Dennis Hopper got an Oscar for his supporting role to Gene Hackman's high-school basketball coach in David Anspaugh's heart-tugging 1986 tale of sport-equals-life heroics. This was based on a real basketball comeback fight in '50s Indiana and released as Hoosiers in the US. Aptly enough, Hopper was fresh back from his own decade-long trip through chemical hell at the time. Sentimental slush, but redeemed by a knockout cast of veteran heavyweights.

Mos Def's best mate expands hip hop's horizons

American space cowboys release UK-only EP of early releases

New Jersey trio's fifth album

It's easy to be cynical about a windy old narcissistic diva but less so to heckle one who's come back from a horrible brain disease: 18 months ago Minnelli was told she'd never walk or talk again. That she battled back to do these live shows at New York's Beacon Theater is the kind of courage that wins you a whole new audience, possibly even including some heterosexuals. On the other hand, if she's really unlucky, she might just get saddled with further Pet Shop Boys collaborations.

Ninth LP from veteran Canadian rockers

'Frisco hippies who survived the '60s and still go back there for a living

Jamaican superstar DJ and his UK peers

DIRECTED BY David Cronenberg STARRING Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne, Lynn Redgrave Opens January 3, Cert 15, 99 mins Over the years, with films like Rabid, Videodrome, Crash and eXistenZ, we've come to expect eerie, special-effects-laden, futuristic horror fare from David Cronenberg. His latest is a sinister but understated study of a schizophrenic (Ralph Fiennes) known only by his childhood nickname of Spider. The film opens in the 1980s with Spider checking into a grim halfway house in a run-down area of east London after 20 years in psychiatric care.

Retired actor Alexander (Erland Josephson) is celebrating his birthday with friends and family when an imminent nuclear catastrophe is announced on TV. So Alexander offers to make a deal with God to avert the disaster. Andrei Tarkovsky's final film is as powerful as you'd expect.