One of the most original debuts of the past 20 years, Richard Kelly's mesmerising head trip from '2001 gets an extra 20 minutes and some soundtrack tweaks. The extra scenes slow the narrative momentum, but Jake Gyllenhaal's breakthrough role as disturbed teenager Donnie still captivates, while Kelly's astute meditations on life, death and mental illness in '80s small-town America demand your attention.
Leaving aside for a moment the issue of whether an unshown TV special from '68 could capture, as the opening credits suggest, "the spontaneity, aspirations and communal spirit of an entire era" any more accurately than, say, Catweazle or Do Not Adjust Your Set, and regardless of whether you think Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed are the fulcrum points of a generation or just something that music critics of a certain age should learn to get over, the portents of this cryogenically preserved moment in rock time are undeniable. Look!
112 minutes of Robert Altman's floaty, wispy ambient eavesdropping in the company of Chicago's Joffrey Ballet, with producer/star Neve Campbell drifting into dance numbers, performing a few grands jetes, drifting out again, snogging non-dancing co-star James Franco, then it's back to the real troupe, dancing, rehearsing, then dancing again. A test for even the most ardent Altman fan.
Recorded in Seattle in October 1992, this concert performance by Edgar Froese's Krautrock pioneers is less dull than it may sound, with the live footage intercut with the films and graphics used for the band's dramatic backdrop projections. There's a dynamite version of "Purple Haze", but at times the music veers too far into jazz-rock noodling. And, at 45 minutes, it's hardly value for money.
There's a dark rumble to Massive Attack's instrumental score for this Luc Besson-produced martial arts movie, arranged by Robert Del Naja and Neil Davidge in 21 miniature sequences. Many of these are a minute or so long, so it's hard to cite them as anything special, and the nagging feeling persists that there's been an element of smoke and mirrors about this outfit's fashionable misery since their heyday. Those pieces that are allowed time to breathe suggest greater depths, like "One Thought At A Time", which clocks in at a whopping four minutes plus.
