Reviews by Abhi

Vague plot and poorly fleshed out end left me unsatisfied. Seems like most of the movie was either a dream or a red herring. With the cast, production values and a pretty decent idea for a plot, they could and should have done much better than this.

The third bonus disc should be called the third disc of the set and packaged with every box of this release. It's filled with some absolute gems that I've not heard anywhere else, particularly 'Trapped', 'Missing', 'Lift me up' and 'Code of Silence'.

Oh, and for the casual fan, this is a generally a better intro to Springsteen than the misleadingly named 'Greatest Hits'. Unfortunately, this misses some of the gems from that album, especially 'Secret Garden' (which was a new song on that one) and to a lesser extent, 'Better Days'.

This local Seattle band describes their music as 'face melting acoustic music'. Their debut EP contains six excellent tracks, the standout song being 'Guilty Hands'.

They are a string-only band, no drummer accompanies them. However, one of them is pretty good at churning out vocalized beats in their concerts (none of that on the EP, unfortunately). They're only three years old and still developing but already are electric performers on stage along with being very skilled. To really break through, they need more quantity and quality in their songs to go with their virtuosity on the instruments.

So, Guns n Roses is dead because Axl Rose can't get off his ego high horse. To fill the gap, we have Velvet Revolver consisting of most of GnR with Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots on vocals.

These guys sound awesome, just awesome. The only problem is that they did not bother to write very many songs. Most of the songs on here are junk, miles away from the best songwriting Axl Rose could produce. He produced some junk as well, but we loved GnR for the great stuff.

Still, this gets four stars, just for sounding so great. The band still rocks and Slash's guitar still wails. We'll take what we can get.

Both of them had to be in absolutely DIRE need of therapy.

Sophie and Julien play a bizarre game starting as kids where they try and one up each other, one that keeps increasing in intensity as they grow up. Refer to last paragraph.

It's hard not to compare any of Bruce Springsteen's new albums with his vast body of previous work. Does it measure up or not? Is he in decline or does he still have it? Which is why it takes a couple of listens to get to the songs on this album.

Compared to the rest of his work, this isn't the best. The production is too heavy handed on a few tracks and his voice only really shines when the production is scaled back, but it does shine like it always did. He's still a great storyteller, like he always was. He's still mixing the political and the personal, making a sweeping universal comment by exploring a personal story. I'll cut this short and say, he still 'has it'.

Another 34 years is unlikely, but at 58, he still rocks.

I saw this movie around 18 years ago and then again, just recently. It's aged surprisingly well, despite the clunky, stop frame robot animation. The plot is pretty good, there's plenty of blood and gore (including a guy with his skin melting off his body) and crucially, not too much reliance on CG effects. I did not remember all the blood and gore. This movie is definitely not for kids younger than 13.

Kim Ki Duk loves to mess with his audience's head and he's in great form here. The movie follows the relationship between a girl and the her pimp who is also the one that forced her into prostitution. That's just scratching the surface of this twisted tale.

Led Zeppelin release another compilation album and it comes in at a hefty 24 tracks. It reflects their quality that all the included tracks are brilliant yet they still don't cover the whole breadth of their catalogue. Most bands don't have 24 good songs in their entire careers.

The clear selling point for this compilation is the new remastering. The improvement in quality is subtle and incremental. The last remastering of all their albums (I own that box set too) was a major jump forward in quality. The DVD contains some awesome live material as well.

A definite great buy for old fans and for new fans looking for one set that covers plenty of territory.

Generally patterned along the excellent 'Molinos', the band's signature (if you can call it that) is intact here. They play a mix of celtic tinged folk rock along with bluegrass and even a couple of Spanish songs! The lead vocalist Tom Landa grew up in Mexico, which explains that little mystery. The band's playing is top notch again.

The most amazing thing about their music is that all the experimentation and fusion of musical styles never comes across as forced. Everything feels organic and natural and the album flows really well from one song to the next. Tom Landa's voice has something to do with it, no doubt.