Nerdy Pretty Things

A resurgent Björk, vintage computers as art, and more picks

May 8, 2007

MUSIC: Björk follows up a fierce Coachella performance with Volta, featuring support from Antony, Timbaland, and—you guessed it—an Icelandic brass section. Less exuberant are New Moon, the posthumous B-sides comp from Elliott Smith, and God Save the Clientele, in which Brit-rockers the Clientele get psychedelic.

BOOKS: In his entrancing photo tome Core Memory, Mark Richard documents the strange beauty of seventies-era computers, while photographer Taryn Simon's An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar mines a different vein with similar results. And which would Marilyn prefer—the Arthur Miller anthology Presence or David Talbot's Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years?

MOVIES: As the name implies, 28 Weeks Later (above) takes place several months after its predecessor (that would be the British zombie horror flick not the Sandra Bullock rehab movie), while Day Night Day Night puts us in the shoes of a suicide bomber wandering the streets of Manhattan. Our pick: The Flock, which marks the Hollywood bow of Infernal Affairs mastermind Andrew Lau.

WEB: Despite a rocky launch, Joost is worth a look, thanks to top-quality, feature-length—and fully legal—video. Elsewhere, TBS's new Super Deluxe mixes original and user-generated comedy content, while on Sunday IFC.com premieres its first Web series, Getting Away with Murder.

TV: Thursday brings ABC's Traveler, about two dudes falsely accused of terrorism, and BBC America's Innocent, which proves that the Brits can even outdo our legal procedurals.

DVD: It's a Big week, in name anyway: The flick where Tom Hanks plays a kid in the body of a man with a trampoline in his apartment gets a special two-disc edition (as does the Hanks-directed trifle That Thing You Do!). Ed Norton, meanwhile, finds big trouble in little China in The Painted Veil.