But apart from the lovely, reflective “Great Release”, an exercise in Eno-esque sparseness, the results seem laboured and overdone.. This assured third offering from Roots Manuva is a quantum leap on from 2001′s Run Come Save Me. He’s “back with the venomous eloquence”, as he puts it in “Cause 4 Pause”, unspooling intelligent ruminations on life in his haughty toasting style, over dry, pumping beats, techno dancehall twitches and spacious dub moves. The theme is the conflict between responsibility and temptation, the birth of his son forcing Roots to consider his ways. “I know I should cut down this drinking/ Too many late nights and wayward thinking/ Compelling a man to plan to shenanigans,” he notes in “Colossal Insight”, surely the finest rap title ever – unless that’s “Awfully Deep”, where he rhymes “too much dairy” with “away with the fairies”, musing on how life is driving him to the brink of madness. “Sometimes I love myself, sometimes I hate myself,” he admits over the stalking string samples of “Too Cold”, in which his disdain for money and materialism would surely bear out that madness to most hip-hoppers. But then

This assured third offering from Roots Manuva is a quantum leap on from 2001′s Run Come Save Me.

But then, he is “the eclectic, known for my eccentrics”, more likely to delve into the abyss of despair of “The Falling” or the introspective territory of “Thinking” than slip into standard bling or gangsta clich? “There’s too much truth whenever I get the urge to sing/ More soul, more sin, I reflect within/ I’m a lonely soldier/ Always more composure”.. More Adventurous is exactly the kind of title you want a band to choose when they make the jump from independent to major label. No thought of retrenchment or consolidation, but a spirited push further on into uncharted territory – that’s the spirit!

More Adventurous is exactly the kind of title you want a band to choose when they make the jump from independent to major label. Take the opener “It’s a Hit”, whose four verses encompass a trenchant critique of contemporary American mores, from Bush’s warmongering (“Any chimp can play human for a day/ And use his opposable thumbs to iron his uniform”) to overly possessive relationships, artists who offer pain for pay, and back again to Bush’s penchant for capital punishment.

Yet the journey never seems disjointed, the disparate strands sharing the underlying theme of brutality, and stitched together with lovely descending droplets of guitar from Blake Sennett.Sennett and fellow singer/guitarist Jenny Lewis were both child actors, and while it’s our gain that they chose music over drama, their thespian training may have something to do with the way the individual songs here spring vividly to life, and certainly with their ability to take on the different roles. Lewis is particularly adept at playing bad girls, dealing in “Portions for Foxes” with a sexaholic’s inability to resist temptation (“you’re just damage control for a walking corpse like me”), and struggling to rein in her baser instincts to take a chance on stability in “I Never”: “Cause I’ve been bad/ I’ve lied, cheated, stolen/ And been ungrateful for what I had/ And I’m afraid habits rule my waking life”.Emotional damage and wanton destruction are recurrent themes, whether it’s the compulsion to wreck things that appear fine (especially relationships), the way reproach prompts suicide in the oddly jocular “Ripchord”, or the self-destructive lifestyle pursued by the subject of “Accidntel Deth”. Yet the manner of their airing somehow draws the poison from these concerns, the way a thunderstorm de-ionises an oppressive atmosphere.Musically, Rilo Kiley operate in much the same region as their friends Bright Eyes (whom they support on tour here next month) and Lambchop, particularly when the sad horns slide into the country-rock lilt of “A Man/ Me/ Then Jim”, a moving reflection on the ways we deal with abandonment. Now he has Sex and the City star Kim Cattrall paralysed from the neck down in a hospital bed in Brian Clark’s updated version of his 1970 hit play Whose Life Is It Anyway?
If Samantha, Cattrall’s television character, was compulsively prepared (in one sense) to take it lying down, that’s precisely what (in the other sense) her character Clare in this play will not do. A year ago or so, he had Felicity Kendall buried up to her neck in earth in his production of Beckett’s Happy Days. Peter Hall seems to be making a habit of immobilising popular TV actresses on the boards of the West End stage.

“I will destroy your life and eat your soul,” snarls Sizemore, who seems to be pitching for his very own Bad Acting Award, but he reckons without his victim’s sideline as a ruthless vigilante.The director, Paul Abascal, was previously Mel Gibson’s hair stylist on the Lethal Weapon movies, which should give an indication of his talent.. Writer-director Chris Smith’s debut feature is notable for its portrayal of subterranean London as a labyrinth of dank passageways, and for providing a glimpse of long-abandoned Tube stations such as Down Street near Piccadilly.It constitutes the worst advert for London Underground since Death Line uncovered grisly goings-on beneath Russell Square in 1972.Paparazzi (12A) Hilariously awful thriller about an action star (Cole Hauser) whose life is invaded by a press photographer (Tom Sizemore) and his gang of goons. Its utter implausibility aside, the film features a strong cast including Brian Dennehy and Gabriel Byrne.Creep (18) Franka Potente finds herself down in the Tube at midnight stalked by a killer. Stiller mugs through the embarrassment, but playing straight man to the freaks doesn’t give him much room to shine.Assault on Precint 13 (15) This remake of John Carpenter’s cult thriller is entirely unnecessary, though when did such considerations ever hold sway in this industry? Ethan Hawke plays the cop in charge of a run-down Detroit police station to which a busload of felons has been diverted during a snow storm; next thing he knows the place is under siege from masked gunmen intent on springing a crimelord from prison.Cue a violent all-night battle that attracts no media attention or intervention by the authorities, even though it must have woken up the whole city. The basic joke hinges on the contrast between Robert De Niro’s uptight former CIA operative and Streisand-Hoffman as a pair of ageing hippies obsessed with sex and “sharing”, though it wears thin. Sadly, what little comedy there is has been overwhelmed by the casting of Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman as Stiller’s parents – the Fockers – each trying to outdo the other. You’ll wish you hadn’t

Meet The Fockers (12A)
You’ll wish you hadn’t.