Culture Catch-up: Dolly Parton digs those days
Music. It might sound cheesy to record an album of hits from the '60s and '70s, but if Those Were the Days ($19) had to be a dairy product, it would be the creme de la creme. Dolly Parton rounded up some stars from the past (like Yusuf Islam, Kris Kristofferson, and Judy Collins) as well as contemporary chart-toppers (like Norah Jones, Keith Urban, and Alison Krauss) to partner with her on classic tunes. Her country-tinged "Where Do the Children Play" is positively addictive, as are many of the other tracks, including "Blowin' in the Wind," "Turn, Turn, Turn," and "Me and Bobby McGee."
Books. Reviewers won't stop beating up on Stephen King's latest novel, The Colorado Kid ($6). It's part of the Hard Case Crime series that celebrates the lost art of pulp fiction. The Kid cover has the right kind of sexy cover image: a seductive redhead in a cleavage-friendly dress. But the story about two geezers from a newspaper in Maine yapping about an unsolved murder to a young intern isn't hard-boiled enough for the pulp crowd. King, though, knows how to tell a riveting tale, so it certainly ain't bad. A lesser-known author who has a way with words, Colby Buzzell, has a stunning debut with My War: Killing Time in Iraq ($26). Weary of dead-end jobs, Buzzell decided to enlist in the Army, and then off he went to war as a machine gunner. He chronicled the car bombings, mortar attacks, and his frustration in a blog that caught the eye of publishers. As Kirkus Reviews noted, "If military recruitment is down now, wait till the kids read this book."
DVDs. Before HBO or Showtime, there was another cable network devoted to film that made the movie buffs of L.A. go gaga. Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession ($25) documents the rise and fall of the quirky station that fed viewers the works of cinema greats like Kurosawa and Peckinpah and pioneered the notion of the director's cut through the talents of tortured film genius Jerry Harvey, who killed his wife and then committed suicide in 1988. Interviews with Robert Altman, Quentin Tarantino (convulsing with excitement as always), and others are interspersed with clips from the movies Z Channel catapulted to the attention of the film world. Aspiring filmmakers may get similarly all aquiver about the DVD of director Ridley Scott's Crusades epic, Kingdom of Heaven ($30). Instead of a ready-made "making of" featurette, there's an "interactive production grid." Um, what is that? Well, it's a screen that lets viewers decide whether they want to hear about the pre-production, the production, or the post-production, and whether they want to hear it from the perspective of the cast, the director, or the crew. There are 16 choices in all, totaling about 125 minutes. In theory, it sounds fun, and everybody loves giving Orlando Bloom more screen time. But no making-of featurette should be longer than the average movie.
TV. When he was just 26, Albert Einstein stumbled upon the little equation E=mc2. Oh, and he also proved atoms existed and did some work with light that later won him the Nobel Prize. It's the 100th anniversary of that year, but instead of wallowing in self-pity because your accomplishments aren't anywhere nearly as cool, watch the findings unfold on NOVA: Einstein's Big Idea (PBS, October 11, 8 p.m. EDT), a docudrama about Einstein and his intellectual predecessors narrated by John Lithgow. Science is way more fun when acted out in period costume.
We love to hate Ann Curry, so it's a wee bit annoying that the Today show newsreader comes off extremely likable in Intimate Portrait: Ann Curry (Lifetime, October 9, 11 p.m. EDT). She does admit to flubbing up frequently, though–there's a blooper reel of her messing up her lines. And then there's all this stuff about how hard she works, and how she saved her sister from breast cancer, and the fact that she's growing her hair long for Locks of Love. OK, OK, Ann! We love you. We were wrong.
Movies. But as much as we admire Ann and the rest of the network news gang, they are no match for the gravitas and gutsiness of Edward R. Murrow and his crew in Good Night, and Good Luck, which documents the newsman's confrontation with rabid Commie hunter Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Directed and cowritten by George Clooney, who also appears onscreen as Murrow's producer Fred Friendly, the black-and-white flick is concise but powerful. And in case you're wondering which actor is channeling the spitting image of the junior senator from Wisconsin, it's McCarthy himself from archival footage. He may not have been a good politician, but darn can he act. Russian spies aren't the problem in the delightful Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. The enemy of the claymation duo is a giant hare that's terrorizing English vegetable gardens. But no, animator/creator Nick Park was not inspired by Bunnicula. "I thought this was original, using a rabbit in a horror movie genre," he told U.S. News's Marc Silver.