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CULURE JAMMING -- FEBRUARY 17

TOP PICK
GoodFellas 20^th Anniversary
(Warner)

One of the greatest mob movies of all time celebrates its 20^th anniversary with a Blu-ray book version that includes tons of cool extras, like a feature-length Golden Age of the Gangster Film documentary. Martin Scorsese’s wiseguy epic is the centerpiece, with great performances by Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta and an Oscar-winning (and yeah, funny) Joe Pesci.

DVD

Atonement

(Universal)

This adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel about a lie that changes the lives of World War II-era lovers was nominated for a half-dozen Oscars in 2007. (Indeed, it’s part of a series of Academy Award releases on Blu-ray.) Keira Knightley has never been better, and the story – there’s a war going on, so you know things won’t end well -- will tear you apart.

CD

Buzzcocks reissues

(Mute)

One of punk’s all-time greatest singles bands also released three albums in the ’70s: Another Music in a Different Kitchen, Love Bites and A Different Kind of Tension. These reissues each include a bonus disc filled with demos, live versions, radio performances and some previously unreleased material. Best: All of the essential singles are here too.

VIDEO GAME

MAG

(Sony)

Think Modern Warfare 2’s playing field isn’t claustrophobic enough? This groundbreaking first-person shooter for the PlayStation 3 is an online-only behemoth capable of equipping 256 players with weapons at the same time. Since it’s a war game by the makers of the SOCOM series, prepare for some heated battles. Get ready for a bloody good time too.

BOOK

Me, the Mob and the Music: One Helluva Ride With Tommy James and the Shondells

(Scribner)

Apparently there was plenty of hanky panky going on behind the scenes of James’ music in the ’60s. In this absorbing chronicle of James’ chart run (co-written by James and Martin Fitzpatrick), we learn that his record-company boss had some very brutal ties inside and outside of the industry. It wasn’t all crimson and clover as they chased the money, money.

--Michael Gallucci

MOVIE REVIEW -- PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTNING THIEF

You’d think a bestselling book series about kids with mythical powers would at least try to divert attention from the inevitable Harry Potter comparisons for its initial turn on the big screen. But The Lightning Thief, the first film based on Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson & the Olympians books, is directed by Chris Columbus, the same guy who helmed the first two (and most undeveloped) Harry Potter movies. There are some differences between American Percy and Brit Harry – most significantly, Percy’s roots are in Greek mythology instead of budding wizardry. But like Harry, Percy takes two friends (yep --one’s a boy, the other’s a girl and both are demigods) along on his adventures. Turns out teen Percy (Logan Lerman) is the son of Poseidon. After Zeus’ lightning bolt is stolen, Percy and his pals go on a quest to get it back. Columbus directs to entertain rather than impress, so a lot happens in The Lightning Thief, but not much sticks with you. The CGI beasts and action scenes get special attention, but there’s not much development in mood or character (Percy is dyslexic and has ADHD -- interesting facets to his personality that are barely explored). At least the grown-up stars seem to be having fun with their brief roles, especially Pierce Brosnan as a mentoring centaur, Rosario Dawson as a bitchy Persephone and Uma Thurman, hamming it up as Medusa. But the movie, like the first Harry Potter film, plays like a slightly entertaining but uninspired introduction to a franchise that could ripen over the years (there are five Percy Jackson books so far). But unlike Harry, which wraps up its run in theaters next year, Percy’s possibilities are still untapped. --Michael Gallucci

MOVIE REVIEW -- BRIGHTON ROCK

Adapted from a Graham Greene novel, this 1947 British gangster film was quite a shocker in its day (Mutilated bodies! Gangland warfare! Double-crossing snitches!). It’s still a solid piece of filmmaking by director John Boulting, even if some of the onscreen violence seems a bit tame by modern standards. After rackets runner Pinkie Brown (Richard Attenborough) murders a rival, a boozy barfly (Hermione Baddeley) who was hanging out with the victim right before he was killed begins snooping around. Meanwhile, Pinkie tries to get his small-time gang some respect on the street and cozies up to a young, innocent waitress (a radiant Carol Marsh), who’s inadvertently connected to the crime. The script (co-written by Greene) is tough. So are the characters. Pinkie is ruthless, at one point tossing one of his cronies off a balcony. The film is also quite suspenseful, particularly during the long opening scene when thugs pursue an unfortunate victim through Brighton’s daylight streets and into a dark carnival funhouse. This brutal British noir is grittier than many of its contemporaries in the U.S, where it was originally known as Young Scarface. That title is earned. Brighton Rock’s lineage can be traced all the way to modern mob classics like The Godfather, Scarface and GoodFellas. --Michael Gallucci

CULTURE JAMMING -- FEBRUARY 10

TOP PICK

Mystic River

(Warner)

Clint Eastwood directed some of his greatest films in the ’00s – Million Dollar Baby, Letters From Iwo Jima, Gran Torino. This is one of his all-time best. Making its Blu-ray debut, the 2003 movie – about three childhood friends and a murder that pulls them apart – boasts Oscar-winning performances by Sean Penn and Tim Robbins. Kevin Bacon is also terrific.

CD

Animal Collective: Campfire Songs

(Paw Tracks)

Before they became every music snob’s favorite band, these noisemaking weirdos kept the electronic enhancements to a minimum. Their third album (from 2003) features five single-take tracks recorded on a porch with acoustic guitars. Listen for birds and other natural ingredients (like wind rustling through the trees) in the mix. Freaky!

DVD

Dr. Who: The Complete Specials

(BBC)

As we prepare for yet another actor to step into the doctor’s time-traveling shoes, look back on David Tennant’s run in this five-disc set, which gathers five specials from the long-running sci-fi series: The Next Doctor, Planet of the Dead, The Waters of Mars and The End of Time, Parts One & Two. Extras include deleted scenes, commentary and a video diary.

CD

The Jerry Garcia Collection, Vol. 2: Let It Rock, Jerry Garcia Band, November 17 & 18, 1975, Keystone Berkeley

(Jerry Garcia Family/Rhino)

Garcia’s solo gigs weren’t all that different than the shows he played with the Grateful Dead (except there’s no Bob Weir to weigh things down). There’s still plenty of 15-minute jams and covers of other people’s classics -- like the Rolling Stones’ “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” a highlight of this two-disc set.

VIDEO GAME

Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games

(Sega)

Just in time for the Olympics, this Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game piles on the snow and events -- 14 of them, in fact, many including snowboards, bobsleighs or skis. The first-person point of view is cool (tumbling down a mountain is both exhilarating and nauseating), but best are the multiplayer options, where you can show off your virtual medals across the globe.

--Michael Gallucci

MUSIC REVIEW -- GIL SCOTT-HERON

Gil Scott-Heron
I’m New Here
(XL)

Badass poet and ex-con Scott-Heron was the guy who declared “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” back in 1971. On the 60-year-old artist’s first album in 13 years, he still sounds like the coolest guy in the room and someone you probably wouldn’t want to mess with. He covers Robert Johnson’s “Me and the Devil” on I’m New Here, but it’s his own compositions (like the opening “On Coming From a Broken Home”) that set the climate for this mostly autobiographical song cycle. Scott-Heron’s battered rasp – sometimes singing, sometimes reading or rapping -- gives the songs suitable gravity, especially when he looks back on a life of some bad decisions. The music ranges from spare handclaps to full-band throttle. But Scott-Heron – reflective, defiant -- provides the most volume. --Michael Gallucci

MOVIE REVIEW -- UNMADE BEDS

In the opening scene of Unmade Beds, 20-year-old bisexual Axl (Fernando Tielve) wakes up next to a girl he doesn’t recognize, wondering if he slept with her the night before. It’s a typical morning for the kid from Madrid who’s trying to find himself in London. That’s half of the movie’s story. The other part belongs to Vera (Déborah François), a French transplant who works in a bookstore but tells boys she meets that she’s a flight attendant.

While their paths rarely cross (until the end of the film, of course), Axl and Vera share a warehouse with other young European hipsters who are hanging on to their adolescence. Unmade Beds often plays like a series of vignettes featuring the pair going through their daily lives. Scenes switch back and forth between them: She works and flirts with a guy she meets at a club; he trails a real-estate agent who may be his long-lost father.

The boys and girl on the brink of adulthood here aren’t as wayward as most of their indie-film contemporaries. Many of them have jobs, even if they do spend most of their free time hanging out in clubs, drinking and looking for love (or at least sex). Director Alexis Dos Santos lingers on his characters, but he doesn’t quite know what to do with them. They talk, they smoke, they drink and they make love, but there isn’t much conflict -- unless young twentysomethings enjoying their last grab at responsibility-free living counts. (These kids aren’t all that fucked up, and Axl’s daddy issues really don’t amount to much.)

It doesn’t help that Axl is needy and annoying (he tends to forget people’s names, especially the ones he’s in bed with), and Vera is boring and aloof (her face is perpetually blank, whether she’s having sex or stocking books). Whatever resolution Unmade Beds offers takes place in the bedroom; characters hang out there, fuck there and make art there. They’ll also put you to sleep there. --Michael Gallucci

MUSIC REVIEW -- HOT CHIP

Hot Chip

One Life Stand

(Astralwerks )

British electro-pop duo Hot Chip want it both ways. Like other European (and European-sounding) groups that play around with synths and target the dance floor, Hot Chip welcome the distance that being a smartass provides. Yet they can’t help but get all cuddly once in a while. Some of the songs on their fourth album, One Life Stand, were inspired by Alexis Taylor becoming a parent. So much for hipster cool. But there’s still plenty here to get both butts bumping and hearts pumping. One Life Stand isn’t as frantic as 2008’s Made in the Dark (being a dad wears you down); the focus is mostly on songs, not sounds, this time. Many of the ballads flatline, but tracks like “Thieves in the Night” and “Hand Me Down Your Love” throb with nightlife neon, pulling at the corners as squeals and shrieks escape into the air. --Michael Gallucci

CULTURE JAMMING -- FEBRUARY 3

TOP PICK

The Simpsons Season 20

(Twentieth Century Fox)

The Simpsons celebrates its 20^th anniversary with its first batch of HD episodes on its inaugural Blu-ray set. All 21 episodes from the 2008-09 season are on these four discs, including a funny Da Vinci Code spoof. Plus, Homer and Ned become bounty hunters.

VIDEO GAME

Army of Two: The 40^th Day

(EA)

You gotta play this third-person shooter (for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3) with a pal in co-op mode. As a pair of mercenaries in war-town Shanghai, you and your friend must stop a madman rolling toward – what else? – world domination. Biggest challenge: choosing along the way whether to have a heart or be a cold-blooded killer. Decisions, decisions!

DVD

The Bourne Trilogy

(Universal)

Universal kicks off its new dual-format discs (Blu-ray on one side, DVD on the other) with three movies that look great either way. The Bourne Identity and The Bourne SupremacyThe Bourne Ultimatum is the classic. James Bond was never this exciting. are terrific action thrillers, but

DVD

Moon

(Sony)

No wonder director Duncan Jones nails his debut movie about a psychological space odyssey: His dad, David Bowie, sang about the same subject 40 years ago. Sam Rockwell plays an astronaut at the end of a three-year space mission, where his only companion is a talking computer. It’s like a cool mash-up of 2001, Silent Running and Major Tom.

BOOK

Phish: The Biography

(Da Capo)

Writer Parke Puterbaugh has spent the past 15 years covering Phish, often as the band’s official biographer. So his book is stuffed with insider details – from their early barnyard gigs to last year’s massive reunion shows. He touches on frontman Trey Anastasio’s recent drug problems, but mostly The Biography is about the music and the band’s (and fans’) relationship to it.

--Michael Gallucci

MUSIC REVIEW -- SADE

Sade
Soldier of Love
(Epic)

You can’t rush Sade. In the 25 years since her debut, she’s released only six albums. Her latest, Soldier of Love, comes a full 10 years after her last one, 2000’s Lovers Rock. But it’s always worth the wait. Here, the warm, simmering R&B of her 1984 debut, Diamond Life, receives a few nips and tucks (marching drums, skittering electronic noises). Yet it’s unmistakably Sade – smooth, cool and impeccably arranged. Her deep, rich voice has lost none of its force over the years. She coats opener “The Moon and the Sky” with lush, smoky tones that make the wide-open spaces she’s singing about the most intimate place in the world. On the title track, a single percussion roll pulls along a spare hook that’s all about the surrounding elements: random sound bursts, handclaps, Sade’s voice. Soldier of Love isn’t always this exciting; some of the late-night ballads drag at a nearly crippling pace. But there’s enough gorgeous music to keep you satisfied for another decade. --Michael Gallucci

MUSIC REVIEW: LIL WAYNE

LIL WAYNE
Rebirth
(Universal Motown)

White guys with backward baseball caps and lousy attitudes aren’t the only ones who shouldn’t jump genres. Apparently it goes both ways. On his long-delayed “rock album” Rebirth, rapper Lil Wayne replaces hard hip-hop beats with soggy guitar riffs and primeval drum thumps straight outta 1999. Opener “American Star” even launches the album with a semi-scorching fret workout that could have been hiding in Eddie Van Halen’s closet all these years. But Rebirth quickly falls into a hard-rock trap. Either Weezy has lousy taste in rock or he actually believes this is what it sounds like. His sole contribution to the genre? Auto-Tune. Only “Drop the World” (as in “I’m gonna pick the world up and drop it on your fuckin’ head”) manages to pack some weight. Just as Fred Durst and dozens of other rap-rock clowns could never quite grasp the fundamentals of either music, Lil Wayne temporarily abandons his rap throne for a record that mistakes volume for power. --Michael Gallucci

MOVIE REVIEW -- STORM

The tempest at the center of Storm has nothing to do with a thunder- and lightning-packed downpour. It’s a political thriller about a Dutch attorney who stumbles on a new batch of war crimes while building evidence against a Serbian army general who may be responsible for ethnic cleansing in Sarajevo.

At the center of this storm is lawyer Hannah Maynard (Kerry Fox), determined to bring the army commander to justice, especially after her chief witness kills himself -- but not before the witness lies in court, effectively damaging whatever case Hannah and her prosecuting team had made against the general (who has been in prison three years awaiting trial).

It doesn’t help matters that Hannah was hoping to head the prosecutor’s office, a job that instead went to the man who’s now her boss (and who’s more than eager to pass on the flimsy case to her). Starting from basically scratch, Hannah begins to uncover new details. For starters, her key witness was telling the truth about the horrors in Bosnia; he just didn’t see them himself. His sister Mira (Anamaria Marinca), however, suffered them firsthand. Not so surprisingly, she doesn’t want to talk about her past. Some thuggish Serbians don’t want her to talk either.

Director Hans-Christian Schmid steers his smart, probing drama into a mystery for much of the film, as Hannah peels away parts of her witnesses’ lives, uncovering new layers of terror. Schmid slowly ratchets up the danger as Hannah burrows deeper and deeper: She dodges a rock thrown through her car window; Mira’s son disappears from school. Both incidents are not-so-subtle, menacing messages to the women to stop meddling. Plus, Hannah’s boss and the court just want to reach a settlement and put the whole thing behind them. So much for justice.

Fox is solid as the strong-minded and dogged Hannah. “I’m not interested in politics,” she says. “My responsibility is to uphold the applicable law.” Storm starts as a courtroom drama, but as her investigation uncovers the secrets behind a bus, a hotel and Serbian officials, it develops into much more. There are no fancy camera moves, stylish visuals or brash mood-setting music -- Schmid builds the dread naturally, and the results are way more suspenseful than most Hollywood thrillers. Along the way, he reveals the battle scars from a war that ultimately amounted to genocide. --Michael Gallucci

MUSIC REVIEW -- YEASAYER

Yeasayer

Odd Blood

(Secretly Canadian)

Yet another group of Brooklyn hipsters, Yeasayer don’t ooze pretension like many of their peers. In fact, several of the songs on their second album, Odd Blood, are more accessible than anything you’ll find in the Dirty Projectors and Grizzly Bear’s combined catalogs. The first single, “Ambling Alp,” even comes pretty close to conventional pop territory. That doesn’t mean Yeasayer have abandoned the tripped-out psych-pop of their 2007 debut; they’ve just learned to corral it more efficiently into songs rather than ideas masquerading as songs. Odd Blood’s best tracks (“Ambling Alp,” “O.N.E.”) borrow Animal Collective’s tribal jams and meld them to peppy ’80s synth-pop. They’re way more ear-friendly -- and way less mind-fucking -- than you’d expect from a band that proudly wears the “experimental indie-rock” tag. --Michael Gallucci

MUSIC REVIEW -- NICK JONAS & THE ADMINISTRATION

NICK JONAS & THE ADMINISTRATION

Who I Am

(Hollywood)

As the most talented and ambitious Jonas Brother, Nick carries a lot of weight. Apparently he also carries a head full of ideas that needs cleared every 10 months or so. On Who I Am, a solo project with a group of session musicians called the Administration, Nick doesn’t stray far from JoBros themes of bad-love-turned-worse and the mean girls who make his life such hell. Never mind he’s only 17 and things will likely become totally unbearable once he settles down and gets married; as “State of Emergency” declares, love is a losing battle for the baby Jonas Brother. The Administration is a funkier bunch than Jonas’ siblings, so Who I Am boasts a more soulful sway than anything Nick has recorded before. And the album’s best songs – the snaky “Rose Garden,” the grown-up pop of the title track -- push Jonas out of his familiar teen-pop territory. The ballads are still kinda soggy, but when JoBros eventually go their own ways, Nick should be just fine. As long as he stays away from those evil women. --Michael Gallucci

CULTURE JAMMING -- JANUARY 27

TOP PICK

Bayonetta

(Sega)

In the year’s first must-play videogame, you’re a witch with some big weapons and killer moves (including one that gives you humongous fists to bash enemies with). This action game (for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3) blends intense button-mashing with solid storytelling. Best: Finishing moves incorporate old-school torture devices like the guillotine and iron maiden.

CD

Whitney Houston – 25^th Anniversary Edition

(Arista/Legacy)

Before the doodie bubbles, before declaring crack-is-whack and before she became one of the world’s top divas, Houston was a 21-year-old R&B singer primed for stardom by record-company legend Clive Davis. Her 1985 debut glistens in this deluxe edition, which includes five bonus tracks. A DVD features music videos and early TV appearances, including her first.

DVD

The Hurt Locker

(Summit)

Here’s your chance to see one of last year’s best movies (and an Oscar hopeful), which practically nobody saw in theaters. Too bad, because Kathryn Bigelow’s smart film about a Baghdad bomb squad deserves a big-screen viewing. So watch it on Blu-ray, where the terrific action sequences tangle with the more personal stuff (featuring an excellent Jeremy Renner).

DVD

Magnolia

(Warner)

It celebrated its 10^th anniversary last year, but Paul Thomas Anderson’s stunning epic now makes its Blu-ray debut in a set that includes a production diary, extended scenes and an Aimee Mann music video. Anderson’s sprawling tale of human frailty (eight years before he tackled the same subject in There Will Be Blood) stands as one of the ’90s’ best movies.

DVD

9

(Universal)

Last year’s post-apocalyptic CGI movie looks dazzling on Blu-ray. But you may want to keep the little ones away from this story about tiny stitched-together creatures who struggle to survive in a menacing wasteland (spoiler alert: There aren’t nine of them at the end). Extras include commentary, deleted scenes and the original short film that inspired the film.

--Michael Gallucci