Reviews

Straightforward biopic of country chanteuse Patsy Cline, with a chain-smoking Jessica Lange in the lead and Ed Harris as her drunken husband. Excellent performances from both, with good period detail and great music (Lange miming along to original Cline recordings)... but otherwise very dull indeed (domestic bickering followed by a plane crash).

After 2002's storming Hollerin' At A Woodpecker, Minnesota-based Weaver's latest compounds his promise. The song, essentially, remains the same—chilly steel, sparse banjo, stroked acoustic—but these vignettes sound like gutter-pulpit sermons in a disturbed netherworld. Weaver's voice—which makes Lee Marvin sound like Aled Jones—lends biblical portent to the most mundane detail. Standout track "John Martin"—its protagonist duped by a sinister drifter—is claustrophobic as hell. A one-man Brothers Grimm with no happy endings. Enjoy.

Hushed, vivid, wonderful Southern folk

First time on CD for vanished 1972 solo album by leader of The Strawbs, featuring Rick Wakeman and Roger Glover

The mould-breaking Nashville singer-songwriter gets a marvellous best-of

Understated yet absorbing drama from Iran

Before The Trip starts, an earnest middle-aged voice warns us that we're about to witness "a shocking commentary on a prevalent trend of our time". This is Roger Corman's ass-covering joke at Middle America's expense:his 1967 drugzploitation classic is nothing more than Jack Nicholson's paean to lysergic acid. Ad exec Peter Fonda takes the trip in question, encountering sundry LA groovers along the way: Bruce Dern, the inevitable Dennis Hopper, even an unknown Gram Parsons. Turn on and tune in!

Oscar-nominated documentary from last year which, unexpectedly, grips like a vice in its climactic stages. Swotty geek-kids competing for the National Spelling Bee contest might not strike you as gutsy drama, but the obsession, the commitment, the heartbreak and the pushy parents make for a brilliantly dynamic and ghoulishly funny interpretation of the American mindset. Word.

Eight Quebecois intellectuals, four boys and four girls, discuss sex, history, the state of the world, sex, each other and sex as they prepare for a weekend together in the country. Gabby, but engrossing in a My Dinner With André sort of way, this 1986 movie marks the first appearance of the old friends who are reunited in Denys Arcand's The Barbarian Invasions.

Already touted as the next big thing, this 26-year-old Idaho native retains the folk-country purr of first album Golden Age Of Radio, and there's an obvious debt to Dylan in the subtle phrasing. Mostly set to quietly rolling acoustic guitar—with Sam Kassirer's Hammond adding an Al Kooper-like undertow—Hello Starling casts Ritter in the same wry glow as early Jackson Browne or James Taylor. Celtic ballad "Kathleen" proves he's fully assimilated the traditional, and the lovely "Wings" was recently covered by Joan Baez.