Office, Politics

Lars von Trier does comedy, Al Gore less so, and more picks

May 22, 2007

MOVIES: The latest Pirates of the Caribbean installment, above center, lumbers into theaters this weekend, but the week's most newsworthy release has to be The Boss of It All, an office comedy from Lars von Trier of all people (hey, it's apparently twice as funny as Dogville). Elsewhere, Charlotte Gainsbourg brings sexy back to circa-1900 Italian-American immigration in Golden Door, and thriller Angel-A marks Luc Besson's first French-language film since The Professional.

TV: American Idol and Lost sign off this week, but don't disconnect the DVR just yet: Steven Spielberg's On the Lot, premiering tonight on Fox, takes the Idol approach to movies, with hopefuls competing for a development deal. Tomorrow night PBS celebrates the departing British PM in The Blair Decade, and Saturday marks the debut of HBO's ambitious adaptation of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

DVD: The making-of doc that accompanies Letters From Iwo Jima may well be more interesting than the film, while another WWII flick, Steven Soderbergh's The Good German, deserves a bigger audience on video. And while we're at it, same goes for Mel Gibson's Apocalypto.

MUSIC: Ozzy Osbourne releases Black Rain, his first album recorded sober (and the better for it), while on the indie front, Brooklynites the National present the elegiac Boxer.

BOOKS: Al Gore preaches to the choir in The Assault on Reason, while the Douglas Brinkley–edited The Reagan Diaries provides a showcase for the Gipper's private thoughts (and spiffy penmanship). Also of note is Khaled Hosseini's Kite Runner follow-up, A Thousand Splendid Suns.

WEB: Online video addicts have two more ways to waste work hours: thedailytube.com and babelgum.com, both still in beta. And it's a big week for HBO comics past (Bob Odenkirk has a new online series, Derek & Simon) and present (Flight of the Conchords, the first episode of which is now available on MySpace).