Reviews

A strange one, this, with Bowie's usually obsessive control seemingly relaxed enough to have allowed packaging that looks cheap and hurriedly slung-together. The content, though, is better—a straight documentary, punctuated with live and video clips, and interview snippets with Bowie, Iman, Iggy Pop, Trent Reznor and Moby. There's lots of rare early stuff but, for all his eloquence, the music does the talking best of all.

Six tracks of bliss from new singer-songwriter

Debut album from spiritual kin of Grandaddy and Flaming Lips

Second album from the stentorian UK rapper, the Harry Secombe to Roots Manuva's Spike Milligan

The songs The Beatles gave away rediscovered

That so little of Bill Withers' catalogue is available domestically is nothing short of scandalous; someone at Sony (who also own the four superb early Sussex albums) should be beaten soundly. Still Bill did slip out here a few months ago, but with little fanfare, and now that and his 1971 debut, Just As I Am, produced by Booker T Jones, appear on Australian label Raven.

Minghella's Civil War saga aims high

From 1953, one of the classic texts of Japanese cinema

Directing, co-writing and starring, Matt Dillon does a pretty solid job. Set in a modern-day Cambodia full of outcasts and fugitives, the plot slowly curdles from globe-trotting crime thriller into primal psycho-weirdness. Dillon never shakes off the second-hand influences, notably David Lynch and Apocalypse Now, but a rich cosmopolitan texture is added by an eccentric cast including Gerard Depardieu, Stellan Skarsgård and James Caan.

Since much of B&S' cult appeal stems from the fact they're seldom seen on telly, this two-hour compendium of videos, concerts and interviews (basically their entire career from 1996 to 2002) feels like a sneaky peep into the world's most secretive band. Unashamedly twee, but eccentric, funny, and quite beautiful.