As good as it gets

SPENDING IT

Recommendation Number One for the week is The Good Girl, a delightfully well-written and acted indie film "" the sort that usually gets trampled over by big-studio blockbusters in the race for multiplex space.

Many Friends devotees will go to see it for Jennifer Aniston but be warned "" this is different from anything she's done onscreen before.

Aniston plays a supermarket employee, weary of both her lacklustre job and her well-meaning but apathetic husband, who spends most of his time playing couch potato and smoking pot with a buddy.

This leads to an affair with an intense young wanna-be writer who calls himself Holden after the protagonist of Catcher in the Rye, and numerous complications result.

The Good Girl manages somehow to be very funny even as it deals with morose, even depressive, characters. More remarkably, the humour is never mean-minded. We don't laugh at the characters (a lazier script would have found plenty to poke fun at); instead we chuckle at the situations they find themselves in, most of which are engendered by complex human emotions and are easy to relate to.

Tim Burton's Big Fish has a less accomplished screenplay but this film, about an old man (Albert Finney) regaling his son with semi-fantastical stories of his own youth, bears the director's trademark "" a lush visual sense that marries fairy-tale and gothic elements.

Some shots are suitably eye-popping and if you liked Edward Scissorhands, one of Burton's early movies, you'll find a lot here that's equally evocative.

Among the older releases still playing, don't miss Matchstick Men, even if you have to steal tickets.

This film is equal parts a heist thriller, a poignant father-daughter drama and a serio-comedy about a man trying to cope with obsessive-compulsive disorder; but it balances its many elements beautifully, and Nicolas Cage is excellent in one of his best roles.

With enough options from Hollywood, don't even go near a Hindi movie counter "" an army of distraught distributors may be waiting to beg you to see disasters like Hawas, Woh and Muskaan.

Instead, the next time you go shopping for music, keep and eye out for a certain Blue Note Record label. Largely unknown to discerning listeners in India, the record label has earned a reputation for itself by the way it spots talent. And what a talent Cassandra Wilson is!

The heavy voiced singer does some fabulous covers of luminaries like Muddy Waters, Dylan, Sting and Willie Nelson, her interpretations largely skewed in favour of the jazz upbringing her ears have had.

Time magazine's American singer of the year for the year 2001, Cassandra's Glamoured is a phenomenal album [ CDs Rs 400], and her old world appeal apart, we'd recommend "I want more", which has a harmonica solo unlike anything one has heard before.

Incidentally, the stripped down, spare-appeal album title isn't misleading "" just in case you think the word 'glamour' is synonymous with elaborate arrangements and an army of backup vocalists. "Glamoured", Cassandra tells us, is a Gaelic word meaning 'to be whisked away'.

Still on talent hunting, The Soul Sessions by British sensation Joss Stone will leave you wide-eyed, especially after you get to know that the owner of the unbelievably acrobatic, vibrant voice is a 16 year old. With a music arrangement that has echoes of the classic Buena Vista Social Club, the Sessions is a surefire screamer. Grab the Rs 350 CD and let the 'cheerful unpretentious lass' blow you away.

Whether Stone will continue to keep audiences wide-eyed in the years to come is a different matter altogether. But if rock legend Deep Purple is any yardstick to go by, the future can only get better.

The Early Years from the masters of rock, has just been released by EMI (CDs Rs 295), and while Jon Lord's prophetic organ playing and Blackmore's touch is visible in the early tunes, they sound more like outtakes than the real thing.

Any Purple fan will sorely miss the prowess of Ian Gillan, and without his octave stretching tonality, the damp squib of an assortment is sure to leave buyers 'Purplexed'.

What perplexes even more is how Michael Learns to Rock ( Pete Seger had once sung "" "When will they ever learn?") has gone on to release their sixth album, with ten 'ultra-melodic' tracks.

Take me to your heart[CD Rs 350] is yet another pretentiously mushy album, with inconsequential lyrics and the same three chords and promises to give the audiences the same 'infectious' appeal other MLTR albums have "" who cares, anyway!