A+E

Las Vegas picked up two more nightclub feathers in its increasingly crowded cap when Krave and our own Kristine W won top spots in their respective categories in JustCircuit.com's 2005 awards. Krave danced away with Best Nightclub in the West, beating out Hollywood's Avalon, Chicago's Crobar, the Factory in San Francisco and Houston's South Beach. Kristine won for Best Circuit Performance by a Solo or Group Act for her February gig at Chicago's Fireball Main Event.

Recently, Anchor Hocking (a glassware company) and the United States Bartenders Guild (last website update: 1999), declared the martini the 20th century's cocktail. Mind you, they got the recipe wrong by stating a gin martini can take a lemon twist when purists know gin martinis take olives and vodka takes a twist. Still, it's nice to see such a dark horse come from nowhere to win the title. Worst drink of the century: the brain hemorrhage (peach schnapps, Irish cream and a splash of grenadine), beating out the Weekly's favorite, the Double Down's bacon martini, which takes a hog's hoof as garnish.

Ken Keating

Just One Lifetime (2.5 stars)

It's sometimes hard to assess adult-contemporary music, when it seems all the artists work to make themselves sound like everyone else out there. Keating falls into that trap. He has a powerful voice, great piano chops and, for his debut, has picked a series of romantic songs that soar (Mrs. Keating's a lucky lady), but there just isn't much to differentiate this disc from other easy-listening music on the market.

Sam Peckinpah's Legendary Westerns Collection (R) (5 stars)


$59.98

Although hyper-realistic violence has become a staple ingredient of contemporary Westerns—rare though they are—it wasn't until the 1969 release of The Wild Bunch that filmmakers were given license to depict the effects of bullets, knives and arrows on human flesh. Or, as Peckinpah once said, to dramatize "what happens when killers go to Mexico." All of the classic titles included in this bonus-filled set—Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Ride the High Country, The Ballad of Cable Hogue—comment, as well, on the closing of the frontier and how it impacted the men and women who lived on the fringes of polite society. The biographical material and reminiscences included in the commentary tracks paint a portrait of a larger-than-life filmmaker, who, like his protagonists, chafed at the yoke of authority and conformity.

Hustle & Flow (R) (4 stars)


$29.95

Very few actors have had more productive years than the one recently wrapped by Terrence Howard. Having distinguished himself in such films as Ray, Crash, Four Brothers, Lackawanna Blues, Get Rich or Die Tryin' and Their Eyes Were Watching God, the 36-year-old finally was accorded the respect he deserved. He was terrific in all of those projects, but his "breakthrough" role came in John Singleton's Hustle & Flow, a gritty urban fairy tale about a pimp trying to make ends meet in Memphis. Backed by a motley crew of aspiring record producers and prostitutes, the manipulative DJay hopes to use hip-hop as his ticket out. As such, the movie occasionally feels like an R-rated Andy Hardy movie, with Howard channeling Mickey Rooney ... but, in a very good way.