'Head Cases

Thom Yorke's tip jar, plus the Hives, Ian Curtis, and more picks

October 9, 2007

MUSIC: What's In Rainbows, the new pay-what-you-want album from Radiohead, really worth? You've got till tomorrow to set your price. Meanwhile, today in actual stores you'll find The Flying Club Cup from Beirut, The Black and White Album from the Hives, and worthy new releases from Bob Pollard, Band of Horses, and Sunset Rubdown. And this might not be saying much, but Steve Jablonsky's orchestral score for Transformers is way better than the movie.

BOOKS: Sadly, the funniest thing about Stephen Colbert's I Am America (And So Can You!) is the title. Elsewhere, real-life blowhard Paul Krugman offers The Conscience of a Liberal, and for his latest stunt A.J. Jacobs grows a really thick beard in The Year of Living Biblically. And, not to be outdone by that cheater Pattie Boyd, Eric Clapton tells his side of things in Clapton.

MOVIES: Jude Law continues to trudge in Michael Caine's footsteps in a remake of 1972's Sleuth, while Ian Curtis comes back to life in Anton Corbijn's Control. Michael Clayton goes wide, and director James Gray reteams with Mark Wahlberg (and Joaquin Phoenix and Robert Duvall) in the melodrama We Own the Night.

TV: Can Irv Gotti rebuild Murder Inc.? Gotti's Way, premiering Monday on VH1, is evidently his way of locking in cash flow either way. And steel yourself for another round of lame "sexy time" imitators as Borat goes into heavy rotation on HBO beginning Saturday.

DVD: Gus Van Sant's low-fi favorite Mala Noche gets the Criterion treatment, and Devil's Night comes early with 28 Weeks Later, a 25th-anniversary edition of Poltergeist and Adam Sandler's post-9/11 movie, Reign Over Me.