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DVD, Blu-ray and TV

Like A Rat Out Of Hell

Crispin Glover scintillates in otherwise unremarkable horror remake

Janet Jackson – From Janet To Damita Jo

Stats show that Middle America's "mass moral outrage" at Janet's Superbowl boob-bearing came from a noisy couple of hundred. Her career may survive, then, though no thanks to this year's scrappy LP Damita Jo. This gathers all the videos from the last four, the best of which is "That's The Way Love Goes", where she maximises her feline moves, timid voice, and gorgeous loping grooves. But she's definitely in decline.

Buffalo Bill And The Indians

Robert Altman's wry comedy tackles the origins of modern showbiz and media manipulation in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. Paul Newman plays the legendary 'star' as a bundle of neuroses who more than meets his match when the show is joined by Sitting Bull (Frank Kaquitts)—a man of principles, unimpressed by the razzamatazz. An enjoyable indictment of Hollywood.

Shaun Of The Dead

Suburban horror comedy from the creators of warped sitcom Spaced. When a mysterious plague strikes London, Shaun (Simon Pegg) has to battle hordes of blood-crazed zombies to rescue his mum and girlfriend. The zombie sequences pastiche the genre, adding genuinely witty slapstick, and the script is as good as Spaced or better. A delight.

Ween – Live In Chicago

Though Ween spent over a decade growing into one of America's biggest cult bands, renowned for a live show of bad taste and dizzying chaos, this is a curiously tame, professional fair. Brothers Dean and Gene blow through a lengthy 26-song set with flawless musicianship, but with the passion of a band who know they are knocking on and that the juvenile japes are wearing thin. One for Ween devotees.

Women In Love

The simmering sexuality. The blood lust. The savaging of bourgeois restraint. The horse flagellation. Ken Russell and DH Lawrence were made for each other. The nude wrestling scene is the one that everyone remembers, but the satire bites best in the form of Hermione, Eleanor Bron's caricature of avant-garde pretence. Made in 1969, this is probably the last time Russell showed restraint before he hurtled into kitsch overkill.

What’s New Pussycat?

Definitively 'zany' '60s farce, written by Woody Allen, with Peter O'Toole as a Paris fashion editor inundated with willing, eager ladies. This sends him to mad shrink Peter Sellers, who's jealous. Meanwhile, Allen longs for O'Toole's fiancée. Basically an excuse for thousands of hit-and-miss jokes, strippers, much daft over-acting and Ursula Andress. Fantastic.

Sparks – Li’L Beethoven: Live In Stockholm

Recorded in March, this is the same stylish stage show that Sparks brought to London earlier this year. Built around the Li'l Beethoven set, you also get a big helping of bonus tracks from that beguiling back catalogue, including the scarily prescient "The Calm Before The Storm". The motorik medley of "The Number One Song In Heaven" and "Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth" takes some beating.

Les Dames Du Bois De Boulogne

This dark treasure from 1945 was Robert Bresson's second feature. Scripted by Cocteau, it's erotic longing and revenge, as spurned spider woman Maria Casares seeks the downfall of her ex and his lover. In contrast with the grey, static textures of Bresson's celebrated work, there's near-noirish lustre, but the intriguing, deceptive narrative bareness, the sense of forces moving beneath the surface, are his alone.

The Station Agent

In a New Jersey backwater, Fin (Peter Dinklage), a dwarf fed up with the way the world reacts to him, moves into the derelict train station he's inherited and tries to ignore offers of friendship from a lonely snack-van man (Bobby Cannavale) and a divorced artist (Patricia Clarkson). Tom McCarthy's gem has something like the drift and precision of early Jarmusch—nothing much happens, except life.
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