Hell is a Place on Earth

A high-octane, fast-paced, action-packed Jack Coulson thriller with edge-of-your-seat suspense and an ending that will blow you away.
For over 70 years Hitler’s most fearsome weapon, Die Glocke (The Bell) has been entombed inside an icy fortress in the most inhospitable and unforgiving place on earth the Antarctic…

Kris Needs repositions the roots of Sonny Blount aka Sun Ra on three discs (60 tracks) spanning his earliest 1933 recordings of big band jazz and be-bop, thru the birth of Sun Ra and the "future shock" of his later visions. "CD1 (Pre-flight) features Sun Ra’s earliest recordings from the 1940s, playing piano for Wynonie Harris and Lil Green, jamming with Stuff Smith, and coaching or arranging for artists such as Andrew Tibbs, the Hambone Kids and the Dozier Boys with Red Saunders’ Orchestra. Other artists he worked with featured here include pianist Dorothy Donegan, Joe Williams, Jo Jo Adams and LaVern Baker. There’s also an intriguing brace of tracks displaying his experiments with mid-1950s vocal groups such as Nu Sounds and Cosmic Rays, while introducing berserk space-preacher Yochanan. All along, Ra was blueprinting his sonic spaceship until the time was right to launch under his own name in mid-1956 with effervescent debut single, ‘Saturn’, on his newly-established label of the same name. Saturn is also the planet he claimed to be his birth-place. CD1 ends with the first 1956 Arkestra sessions, picked up again on CD2 (Lift-off), which runs through early Saturn singles such as ‘A Call For All Demons’, then tracks from Sun Ra’s early albums Jazz By Sun Ra, Sound of Joy, Visits Planet Earth and Super-Sonic Jazz, his sound tangibly expanding through the stunning Arkestral manoeuvres of tracks such as ‘Sunology’. CD3 ( Future Shock) mixes tracks from Sun Ra’s twin landmark albums Jazz In Silhouette and The Futuristic Sounds Of Sun Ra, with intoxicating one-off singles such as ‘Great Balls Of Fire’, ‘Space Loneliness’ and ‘Big City Blues’, the massively weird ‘Teenager’s Letter Of Promises’ with singer Juanita Rogers, before signing off with Yochanan’s demented ’Message To Earthman’."

For his return to Blue Note Records after a several year hiatus, Van Morrison is back to his soulful mix of rhythm and blues, jazz supplemented by horns, with a bit of rock, blues, and Celtic swing. Never an artist easy to pin down, Van continues to satisfy with a mix of his curmudgeonly (fully appropriate to me) lyrics about the money-hungry, greedy recording business, and his feeling of wanting to be left alone with the guarding of his privacy (“If In Money We Trust” “End of the Rainbow“ and “Educating Archie“) balanced by a sweet sentimentality for the early days of Rock and Roll, the 1950s, with a healthy dose of spirituality (“Pagan Heart,” “Retreat and View” and “Open the Door to Your Heart.”) Van is like your cool uncle, whose taste you respect, but you know you have to give him “his distance.”

The Devil arranges for a deceased gangster to return to Earth as a well-respected judge to make up for his previous life.

Steven Spielberg's 1982 hit about a stranded alien and his loving relationship with a fatherless boy (Henry Thomas) struck a chord with audiences everywhere, and it furthered Spielberg's reputation as a director of equally strong commercial sensibilities and classical leanings. Henry Thomas gives a strong, emotional performance as E.T.'s young friend, Robert MacNaughton and Drew Barrymore make a solid impression as his siblings, and Dee Wallace is lively as the kids' mother. The special effects almost look a bit quaint now with all the computer advancements that have occurred since, but they also have more heart behind them than a lot of what we see today.