half his Loretta Lynn-backing Detroit supergroup The Do-Whaters. Blanche also supported The White Stripes last year, and bunked with them on this UK trip.

First new material in eight years from heartland rockers

The old warhorse's socio-political eco-musical in miniature

OPENS AUGUST 27, CERT 15, 93 MINS Here's Colin Firth, trying to banish forever the memory of being "television's Mr Darcy", teaming up with Resurrection Man and My Little Eye director Marc Evans to make something edgy and intense, a dark psychological thriller. With ants. Oh, dear. Colin plays Ben, left comatose following a car crash in which his wife died. Recently awoken, he now lives in a Gothicky converted hospital in grim old east London, with nothing but an ant farm for company and Mena Suvari as his neighbour. Ben starts having visions of his dead wife.

Compelling true-crime thriller

It's 1967 and Terry meets Julie under a Wessex downpour as opposed to a Waterloo sunset. John Schlesinger addresses Thomas Hardy's torrid melodrama of love, betrayal and sheep farming with the epic cinematographic sweep it deserves, while the tension between Christie and her three suitors-the doomed Peter Finch, the stoical Alan Bates and, of course, the dastardly Terence Stamp is spellbinding.

LA's 35-year-old singer/songwriter nearly jacked in the solo stuff last year, so Return In Kind, though a covers record, is something of a reaffirmation. Where Casal has sometimes been victim of a too-perfect voice, here (as in recent work with side project Hazy Malaze) he adds grit to the mix.

Anthony Minghella's Civil War epic has plenty of razzle: spectacular opening sequence; deserter Jude Law's trans-American journey to Nicole Kidman; leery sheriff Ray Winstone; doughty Calamity Jane farmhand Renée Zellweger; and a plethora of star cameos. And yet, bar some early 'war is hell' pomposity, it's a disappointingly hollow experience

Two best-ofs, including first new studio recordings in 22 years

The greatest chase thriller about a melon farmer ever! Charles Bronson is the melon man, prevented from gathering his crop when he's handcuffed to mafia hitman Al Lettieri. Escaping, Bronson wants to turn the killer over to the cops so that he can harvest his melons, but soon the hoods are after him. Directed in pulpy style by Richard Fleischer from an Elmore Leonard script. Bronson's melons look lovely.