Bombastic, pretentious and narcissistic, Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains the Same is also one of the best concert films of the 1970s, capturing the greatest rock band of the decade in full flight at Madison Square Gardens in 1973. The notorious "fantasy sequences" punctuate the musical action but don't, fortunately, interrupt it. Playing true to their self-indulgent rock & roll personas, each band member has his own segment, as does legendary larger-than-life manager Peter Grant. Only John Bonham's is reasonably down-to-earth: during his mammoth drum solo ("Moby Dick") he is seen driving his custom car, his Harley chopper, and a drag racer at Santa Pod, as well as inspecting bulls and doing a bit of building work. Well, what else would a working-class lad from Birmingham do with his millions? Elsewhere, John Paul Jones is a demented Phantom of the Opera with an unfeasibly large organ ("No Quarter"); Robert Plant is a quasi-Arthurian knight errant rescuing a suitable rock-chick damsel in distress ("The Song Remains the Same/Rain Song"); while Aleister Crowley acolyte Jimmy Page goes in for sorcery and mysticism as he encounters the wizard from the cover of Led Zep IV ("Dazed & Confused"). But the real magic is the onstage footage: Page wields his Gibson Les Paul as if he is indeed enchanted (the violin bow becomes his magician's wand in "Dazed & Confused"), while Plant preens and prowls his way around the stage, the very image of the rock idol; and quite how Jones and Bonham managed to be such a behemoth of a rhythm section is still a mystery. For all its many faults, this remains an essential document of an era when rock dinosaurs still walked the earth.

On the DVD: No extra features to speak of at all, which is extremely disappointing given the wealth of archive material concerning the band and this movie that must be available. The picture and sound are respectable without being exceptional. --Mark Walker

After a string of successes on the big screen, So What Now marks the return of comedian Lee Evans to television and his first sitcom. Scripted by Evans himself, the show has an old-fashioned feel to it, recalling at times various comedy series of the 1970s. Evans' character, Lee, is a mere extension of his live performance persona--a rambling, accident-prone loser whose split from his wife forces him into a domestic situation with the slovenly Stuart (O'Donnell) and man-eating yuppie, Heather (Thomson). There is much of Michael Crawford's hapless Frank Spencer in Lee, especially in the visual set pieces that form the cornerstone of the show. Given his strong acting and writing pedigree, this has to be seen as a disappointment for Evans; the combination of weak script and less than inspiring performances mean that So What Now is only a sporadic success. --Phil Udell