Reviews

Three years ago, Skyscraper National Park heralded the arrival of Hayden Desser as heir to the mumbling miserablism of Smog's Bill Callahan. Like the latter, Toronto-born Hayden's nagging melodies and deadpan delivery occupy their own peculiar kingdom. His fourth LP finds him applying sonic bluster to the usual sad-slow creep. "Hollywood Ending", for example, is a raucous tale of being caught up in a blockbuster outside his front door.

Norwegian newcomers'magical debut

Superior slapstick sizzler with lashings of violence

Aussie heist thriller about crooked Guy Pearce's relationships with his two partner-in-crime brothers and his wayward wife, Rachel Griffiths. The team scheme to rip off the bookies, but Pearce and Griffiths are in top gear and make roadkill of any flaws in the plot. Bitter, tough and funny.

Given short shrift by most cinema critics, Robert Benton's flawed adaptation of Philip Roth's novel is wonderfully acted by two stars who've been praised for far inferior performances. Anthony Hopkins is the professor sacked for alleged political incorrectness; Nicole Kidman the damaged younger woman with whom he enjoys "not my first love, not my great love, but my last love." Both risky and tender.

Mega-rock festival staged in Toronto in July 2003, where a bizarre line-up included The Isley Brothers, AC/DC, Justin Timberlake and The Rolling Stones. A voiceover drones on about how Toronto needed a "big idea" to restore its confidence after the city's SARS crisis, but this event is pretty average, and Timberlake's duet with Jagger on "Miss You" is, weirdly, the highlight.

Archive anthology of blues greats recorded on historic European visits

Treasures unearthed from '80s Beeb archives

Second solo album from former Squeeze man

Second irony-heavy opus from leaders' wives