DreamWorks wouldn't screen the new Chris Rock comedy for critics until the last minute. Such cowardly policy always leaves the impression that the film is a disaster . Not so. Head of State is merely a missed opportunity. There are still flashes of Rock's take-no-prisoners wit in this story of Mays Gilliam, a do-gooder alderman from Washington, D.C., who gets suckered into running for President. The party boss, Sen. Bill Arnot (James Rebhorn), means to exploit Mays. But once Mays brings on his brother Mitch (Bernie Mac, a welcome presence on any screen) to run with him as VP, the gloves are off. Like Warren Beatty in "Bulworth," Mays — ith nothing to lose — decides to tell the truth.p>ock, who wrote the script with Ali LeRoi, gets in a few good licks. "What kind of drug policy," he asks, "makes crack cheaper than asthma medicine?" And the candidate running against Mays (Nick Searcy — a cousin of Sharon Stone, no less — runs on the platform: "God Bless America-and no place else." p>This is the Rock that makes the movie rock, at least for a few scenes. But Rock as a director blunders almost as badly as Joel Schumacher did trying to blend the brashness of of Rock with the gravity of Anthony Hopkins in the misbegotten Bad Company. There are times when "Head of State" doesn't seem directed at all; you half expect the actors to crash into each other. Still, give me the attempted satire of Head of State over the racial stereotyping of Bringing Down the House anyday. You can feel a mind at work when you watch Rock. The popcorn salesmen behind Bringing Down the House stopped thinking past the box office a long time ago.

“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."