ALBUMS

THEN:

The Good, The Bad & The Queen – The Good The Bad & The Queen
There’s side projects, there’s super groups, and there’s the super-side-project-asaurus that is The Good, The Bad & The Queen. Singer Damon Albarn of Gorillaz/Blur, bassist Paul Simonon of The Clash, guitarist Simon Tong of The Verve, and Fela Kuti drum legend Tony Allen got together in 2006 and made beautiful music together. Sparse, lush, evocative and...mail us your own exclamatory adjectives when you buy the album.

NOW:

Court Yard Hounds – Court Yard Hounds
Court Yard Hounds is a side-project by Martie McGuire and Emily Robison, who you may know as two-thirds of the Dixie Chicks. Fear not, the Chicks haven’t disbanded...the sisters are just taking a personal detour with a few friends to make a little music on the side. Great tunes, great voices and great storytelling. A lovely side trip for Dixie Chicks fans, country fans, or fans of good music.

BOOKS

THEN:

A Drink Before the War by Dennis Lehane
This is the author that brought moviegoers Shutter Island, Mystic River, and Gone Baby Gone. But the true Lehane fans are devotees of the Kenzie-Gennaro detective series that starts with A Drink Before the War. Full of the grit and hardworking spirit that permeates his hometown of Boston (where the novels also make their home), Lehane’s detective series is rewarding, gripping, and guaranteed to leave you begging for more.

NOW:

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest by Stieg Larsson
The exciting conclusion to Stieg Larsson’s bestselling Millennium Trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who Played with Fire). It’s not without a tinge of sadness that this, Larsson’s last novel before his untimely death, will be the close of a beloved series that has already spawned a movie version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. If you’re not yet a Larsson fan, you soon will be.

FILMS

THEN:

Mad Max
“I am the Nightrider. I am the rocker. I am the roller. I am the out of controller...” In 1978, with barely a few dollars to his name, Australian filmmaker George Miller strapped a few cameras to the hood of some Australian cars, and took an unknown Australian actor named Mel Gibson and made a brutal revenge film. Gonzo, guerrilla filmmaking at its finest, Mad Max is a cult classic that’s still as vivid and visceral an experience today as it was 32 years ago.

NOW:

The Road
Based on the acclaimed novel by Cormac McCarthy, The Road stars Viggo Mortensen in a dystopian tale of survival and love in the dark and deadly ruins of the post-apocalypse. It would be almost redundant to say that Mortensen gives the performance of a lifetime, because, well, if you can name the last time Viggo gave a bad showing, we’d love to know about it.