Music. The surprise album of the week is the soundtrack for the indie movie Happy Endings ($9), featuring the torchy stylings of . . . actress Maggie Gyllenhaal. Who knew she could sing? And not only that, hard-boiled rock critics say that she takes the Billy Joel classic "Just the Way You Are" and strips away the sap. Two new box sets have enough tunes to entertain you for the rest of the summer and much of the fall. Whatever. The '90s Pop and Culture Box ($106) comes packaged with coffee beans to remind you that Starbucks stole your soul in that glorious decade. The eclectic brew of songs on the seven CDs ranges from "Whoop! (There It Is)" to "Mmmbop." Mmmunderwhelmed? Truly timeless tunes await on The Legend ($50), a four-disk set devoted to Johnny Cash's greatest hits and obscure gems. If you really like Cash, you'll get the deluxe edition ($330), which comes with an extra CD, a DVD, and a lithograph portrait by Mark Burkhardt. Maybe that'll tide you over until Walk the Line, the biopic starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, opens in November.
Theater. For fans of another John, that guy in The Beatles, you're going to have to wait just a wee bit longer for Lennon the biomusical to open on Broadway. The powers that be are gonna change a few things up and add in a song between the old opening date (August 4) and the brand-spanking-new opening date (August 14). What they probably won't be changing is the premise–every member of the cast (male, female, black, white) plays Lennon–which apparently got Yoko Ono excited about the project. She OK'd the use of three rare Lennon tunes, "India, India," "I Don't Want to Lose You," and "Cookin'.'"
DVDs. A more sure bet may be the two-disk DVD for The High and the Mighty ($20), the John Wayne classic about disaster striking an airplane en route from Hawaii to San Francisco. It hits shelves along with Island in the Sky ($15), another Wayne flying flick that shared the same director (William A. Wellman) and writer (Ernest K. Gann). In that one, "the Duke" is the pilot of a plane that crashes in the wilds of Canada. Another retro favorite coming to a shelf near you is The Complete Thin Man Collection ($60). On seven DVDs, the lovable duo of William Powell and Myrna Loy star as Nick and Nora Charles, sleuthing sophisticates who appreciate a good martini.
Books.A Woman in Berlin: Six Weeks in the Conquered City ($23), written by an anonymous journalist between April and June of 1945, tells the story of mass rapes by the victorious Red Army and postwar starvation. When the diary was first published in the mid-1950s, the author (who died in 2001) was decried as immoral for portraying German women in a bad light. Readers today will undoubtedly think differently.
