Martin Wolf

Adapted from an autobiographical novel by Farley Mowat, Never Cry Wolf was director Carroll Ballard's worthy follow-up to his superb and much-loved The Black Stallion. Both pictures (as well as his later Fly Away Home) feature animals in central roles, as the communion between the human and animal worlds is a significant aspect of Ballard's films. Wolf's protagonist, wonderfully played by the reliable character actor Charles Martin Smith, learns more about himself as he enters the flow of his rugged surroundings and the family of wolves that he observes. It sounds romantic, but Ballard never sidesteps the ugliness of nature or the discomfort of loneliness. The result is a quirky, deceptively simple meditation on life. Shot on location in Alaska and the Yukon Territory, the film is as striking as Ballard's Black Stallion. Hiro Narita's clear, rich cinematography is marvelous, and the film's evocative, realistic sound was nominated for an Academy Award.

This five-disc, 116-track box set presents a sweeping history of the blues from its emergence in the early 1900s clear through to its various contemporary guises, and includes samples of country blues in all of its regional variations, as well as cuts from string bands, jug bands, jazz combos, gritty Chicago blues outfits, and a look at how rock artists like Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix incorporated the blues into their distinctive styles. Intelligently gathered and arranged, it treats the blues both from a historical perspective and from a working assumption that the form is still alive and well, continually morphing and transforming itself. There simply isn't a better or deeper survey of the blues on the market.