Misc.

This is from one of the best albums of the year (pity about the lyrics at the end).Like Buffalo 66, the soundtrack is better than the film. What other great film soundtracks are out there?Suggestions? (And no dougal, you can't suggest any of your beloved musicals or Barbara-bloody-Streisand).Donnie Darko's got to be on any list. Then there's Requiem for a Dying Planet, with the beautiful musical synthesis of Reijseger and Mola Sylla in what is an otherwise ordinary Werner Herzog film. What is it about the combination of music and film that makes it even more intriguing than, say, image and word? Think: your favourite art books, from Civilisation, The Shock of the New,and Farewell to An Idea,to Martin Lings on Calligraphy and Ouspensky and Lossky on Icons...they all miss out on some intangible but fundamental ingredient, something vital, living, experienced in time, something that is of time.

Other great combos: cinnamon rolls and fresh black coffee; orange flavoured dark chocolate; fish and chips;peas and tomato ketchup, fried egg and chips (seriously, if you haven't tried that what on earth have you been doing with your life?!)Monica Bellucci and film...

Fusion: how I hate that word.Fusion food, fusion music.Lot of it kicked off, I guess, when you heard some Nusrat Fateh-not his original stuff though. But then again, there probably is no such thing as 'pure' music, a music that doesn't borrow, steal, mingle with various cultures and sub-cultures, or pick up something from the past (how can you fail to hear, despite all its contemporary sadness,echoes of the Beatles on Grizzly Bear's album?). And of course, part of the fundamentalist opposition to culture is precisely that it is so fluid and open to different influences and impulses. Khair, there's surely a difference between coming together and being thrown together?

A good example of where fusion-if that's the right word-works is here. Bob on 'the overgrown path' has a lot more interesting things to say on fusion.

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Kaboom was imply awful, the most cliched film you've seen in a while.Wise Blood: not as good as you thought first time round. Which leaves John Harvey's choices of Fat City, Cutter's Way, and The Last Picture Show.