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DVD, Blu-ray and TV

Yes—Yes Years

Yes Years chronicles the band's career from the late '60s through to their '90s reunion via two hours of archive footage and interviews. Greatest Video Hits is more focused and concentrates on the late '70s and '80s when Trevor Horn and Buggles bizarrely joined the line-up. It's easy to scorn Yes' pretension, but Yes Years reminds us that the early material at least boasted some great tunes.

Peter Cook—A Post-Humorous Tribute

Screened on TV last Christmas, this celebrity fundraiser for the Peter Cook Foundation features a host of comedians including Michael Palin, Rik Mayall, Angus Deayton and Dom Joly (reprising the one-legged Tarzan sketch) and, unfortunately, Josie Lawrence and Griff Rhys-Jones. A fitfully amusing parade of the old and new, worth purchasing if only for the excellent, pithily epigrammatic Jimmy Carr.

Carry On Doctor

Two strands of British comedy collide with utterly predictable results (all together now: "Oooh, Matron!") as the usual crew is augmented by the sublime Frankie Howerd and a positively quirky supporting cast (Anita Harris, Peter Jones, Julian Orchard). Post-irony, I think we should admit the Carry Ons are dreadful, but Sid James' laugh remains an imported national treasure.

Deep Purple—Heavy Metal Pioneers

Heavy metal pioneers certainly, but as this appealing history shows, Deep Purple also had the knack of turning a great riff into a decent pop song. There's a dated feel to the lengthy interviews with the likes of Jon Lord, Ian Paice and Ritchie Blackmore, all conducted in the early '90s. But as all but two of the live performances in the archival footage come from 1968-74, it hardly matters.

Rock’n’Roll Suicide

Watch Mr Bowie's greatest creation take his curtain call

Kurt & Courtney

Nick Broomfield's documentaries are as much farcical as investigative, with the director affecting the role of bumbling, plummy-voiced faux-naif, Kurt & Courtney (1998) was no exception. He looks hilariously out of place trailing around grungey Seattle, politely interrogating a series of eccentrics, conspiracy theorists and whacked-out dopers. He examines the possibility that Courtney murdered her husband, but witnesses prove so unreliable he drops the charge.

Sci-Fi – Fantasy Roundup

Psychiatric patient Prot (Kevin Spacey) seems remarkably sane, except for his assertion that he's really an alien visitor from a distant planet named K-Pax. It's Starman meets One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (in a nicely ironic piece of casting, Jeff Bridges plays the psychiatrist determined to discover Prot's real identity), and works nicely even if it does err on the side of sentimentality.

Trees Lounge

Steve Buscemi's 1996 writing/directing debut, by turns subtly hilarious and desperately sad, is a scruffy, rambling tour of barfly life, wherein his shiftless mechanic becomes an ice cream salesman and romances a much-too-young-for-him Chloe Sevigny. The tagline—"One man's search for... who knows what"—perfectly captures its loaded small-town shrug. Bruisingly good.

The Way Of The Gun

Usual Suspects writer Christopher McQuarrie makes his directorial debut with this hip crime caper, with Ryan Phillippe and Benicio Del Toro as two petty criminals who kidnap Juliette Lewis, a pregnant surrogate mother, unaware that the baby she's carrying belongs to mob boss Scott Wilson. Needless to say, the bullets barely stop flying in this slick, violent thriller.

Jacob’s Ladder

Tim Robbins is Jacob, a Vietnam Vet trying to adjust to civilian life in New York but suffering from horrific, nightmarish visions. The after-effects of a military drug experiment, or something more sinister and supernatural? Even if Adrian Lyne's film makes a lot of confused choices, it's still an interesting—and genuinely scary—ride.
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