An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Heading Into The Wild: Emile Hirsch as Christopher McCandless
Rip-roaring: Beowulf
Bland: The Jane Austen Book Club
Lengthy: Ziggy Marley: Love Is My Religion
Addictively silly: 30 Rock Season One
Catch the outstanding Into The Wild and a CGI Ray Winstone slaying beasts and bedding women in Beowulf, among this week's top DVDs.
DVD OF THE WEEK
Into The Wild
Paramount Home Entertainment, 15, £19.99
****
The incomprehensible lack of gongs for Sean Penn's outstanding movie was by far the biggest shock at this year's otherwise entirely predictable Oscars.
It's based on an incredible true story. In 1992, top-flight graduate Christopher McCandless (a terrific turn by Leonardo DiCaprio-a-like Emile Hirsch, pictured right) dramatically rejected the glittering future in law his uptight middle-class parents had always dreamed of for him.
He cut up his credit cards, donated his savings to charity, burned his remaining dollars and set off into the wild.
McCandless, or Alexander Supertramp as he cringeworthily renamed himself, emerges as an intriguingly complex anti-hero - impossible to pigeonhole as a free spirit, a misanthrope or just a middle-class tosser.
McCandless's extreme determination to survive, alone, in the wilds of Alaska stirs a vicarious wanderlust thrill, augmented by the ravishing location photography.
That said, this is no comforting Paulo Coelho self-help allegory. Nature here is ultimately pitiless. I won't give away the ending but let's just say in this forest, there ain't no cute Disney bunnies to bake him cookies.
Extras: None. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh
Beowulf
Warner Home Video, 12, £17.99 (two-disc director's cut, £22.99)
****
Beowulf has bad dialogue and a wafer-thin plot. Yet, unbelievably, these factors don't prevent it from being rip-roaring entertainment. Want a meaningful treatise on an old legend? Try somewhere else.
However, if you want to watch a CGI Ray Winstone fight a fire-breathing dragon with a knife and a Cockney accent, then enjoy the ride. Director Robert Zemeckis's motion-capture film is brimming with blood, booze and, uh, breasts.
Winstone plays Beowulf and, if there are beasts to slay and women to bed, he's your man. The film follows the basic premise of the Old-English poem, with Beowulf facing monstrous foes in Grendel (Crispin Glover), Grendel's mother (Angelina Jolie) and the aforementioned dragon.
Along the way, heads are eaten and bodies are torn in half. How the film garnered a 12 certificate is anyone's guess but it's great fun. Computer-animated Winstone may be tough but he runs like a girl.
Extras: Theatrical cut: none. Director's cut: making-of, three featurettes, deleted scenes. Ross McGuinness
The Jane Austen Book Club
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 12, £19.99
**
Six books, six book-club members - whose lives imitate art - and six months to read them all. Even by Jane Austen's standards, that's a bit too much contrivance for one sitting. Still, with lines such as: 'You're such an Emma!', you won't need to know the books backwards to understand this story about a group of love-lorn Californians.
Six-times divorced Bernadette is the club's founder; Sylvia's been dumped by her husband; Sylvia's daughter Allegra falls for the wrong lesbian; uptight French teacher Prudie (Emily Blunt) is married but tempted by one of her students; and single girl Jocelyn is so busy matchmaking, she fails to see that love is right under her nose (in the shape of Hugh Dancy's sweet sci-fi geek Grigg).
And all, of course, ends happily ever after. There's plenty of discursive Austen chat but, fatally, none of the characters are easy to identify with or warm to - ironically, about the only thing that doesn't echo the enduring novels at all. In the land of Austen adaptations, this is a bland, retiring wallflower.
Extras: Behind the scenes, deleted scenes, featurettes, trailers. Sharon Lougher
Ziggy Marley: Love Is My Religion
Cooking Vinyl, no cert, £12.99
***
Bob's eldest son has forged a solid career peddling conscious rootsrevival reggae: he scooped a 2007 Grammy for Love Is My Religion and this LA concert was part of the supporting world tour. Marley certainly gives good value for money - at two hours and 19 tracks, it's a lengthy affair.
Tunes from his Melody Makers years (Tomorrow People, Lee And Molly), tracks from his two solo albums and a handful of Bob's songs make up the largely mid-tempo set-list. Marley doesn't have his father's charisma and fast cutting between camera angles can't disguise the initial slow pace but when he hits his stride and bounces around for Is This Love, you get a sense of the atmosphere at the show.
He's got some fantastic support, too, from the likes of legendary reggae percussionist Uziah 'Sticky' Thompson and Burning Spear stalwart Ian 'Beezy' Coleman.
Extras: Behind the scenes interviews and jam sessions, music videos, making-of. Siobhan Murphy
30 Rock Season One
Universal Pictures, 12, £34.99
****
US channel NBC's odd decision to simultaneously launch two comedy drama series about life behind the cameras on fictional live sketch shows had to invite comparisons. While Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip can be hard to love, 30 Rock plays it totally for laughs and is addictively silly as a result.
Former Saturday Night Live writer/performer Tina Fey is creator and star - she plays Liz Lemon, head writer of The Girly Show, whose job is made more difficult when slightly psychotic 'suit' Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) becomes her interfering new boss and mildly insane low-rent movie star Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) is made the new star of the show, to the horror of Lemon's team and her demoted star Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski).
Baldwin is brilliant as the high-rolling, microwave-obsessed exec. There are also terrific support characters, such as airhead gofer Kenneth and tortured black Harvard grad Toofer, sharp one-liners and impressive star cameos.
Extras: None. SM
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Tonight:
8°c
