Palaces, princesses and politics--on the face of it Indian art cinema doyen Shyam Benegal's maiden foray into Bollywood, Zubeidaa, appears to have all the ingredients of a mainstream success. However, the film is at best an uneasy blend of art-house sensibilities with the full-on spectacle that is commercial Hindi cinema. This is the latest in a series of semi-autobiographical stories by writer Khalid Mohamed that have been directed by Benegal. Here the director charts the story of Zubeidaa, a young aristocratic Muslim woman, whose promising film career is cut short. She is married off young, has a son, is divorced and finally finds love with the married ruler of a princely state in newly independent India.

Told in flashback, the film's structure and some key scenes are very similar to the director's masterpiece Bhumika ("The Role", 1976). Karisma Kapoor, hitherto known for her scantily clad raunchy roles, makes her bid for artistic credentials as the eponymous heroine. But much like the film itself, her performance falls between two stools. Veteran actress Rekha who plays her paramour's first wife easily outclasses her in a graceful yet forceful performance. AR Rahman's music is haunting, dreamy and helps create a mood and ambience that the visuals fail to produce.

On the DVD: Zubeidaa is presented in a pleasing anamorphic transfer with 5.1 Dolby Digital sound. While the menus are easy enough to navigate, the extras are disappointing, consisting of a faded theatrical trailer and a few television promos complete with dropouts. The subtitling, though largely accurate, makes quite a few errors. For example "cemetery" appears as "symmetry" while the word "diary" consistently appears as "dairy". --Naman Ramachandran

Without being at all tricksy or showy, Arthaus Musik's In Rehearsal documentary series offers enthralling, profound insights into music-making of the highest calibre. In this case, with Zubin Mehta conducting the Israel Philharmonic in a rehearsal of Strauss' Till Eulenspiegel, those insights are sharpened by the knowledge that the orchestra is playing the piece for the very first time: the music of Richard Strauss had been banned in Israel until 1994 as a reaction to his involvement with the Nazi party. Thus, though the initial run-through is somewhat scratchy (and causes an hilariously neurotic hissy fit on the part of the principal horn player), the fact that the ensemble has no performance tradition of this piece means that every phrase has to be taken apart, explained, and put together again. We therefore see Mehta's ability to make a phrase more comic or fuller of pathos by simple nips and tucks of note lengths, and hear his reasons for shaping the piece the way he does. The documentary also offers a window on Mehta's genial but steely relationship with the orchestra: when he criticises the first flute (who is auditioning for a place in the orchestra), her terrified face is like a portrait by Francis Bacon.

On the DVD: Mehta rehearses the orchestra in English, and the documentary has subtitles in French, German and Spanish. There are also four trailers for other Arthaus music videos. --Warwick Thomson

Cy Endfield cowrote the epic prequel Zulu Dawn 15 years after his enormously popular Zulu. Set in 1879, this film depicts the catastrophic Battle of Isandhlwana, which remains the worst defeat of the British army by natives--the British contingent was outnumbered 16-to-1 by the Zulu tribesmen.

The film's opinion of events is made immediately clear in its title sequence: ebullient African village life presided over by King Cetshwayo is contrasted with aristocratic artifice under the arrogant eye of General Lord Chelmsford (Peter O'Toole). Chelmsford is at the heart of all that goes wrong, initiating the catastrophic battle with an ultimatum made seemingly for the sake of giving his troops something to do. His detached manner leads to one mistake after another and this is wryly illustrated in a moment when neither he nor his officers can be bothered to pronounce the name of the land they're in. That it's a beautiful land none the less is made clear by the superb cinematography, which drinks in the massive open spaces that shrink the British army to a line of red ants.

Splendidly stiff-upper-lipped support comes from a heroic Burt Lancaster and a fluffy, yet gruff, Bob Hoskins. Although the story is less focused and inevitably more diffuse than the concentrated events of Rorke's Drift that followed soon after, Zulu Dawn is an unflinchingly honest depiction of British Imperial diplomacy. --Paul Tonks

Based on actual events, this film takes place in 1879 at Africa's Roarke's Drift, a military post occupied by 97 British soldiers.