Edgar Froese's Berlin electronica franchise got into gear with this 1972 double, Tangerine Dream's third album, the reissue of which highlights their decisive move away from Baader-Meinhof guitars and into gothic liturgies of mellotron and synthesized abstraction. Not that this neuters the band's still-extant freakout tendency, which grumbles up tectonically to shake the cloud-hung soundscape of cosmic foreboding. Godspeed You! Black Emperor, listen to "Birth Of Liquid Plejades"... This is how you do it, okay?
Steve Martin is dentist Robert Sangster trapped in a too safe relationship with his hygienist (Laura Dern). When he takes a walk on the wild side with drug-dealing patient Susan Ivey (Helena Bonham Carter), Sangster's pharmaceutical supplies are pilfered and Ivey's psychopathic brother and the police send his life into tailspin. A laboured attempt to reinvigorate an increasingly tired-looking Martin.
Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer are the short order cook and waitress in a New York diner in Garry Marshall's romantic drama. The stars ensure that it's at least watchable, but the chemistry between them is nowhere near as intense as it was in Scarface, a few years earlier.
After the steamy funk of Boogie Nights and the Aimee Mann tearjerkers of Magnolia, PT Anderson's new film basks in heady strings and wonky harmoniums, scored by regular collaborator Jon Brion. It's deliberately dizzying and disorientating, and not always pleasurable. But the borrowing of Nilsson's "He Needs Me" from Altman's Popeye, sung with sugary desire by Shelley Duvall, is inspired. Waiting to interview Anderson in a hotel lobby recently, I congratulated Emily Watson on her singing of this. It's the only thing I've ever said to Emily Watson.
