To say that Stevie Wonder experienced an "artistic peak" in the early-to-mid 1970s seems like a gross understatement. Here's a guy who, if he had retired after "Signed Sealed and Delivered" would be remembered as a great Motown soul artist, who then took an enormous leap forward into a realm of creativity that combined an avant-garde approach both to rhythm and to electronic instruments, with a naked expressiveness about a wide range of emotions and feelings, from love to grief to political rage. All the while, manufacturing the freshest-sounding melodies and richest harmonies this side of Brian Wilson.

If you haven't explored this music, take your pick from "Music of My Mind," "Talking Book," "Innervisions," this album, or its follow-up "Songs in the Key of Life." They're all equally accomplished, with their moments of sheer ecstasy, and I would say they're all essential listening.

I happen to prefer "Fulfillingess'..." slighly over the others, because for me it hits its emotional targets with songs like "Smile Please," "Creepin'" and "It Ain't no Use," and sets up some deeply funky rhythms with "You Haven't Done Nothin'" "Boogie On Reggae Woman" and "Bird of Beauty." Whereever you start, you won't be sorry.

I admire Gene Hackman, and am not immune to the humor of Ray Romano. So this movie was a major disappointment. How can you have a political satire with absolutely no bite whatsoever? This movie has nothing to say about politics, small town America, or anything else. It's few negative characterizations are inane boo-hiss villain caricatures.

You know you're in trouble from the first scene, when Ray Romano feels compelled to say "hello" to every person he passes on the street. As if that's somehow the essence of small town America. As if that's funny. What a shame.

If you came to this movie looking for something funny and insightful about modern politics and small towns, I have a movie for you--"Election," starring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick. That's a brilliant film. This is a stupid film.

When talking about this album, I think of a tortured analogy once used by CBS commentator Andy Rooney, something like, "I like women's hair. I like butter. But I don't like finding a strand of women's hair in my butter." Well, I love Diana Krall. I admire Elvis Costello. But the combination of Diana Krall and Elvis Costello doesn't work, and her willingness to collaborate with her husband indicates that, at some level, she doesn't understand what makes her a great artist.

Jazz is not about lyrics in the way that many rock performers think of them. Elvis Costello's lyric writing is firmly in the tradition of Bob Dylan--wordy, poetic, complex, allusive, clever. It has more in common with T.S. Eliot than it does with Cole Porter. For performers in the Dylan tradition, music often takes a back seat to the lyrics. Thus, it is uncommon to find a jazz performer covering a Bob Dylan tune. But it is very common to see a Bob Dylan lyric published as if it were a piece of poetry.

A great lyric in a pop standard adheres to a totally different aesthetic. While it can be clever, it can't be something that you need to read on a piece of paper in order to understand. But those are the kinds of lyrics that Elvis Costello specializes in. Sometimes, he can be absolutely brilliant. But he's also capable of being frustratingly dense, and too many of his collaborations with his wife on this album fall into that category.

Krall's music to accompany these lyrics suffers from some of the same problems that Costello's music suffers from--an excessively artful wandering from recognizable melodies, a forced quality where it feels like her reach is exceeding her grasp. Not every song is equally bad, but overall, you hear these collaborations and feel no desire to hear them a second time.

Fortunately, there are a few tunes on this disk that redeem it, and almost make it worth buying. Her take on "Stop This World" by Mose Allison is a great direction--I think more blues from Krall sounds like an excellent idea. And her version of "Love Me Like A Man" is a tour de force.

Diana Krall is a world-class jazz artist who combines the pianistic skills of an Oscar Peterson with a vocal style that is utterly unique. She is a brilliant intepreter of the jazz/pop standards, and her interpretations have created new standards. But she is not, nor should she try to be, an avant-garde artist, an auteur like Elvis Costello, or a synthesizer of disparate styles.

Marshall Crenshaw, an overnight sensation who quickly fell from grace by somehow falling on the wrong side of Rolling Stone critics (it's hard to believe they ever mattered very much) and became a cult artist, is gradually disappearing from view. When he tours, he tours alone, playing before small but intensely loyal crowds. Although Rhino has reissued his popular first album, and put together an excellent best-of, most of the rest of his catalogue is now out of print and increasingly hard to find. If you somehow have the sad fate of being a fan, like me, who considers Crenshaw's artistry on a par with the greatest rock ever had to offer, your first move should be to buy up what you can that's in-print, before it goes out of print. Then you can start hunting for the rarities.

"Downtown" is one of his rarest, and one of his best. I had the LP, have never gotten close to the CD, which was out for 20 minutes, and recently managed to score an unopened cassette. It's so great, it's hard to believe this wasn't a gigantic hit. But, it wasn't. The best-of includes four of the best songs, including "Vague Memory," "Little Wild One" "Blues is King," and the hilariously sad "I'm Sorry (but so is Brenda Lee)." But, if you're a fan, you will also want to be able to hear the eight songs omitted from the best-of, including the beautifully composed "The Distance Between," "Terrifying Love" (featuring producer T. Bone Burnett on sitar), the bopping "Shake Up Their Minds," and especially "Yvonne," one of Crenshaw's trademark epic tales of romance gained and lost. Any of these would have earned a spot on the best-of, and deserve to be heard today.

This album might've failed commercially, despite its excellence, because compared to his first two, it does have a melancholy feeling to it. Even the upbeat songs use a lot of minor keys. I think Crenshaw has said this album, and its successor "Mary Jean," both reflect his disillusionment and loss of confidence in the wake of his big build-up and fall. But to me, that enriches the music all the more. T-Bone Burnett's production is among his best efforts--clean, with a very "live" sound that was somewhat of a change from the Phil Spectorish sounds of his first two albums.

I hope the folks at Rhino read this review and think about it, and decide the world needs to hear this album in its entirety, on CD, remastered, etc. etc. But in case they don't, I recommend you pay whatever reasonable amount you can to get the few copies left on this earth of "Downtown."

"Four Weddings and a Funeral" is great. "Notting Hill" is basically enjoyable. But this movie is basically terrible, though a few great performances and funny moments enliven it. It follows the format of some of the cheesiest romantic anthology shows of the 1970s like "Love American Style" and "The Love Boat," interweaving improbable, and therefore quite sappy, love stories together, in which the characters generally have only incidental or coincidental relationships with one another -- i.e. the final group of scenes at a children's Christmas pageant and at an airport gate, where all the characters happen to be together. The outcome of each little story is almost entirely predictable from the first scene or two in which the characters and situations are introduced. Probably this is true because they give each tale so little time, any detours into surprise would cause this bland souffle to collapse.

The two stars are for the one truly excellent performance here, Emma Thompson's. She was ubiquitous for a few years, but she's pulled back, so it now feels like a rare pleasure to see her work in a domestic story like this. I also enjoyed the burned out rock star's story. If you happen to catch this on cable, those two pieces will give you pleasure. The rest will make you feel like you ate too much cotton candy.

So much happened in pop music from 1964-73 that looking back at it, all most people see are the highest peaks. We tend to forget the overall sense of discovery and excitement as the musicians of that time pushed ever forward to try something new, or to revive something old in a new way.

A case in point is this utterly enjoyable album by Joe Cocker, a document of a brief but memorable tour with a band that featured about 10 singers, 3 drummers, 2 horn players, and a great piano-organ-guitar-bass section featuring Leon Russell, Chris Stainton and Carl Radle. There were a lot of musicians on stage, making a stew of music that combined tambourine-shaking white and black gospel, sophisticated Ray Charles-type blues, and British rock. Very quickly, this style went out of style. Leon Russell's time in the limelight was short, as was Delaney and Bonnie's and they were the primary exponents of this sound. In truth, Joe Cocker was probably a strange choice to front a band like this--it's more of a Leon Russell production in many ways. But the combination works magically on this album. Cuts like "Honky Tonk Woman," and "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window" rock out, while the middle section of the album featuring a couple of Ray Charles classics, "Drown in My Own Tears" and "Let's Go Get Stoned," and other R&B songs seem very close to Cocker's heart. Russell gives us the great "Delta Lady" and "Superstar" (sung by Rita Coolidge), and his piano dominates the album's biggest hits, "The Letter" and "Cry Me a River," in which he proves that almost any pop song can be sanctified. A few cuts fall short--the version of Dylan's "Girl from the North Country," sounds terrible, and Russell's "Give Peace a Chance" is the kind of repetitive chant that quickly became a self-parody of this style. But another hippie gospel number, "Space Captain" is a lot of fun, with the choir's well-timed oohs and aahs.

The thing that continually lifts up "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" is the quality of the musicianship. Cocker is in great voice, the choir is very effective, the horn players make 2 players sound like 10, and the rhythm section is tight as a frog's eyelids. It's not surprising--there is a direct line on this album extending from Delaney and Bonnie, where a lot of the backup musicians came from, to George Harrison, who used many of the same rhythm players on "All Things Must Pass," and who played live in the Bengla Desh benefit with Leon Russell, to "Layla" in which Eric Clapton teamed with several of these musicians to become Derek and the Dominos. Like Eric Clapton, Joe Cocker was just passing through this musical community, but when they came together, brief as it was, they made something rather magical.

This has become one of my favorite albums. As was the case with many of Eric Clapton's 70s recordings, there is conscious, post-traumatic sense of escape from the trappings of superstardom. "Backless" is the antithesis of the apocalyptic drama that was Cream or Derek and the Dominos. No one would ever die for this music--it's just for fun, to make you smile, and to enjoy some great playing. His two Dylan songs are nothing you would confuse with "Desolation Row"--they are simple songs that could've been written by anybody, and they are both quite enjoyable here. The real highlights, though, are the minor hits "Promises," "Watch out for Lucy," and "Tulsa Time" which have a great after-hours motel room feel about them. "Promises" is as close to perfection as you could get--a subdued vocal, lyrics ruminating about one of those relationships that get under your skin, a great rhythm track, and subtle slide guitar touches that double the wordless chorus. "Watch out for Lucy" is an irresistable toe-tapper that allows Clapton to cut loose on the guitar, and "Tulsa Time" is a rocker that provides another good setting for Clapton to cut loose. I love the organist and the drummer on this session--and found myself thinking of Garth Hudson and Levon Helm.

I guess fans know about this CD, but I don't remember its re-release in a much expanded form getting nearly the attention it deserves. In every respect, this is one of the most compelling live albums from the rock era, and it is a career peak for Eric Clapton. Most all-star backing bands bump into each other on the way to the spotlight, but not this one. For one night, celebrity pals like Pete Townsend, Ron Wood and Steve Winwood became clones of the Dominos, humbly backing Clapton so he can give us great renditions of "Layla" tunes like "Layla," "Bell Bottom Blues," "Little Wing," and "Tell the Truth." The fierce Derek and the Dominos numbers come off best, but the whole thing sounds great to me. You'd never know Clapton was coming off a despairing, drug-abusing, two-year layoff. He sounds, vocally and at the guitar, in peak form. You also get sort of a "Blind Faith" reunion, on "Presence of the Lord," the best song from that group's only album, rendered here in a fine version. This album reminds you that the great stars of the 60s and 70s were appreciated above all for their tremendous abilities as musicians. That's hardly the reigning aesthetic today, unfortunately.

Far more than Outkast, Britney Spears, or Janet Jackson--more than all of them combined! Norah Jones is the most controversial figure in pop music today. This born attention-grabber has roiled the music world with her extreme positions and outrageous insistence that in music, what matters is sophistication, skill, subtlety and beauty. Music critics from the NY Times to the hippest underground journals are united in their outrage--they've even resurrected the formerly banned-as-insensitive terms "yuppie rock" and "Muzak" to express the depths of their fury and hatred of everything Norah Jones stands for. Why...why...they sputter...her fans don't even "rip" her music! They actually go into bankrupt record chains and...hide the kids...BUY her ENTIRE CD! Worst of all, her fans are...OLD!

Ha! This is fun. For a guy whose pop music touchstones include Ray Charles, Etta James, Hank Williams, the Band, Steely Dan, Al Green, Boz Scaggs and Little Feat, Norah Jones is redemption after years of juvenilia rising to the top, and music that truly draws on the American strains of folk, jazz, blues and country consigned to the margins, it is a triumph to see that this modest character with exuberent talent and fearless taste come onto the scene to redeem everything that was most soulful and permanent about the great pop music of the 50s, 60s and 70s.

It is not an accident that geniuses like Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Tom Waits and Dolly Parton make appearances on this album. These aren't artists who jump on the latest bandwagon, nor do they make "yuppie muzak." They recognize the intense soulfulness of Norah's voice, the incredible power of her restrained yet incredible Handsome Band, and their combined ability to continue the Americana conversation between black and white music that is probably the greatest thing about our country. That conversation has been hard to hear these past 25 years, in which TV's endless search for novelty became the dominant force in music. Now it's roaring back in the form of this modest little girl.

In my opinion, "Feels Like Home" is a major step forward for Ms. Jones. As fine as her debut was, this album hits deeper. Part of it is the variety. There's less jazz here (although the final cut, an Ellington tune with lyrics by Norah is perhaps her jazziest effort ever) and more soul/R&B. Every time I listen to this addictive album, I have a different favorite cut, but the one that really sticks is "What Am I to You," a deceptively simple R&B torch song that sets Norah's fabulous Wurlizter piano against a smacking drum line by Levon Helm, and a sobbing organ by Garth Hudson. Her vocal on this track reminds me a little bit of Ann Peebles. The Dolly Parton and Tom Waits cuts are also great, as is her version of Townes Van Zandt's sad waltz, "Be Here to Love Me." Probably the most accomplished song Jones writes is "The Prettiest Thing" which takes you on quite a journey, before you even realize it.

The criticism of this album out there strikes me as almost political, as if the guardians of pop culture are trying desperately to make Norah Jones uncool, right now, I guess to make way for some trendoid band like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Don't fall for it. This music is DEEPLY COOL.

It's hard to beat the acting in this epic film. Alec Guiness, until then primarily known for comic roles, plays a ramrod straight British officer who has a tendency to get obsessed with matters of propriety and honor. He's deadly serious, but his performance comes right up to the edge of absurdity, including his amazing facial and body language at the climactic, ironic final moment. William Holden shows why he embodied the American male ideal in the 50s--the carefree, scheming existentialist who decides to care at the last, tragic moment. Sessue Hayakawa and Jack Hawkins are also memorable. This movie is one of my favorites. It unfolds slowly, but with a strong line of tension throughout that keeps you utterly hypnotized. The movie is almost the proto-typical blockbuster--fabulous photography, great scenery, powerful music, casts of thousands, and of course, that great big bridge that they actually built for the movie, and that, in the end, they...(I won't spoil it.) Rare is the movie that manages to have a compelling anti-war message while paying full tribute to the bravery of soldiers and the justice of war.