InDigest Picks

Books:
Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfallby Kazuo Ishiguro [Knopf]
+ Kazuo Ishiguro can be a little stuffy. (It's no coincidence that Merchant & Ivory have adapted his stories into films.) But Ishiguro's formality can be a thing of beauty. Like it is in Nocturnes, Ishiguro's first collection of short fiction. Nocturnes is comprised of five intertwining, yet separate, stories that have music at their core. A jazz musician who is convinced that plastic surgery will aid his ailing career, a man so obsessed with music and opinion that it's the only thing he is valued for, in each story music plays a different role, but Ishiguro utilizes these characters and their different lives to reveal the many ways that music and art infiltrate our lives in meaningful ways.

Odd and the Frost Giantsby Neil Gaiman [HarperCollins]
+ Neil Gaiman's writing hits that sweet spot between young adult, literary and comic book novels. No matter which home the novel will ultimately be marketed to they are always appealing all around. Gaiman is following up his Newbery Award winning novel The Graveyard Book with a story about Odd, a boy growing up in a Norwegian town whose father was killed during a Viking expedition. He is now going to Asgard to stop the Ice Giants from running the city of the gods. I think I said this about a book a couple weeks back, but I'll reuse it: Awesome.

Music:
Volcano Choir - Unmap[Jagjaguwar]
+ The new group which combines the members of Milwaukee's Collections of Colonies of Bees (including Jon Mueller, whose newest solo album is incredible) and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. It's got Vernon's chilling falsetto and the eerie, percussion heavy, ambient swagger of Collections of Colonies of Bees. Go to LaLa right now and listen to "Seeplymouth" and "Husks and Shells." Or, alternatively, have a free download of "Island, IS."

To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie - Marlone[Kranky]

+ To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie has always been a good band, but on Marlone I was often questioning whether this was even the same band. This is a damn good record. Jehna Wilhelm's voice is striking, and their compositions that land somewhere between ambient and psych. The album is head a shoulders above anything they've done so far. It loses some of the pop edge they used to have (though it's still there) and sound a little more like they belong on Kranky. But they also remind the ways ambient and organic music can be infectious and contain elements of pop.

In Theaters:
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (Jon Krasinski) [IFC]
+ The film, based on the novel by David Foster Wallace, has been received with a small legion of luke-warm reviews. Nonetheless, it is DFW and that makes it engaging, at least in the fashion where it'll be interesting to look into the film and what the filmmakers saw at work in DFW's book.


DVD:
30 Rock - Season Three[Universal]
+ The third season of 30 Rock may not have been their best, but after they got over the need to have a guest star in every episode (though Oprah was surprisingly funny) the season really picked up. The second will likely always stand as their shining moment, but this is one of the best comedies that's ever graced network TV.

Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf or Death(Nick Park) [Aardman / Lyons / Hit Ent]
+ That's right. The new Wallace & Gromit hits DVD today. Anyone who doesn't like Wallace & Gromit doesn't have a soul. There are no arguments to be had over this one. Sorry.

Comics/Graphic Novels:
American McGee's Grimm #5 [IDW Publishing]
+ American McGee's Grimm may be the only comic book series based on a video game that I've ever had any appreciation for. The central premise of the series is that Grimm, this heinous looking little troll-ish figure, is out to destroy everything that makes comics boring. So, he does his little fart bomb (a sort of fighting maneuver that makes people confused and generally suck at whatever it is Grimm wants them to suck at) to superheroes and the bad guys win. He creates an army of zombies to kill the "good guys" in an old west town. Sure, it's kind of silly, but it's funny and the artwork is truly amazing.

Astonishing X-Men Omnibusby Joss Whedon and John Cassaday and X-Men Origins[Marvel]
As Marvel continues to issue "Origins" comics and films for X-Men characters (a sequel to the Wolverine film is in the works along with an Origins film on Magneto and others), this book goes back and looks through their known origins thus far. This Graphic Novel collects X-Men: Origins: Colossus, Jean Grey, Beast, Wolverine, Sabretooth, and Gambit. Also out is an omnibus of Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men series. Whedon is a master of comics, and this he may be the best writer of X-Men comics Marvel ever had.