Rock heroes & neo-zeroes

Spending It

Every once in a while, you come across compilations like Virgin music's Heroes, which makes all past collections like College Classics and Soft Rock Hits pale into insignificance.

This compilation, spanning four decades, lists solo artists, rock legends, and band frontmen who are stars in their own right, from Dylan and Jagger to current icons like David Gray and Robbie Williams.

Thankfully, Virgin hasn't compromised on space to accommodate the greatest solo artists rock music has ever seen.

And though puritans might scoff at inclusions like pop papa Elton John, check out his blistering rendition of Pete Townsend's "Pinball Wizard".

The song list is a veritable who's who with usual suspects like Joplin's "Mercedes Benz" and Rod Stewart's "Maggie May" finding space alongside interesting inclusions like Jackson Browne's smooth version of a song made famous by the Eagles "" "Take it easy" and Sid Vicious' outrageous take on Sinatra's "My Way".

All in all, the double cassette album is probably the best compilation to have hit shop shelves in quite a while now, despite the glaring omissions of Freddie Mercury and Jimi Hendrix from the list.

And if you are a picker and chooser, when it comes to building your personal rock library, your wait for a complete classic rock album is over.

What you should probably stay away from this month, unless you are a die hard Taufiq Quereshi fan, is his latest work Sum "" cultures of rhythm, which is a collaboration with the Rajabhatt brothers and Sridhar Parthasarathy.

Sum is a distant cry from Rydhun, his last best selling effort, with distinctive compositions that had a common sound.

This time around, it sounds more like getting a mood-inspired track, and trying to fit the others in, to justify the album release.

On to films now and inevitably the most publicised (and most overrated) movie of the week: the concluding part of the Matrix trilogy.

There's even more high-sounding philosophical mumbo-jumbo in this one than in its predecessors, and the Indian influence is even more marked: there's an Indian family with the apparent inability to pronounce their own names ("I am Ramakandra and this is my wife Kamaala") and the bad guys seem to have taken laughing lessons from Hindi movie villains of the 1960s.

Even die-hard Matrix-heads will have a hard time justifying the hype over Revolutions.

At the preview screening, incidentally, there was a lady who solemnly told a byte-seeking TV crew: "These films aren't about action, they're about Redemption." Who'll redeem our ticket money, is what we want to know.

Our pick for the best of the films on show? The winner "" by much more than a gill "" is the mesmeric Finding Nemo.

This cornucopia of glorious colour and sound should dispel once and for all the myth that animated films are meant for children (assuming that one hasn't already been buried by Monsters Inc, etc).

Some of the most wondrous, path-breaking work in modern cinema is being done in this field, and Nemo is another step in the right direction.

This submarine saga involves a fretful clownfish's trans-oceanic search for his offspring, who's been captured by deep-sea divers.

The diaphanous plot is just the pretext for a film that is a visual delight, with an endearing cast of anthropomorphic characters "" the goofy sea-turtle with the Paul McCartney grin (and fringe); the trio of sharks trying unsuccessfully to abjure non-vegetarian food "" and great one-liners like "With fronds like this, who needs anemones?" This is not a movie just for kids; and it is not, as blurbs might patronisingly suggest, a film for "the child in you". It's a film for anyone who loves movies.

Even at his best, Eddie Murphy is an acquired taste but Daddy Day Care is as pedestrian a Murphy comedy as you'll find.

This film tries, unsuccessfully, to combine slapstick humour with insights on parental responsibilities. We say: there's little here that's funny, and as for the insights, you'll find far more of those in Finding Nemo.