Nuts Behind the Wheel

A wacky Brit car show, Taxi Driver on DVD, and more

August 14, 2007

TELEVISION: After a few backfires—an edited-beyond-recognition version on BBC World, an American edition that was never aired—Top Gear is finally coming stateside. The U.K.'s irreverent auto show—think Car Talk meets Jackass—makes its U.S. debut in unadulterated form Monday on BBC America. But fear not, patriotic motorists: NASCAR in Primetime, a beneath-the-hood look at the sport of Ricky Bobby, premieres tomorrow on ABC.

MOVIES: With a name like Superbad, the Judd Apatow-produced comedy better be good. (It is.) Elsewhere, it’s documentary season: Leo DiCaprio gets Gore-y with The 11th Hour; Manda Bala is an Errol Morris-style riff on corruption in Brazil; and The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, concerns two Donkey Kong aficionados competing for a Guinness World Record. Sounds like an Apatow project.

DVD: Three choices for tough guys: Eclipse’s three-disc set of director Sam Fuller’s action-packed first movies; a new edition of Taxi Driver, with feature-length commentary from Fuller disciple Scorsese; and the first season of the original The Fugitive. Also, the two-disc Inland Empire includes 75 minutes of footage cut from David Lynch’s already overlong (albeit mesmerizing) film.

BOOKS: To celebrate the 50th anniversary of On the Road, Viking is publishing Jack Kerouac’s legendary 1951 first draft in an Original Scroll edition—a neat showcase for some quality typing, as Capote might’ve said. Meanwhile, in Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster, Dana Thomas decries what globalization has done to Old World craftsmanship. It’s not tailoring, it’s stitching (to continue the theme).

MUSIC: Never mind the titles, enjoy the grooves on both Hey Hey My My Yo Yo, by Danish duo Junior Senior, and Hermaphrodite, by Black Dice’s Eric Copeland. Or check out the jagged pop of The Coral’s Roots & Echoes or the smirky college rock of Cake’s B-Sides and Rarities.

WEB: Skinny and white? Don’t let that stop you from auditioning for the lead in Biggie Smalls biopic Notorious at www.biggiecasting.com (though our money’s on this kid ). Start researching the role at the cool new directory-style search site Spock.com.