All the Pretty Horses comes with a fancy pedigree: a Cormac McCarthy novel about adolescent Texas cowboys, circa 1949, that deservedly won the National Book Award eight years ago. Director Billy Bob Thornton (Sling Blade) and screenwriter Ted Tally (The Silence of the Lambs) approach the material with respect, but only Barry Markowitz's luminous camerawork does justice to the descriptive majesty of McCarthy's prose. Although the actors work hard, the haunted soul of the book resists capture onscreen. At thirty, Matt Damon seems a bit mature to play John Grady Cole, the teenager who rides off to Mexico with his pal Lacey Rawlins (Henry Thomas) in search of adventure. After meeting outlaw kid Jimmy Blevins (Lucas Black, in the film's liveliest and best performance), John and Lacey find work breaking horses on a hacienda run by Rocha (Ruben Blades), a wealthy man whose daughter, Alejandra (Penelope Cruz), is tempestuous — aren't they all? — and doomed to fall for John. It doesn't help that Damon and Cruz fail to generate sparks or that the second half of the film, in which John and Lacey face hell in a Mexican prison, feels bluntly edited to fit a two-hour running time. Thornton and Tally clearly ache to give the film a mythic resonance, but their movie sounds hollow where the book rang true.

“Is It True”

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."