Nina Caplan|Metro5 April 2012
The Weekender

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DVD/Video of the year

Cabaret Special Edition (Fremantle Home Entertainment, 15, £19.99/£12.99)

Bob Fosse's extraordinary film manages to mix sexual and sinister 1930s German politics while seamlessly integrating great song and dance routines that stand as a metaphor for both.

Liza Minnelli is Sally Bowles, trying for divine decadence in the darkening world of increasingly Nazified Berlin; Michael York (pictured with Minnelli) is a naive Englishman who becomes housemate and playmate while the music lasts. The film won eight Oscars, one of which rightly went to Joel Grey, whose unnerving MC really does hold the show together. With documentaries and cast reminiscences on the DVD.

Jazz CD of the year

Guy Barker: Soundtrack (Provocateur Records)

Barker's silver-screen credentials are sterling: the trumpeter played with Frank Sinatra, wrote music for The Talented Mr Ripley and, of course, loves film.

Barker and his seven-strong band tip their hats to Miles Davis, Gil Evans and Charles Mingus with an exciting first half that is quintessentially modern (and appropriately cinematic) in its experimentation and daring editing of styles and sounds; the second half is a 25min suite dedicated to film noir, and all the tortured glamour of the 1940s celluloid greats reflects through Barker's gorgeous music. A deserved Mercury Prize nominee and all-round magnificent achievement.

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