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Reviews

Loop Guru

Dazzling third solo album on border of post-rock and electronica from ex-Fridge magnate Kieran Hebden

Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind – BMG

No self-disrespecting finger-snapping swinger should be without the music to Clooney's clever directorial debut. Suave as the fella himself, it kicks off with a song written by the movie's hero, Chuck Barris—or at least he claims he wrote it. Of course, he claims a lot of things. His shining pop moment, "Palisades Park" by Freddie "Boom Boom" Cannon, is as kitsch as the night is long.

Speech – Spiritual People

Early-'90s flavour-of-year follows up multi-million-selling solo debut

Ice Cube

First four albums by "crazy motherfucker" turned film star remastered and reissued

Jo Ann Kelly – Black Rat Swing

Career overview of Britain's most famous white female blues singer (1944-1990)

Various – All Tomorrow’s Parties 3.0

Annual indie works outing annexed by electronica massive

Balzac And The Little Chinese Seamstress

Touching memoir of Chinese Cultural Revolution

Anita And Me

Director Metin Hüseyin's breezy adaptation of Meera Syal's terrific fictionalised memoir about growing up Anglo-Asian in the West Midlands in the early '70s suffers a little from British film's TV smallness, feeling at times like an extended episode of Goodness Gracious Me. But the crisp script and immense charm of 14-year-old newcomer Chandeep Uppal as the sassy prepubescent heroine Meena bring Syal's rites-of-passage story to life.

Johnny Cash—The Man, His World, His Music

First issued on video in 1985, this is a fully absorbing, occasionally revealing insight into the country legend's late '60s heyday. A fly-on-the-wall documentary charting a typically grinding US tour, Cash is never less than engrossing, be it gleefully jamming with a nonchalant Dylan (a searing version of Billy Edd Wheeler's "Blistered"), duetting with 'er indoors June Carter ("Jackson") or cutting rug with lead guitarist Carl Perkins ("Blue Suede Shoes").

Possession

Neil Labute adapts an AS Byatt novel and rather blots his edgy image. It follows Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart through Yorkshire and Paris as they uncover the personal secrets of a late-Victorian poet. Labute's emasculated in the company of academics, and the overall tone's uncertain and vague.
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