Koyaanisqatsi is arguably the best stoner movie of all time, although Godfrey Reggio probably didn't realise that in '83. Aerial photography of forests, animals; etc, sweeps across to expansive time-lapse shots of factory complexes and nuclear power plants. The big country's poeticised and exposed to Philip Glass' insistent score. Powaqqatsi, the '88 sequel, explored Third World exploitation, but the original's the must-see.
Fifteen years on, the only thing that's dated about John Cleese's romantic-comedy-cum-caper-movie is the fashions. Cleese honed the script for years, and it shows—plus the entire supporting cast are a treat, especially Michael Palin's stuttering animal rights assassin, Jamie Lee Curtis'sexy double-crosser and Kevin Kline's psychopathic fish-killer. Immensely likeable.
Made for HBO, John Frankenheimer's final film shows how the US stumbled into the Vietnam war. Alternating choppy chaos with slow control, it considers the view from the White House during Lyndon B Johnson's troubled administration. An ambitious three hours in length, with Michael Gambon's LBJ backed by an incredible cast including Donald Sutherland, Alec Baldwin and Philip Baker Hall.
For a man so steeped in the honeyed hickory grit of Gram Parsons, newcomers to Bruntnell could be forgiven for mistaking his English 'burb origins for Bakersfield, Ca. New Zealand-born, Surrey-raised and westward soul-bound, he finally drew acclaim with 2000's superb third LP, Normal For Bridgwater. Its follow-up is equally fine, studded with guitars (courtesy of 21-year-old James Walbourne and Son Volt's Eric Heywood), faint washes of piano, peals of steel and a forlorn, imagistic delivery and way around a melody reminiscent of Joe Pernice.
