Lousy Title, Great Record

Spoon goes Ga Ga. Plus: Sienna faces the press, and more

July 10, 2007

MUSIC: Too cheap to spring for the eight-gig iPhone? This week brings several reasons to regret the decision. Chief among them: Spoon's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, which pairs heartbreaking lyrics (both lovesick and political) with a sort of neo-Stones brand of funkiness. Also of note are Family Tree, a collection of Nick Drake rarities, Our Love to Admire from Interpol, Super Taranta from Gogol Bordello, Justice's dance-friendly Cross, Smashing Pumpkins' surprisingly not-awful Zeitgeist, and Werewolves and Lollipops, a new comedy album from rat-voiced Patton Oswalt.

TV: Lots of guilt, little pleasure: Barry Bonds starts in tonight's MLB All-Star Game on FOX, while Posh and Becks go to Hollywood in Victoria Beckham: Coming to America Monday on NBC. And on Sunday, two washed-up celebs use VH1 as their personal eHarmony in Scott Baio is 45…and Single and Rock of Love with Bret Michaels.

MOVIES: Steve Buscemi directs and stars in a remake of slain Dutchman Theo van Gogh's Interview, about a washed-up journo assigned to grill a seemingly vapid soap star (played by Sienna Miller).

BOOKS: Alan Weisman's The World Without Us ponders a post-people earth (hint: less pollution), while Bob Novak's memoir The Prince of Darkness takes on Plame-gate (hint: Joseph Wilson is "an asshole"). In fiction, Austrian experimentalist Peter Handke cribs from Don Quixote for Crossing the Sierra de Gredos, about a woman who hires a scribe to document her Spanish excursion.

DVD: Oscar-nominated (and all-too-timely) doc Iraq in Fragments deserves to find a larger audience on video. Lighter is The Film Crew: Hollywood After Dark, in which some of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 jokesters skewer a 1960s B-movie starring Rue McClanahan as a stripper.

WEB: Unless Congress steps in at the last minute—an unlikely prospect—royalty rates for Web broadcasters will increase drastically on July 15. Translation: Get in your listens now, because even bigger Webcasters like Pandora and WOXY might not survive the change intact.