Post-Collegiate

The Van Wilder guy gets serious, “Layla” tells her side, and more picks

August 28, 2007

MOVIES: He may be best known for Van Wilder, but Ryan Reynolds is surprisingly good in three different roles in The Nines. A Clockwork Orange legend Malcolm McDowell, meanwhile, continues to move in the opposite artistic direction in Rob Zombie's "re-imagined" Halloween, and Balls of Fury blazes a new cinematic trail (provided you completely missed both Dodgeball and Blades of Glory).

BOOKS: Taschen's Pierre & Gilles: Double Je, 1976–2007 celebrates three decades of the French duo's stylized portraits; John Steinbeck's collection of World War II dispatches, Once There Was a War, gets the Penguin Classics treatment; and decades after inspiring both "Something" and "Layla," Pattie Boyd cashes in with Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me.

MUSIC: Art-punk trio Liars continue to experiment on their dark and mellow fourth album, Liars; English new ravers New Young Pony Club debut with Fantastic Playroom; and Lyle Lovett makes what we think is some kind of veiled anatomical joke with It's Not Big, It's Large.

TV: Looking for smart television? Maybe next week. Monday brings The Hunt For: Monster Sharks on Spike, while HBO throws a bit more dirt on the grave of John From Cincinnati with Justin Timberlake: Futuresex/Loveshow. Come Thursday, though, you may find yourself longing for a J.T. replay as MTV trots out Celebrity Rap Superstar, in which eight "celebs" and their MC mentors (including, yes, Tone-Loc) square off in hip-hop battles.

DVD: Can you compensate for the lack of an instrument with an excess of spandex? Air Guitar Nation ponders the question, while DangerMouse: The Complete Series features all 89 episodes of the animated British spy spoof. And season one of Friday Night Lights deserves to find more viewers on DVD than it did on TV last season.

WEB: If you can't make it to Seattle's Bumbershoot arts festival for three days of hipster hilarity and indie cred, local radio station KEXP is streaming select performances. And while Google Earth's new "Sky" feature may be an amazing feat of technical wizardry, we've been too busy re-watching the dorktastic introductory video to actually give it a try.