Rather than slogging through a lake of reviews to find something you’re just going to put down after 10 minutes, Cult of Mac has once again waded through the iTunes store to compile a list of the best new albums, books and movies to come out this week.
Enjoy!
Movies
American Hustle
Starring Christian Bale as a fat but brilliant con man who is forced to work for a wild FBI agent (Bradley Cooper) alongside his seductive partner Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), American Hustle is full of allure, compelling characters and enough conning to shake the political foundations of New York. Bale and Amy Adams take center-stage but it’s Jennifer Lawrence who steals the show with her hilarious portrayal of Bale’s unpredictable wife. It was snubbed big time at the Oscars, but what do they know?
iTunes – $17.99
Anchorman 2: Unrated
Rather than taking the path of the Hangover sequels and regurgitating the same formula that made the first movie a huge hit, Anchorman 2 sees America’s favorite co-anchor lose his job to his wife before tumbling to bottom of broadcast news. Re-assembling the news team, Ron takes on a new rival on 24-hour new network. When Ron and the team are put on the graveyard shift they’re forced to revolutionize the way the news is told, in what’s been called one of the best comedies of 2013.
iTunes – $19.99
Inside Llewyn Davis
Loosely inspired by the story of musician Dave Van Ronk, Inside Llewyn Davis is the hilariously deadpan odyssey of the title character, a 60s folk singer in New York’s Greenwich village and his quest to break into the music scene while still reeling from the death of his musical partner.
iTunes – $17.99
Albums
Frankie Cosmos – Zentrophy
In a lot of ways, 19-year-old Gretta Kline, stage name Frankie Cosmos, reminds me a lot of Best Coast. She’s got the pared down indie-pop guitar riffs with an unassuming 60s girl-group voice. Her debut album Zentrophy packs 10 short songs in just over 20 minutes in length total, becoming our favorite short album of the week.
iTunes – $7.99
Elbow – The Takeoff and Landing of Everything
Six albums into their storied career, Elbow has become one of the U.K.’s most prominent bands thanks to their signature brand of atmospheric rock. In The Take Off and Landing of Everything the group faces the challenge of getting older and answers with spectacular middle-aged panache. It’s the best album by a bunch of old dudes to come along since Pearl Jam’s Lightning Bolt.
iTunes – $9.99
Young Money – Rise of an Empire
This week’s offerings from the rap world were pretty weak but there are a few notable tracks to be found on Young Money’s label-line up album. Lil Wayne drops some of his best verses in a year, alongside Nicki Minaj. Tyga is sprinkled over a few songs with great aplomb, while Drake’s Trophies, with its Rocky theme-type horn sample, is my new jam to jog to.
iTunes – $13.99
Books
How Paris Became Paris
by Joan DeJean
Tourist still flock to the City of Lights like moths to a flame, but before becoming one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, Paris underwent a century of planned development to make it both lovely and exciting. In this book, Joan DeJean surveys the rise of Paris as a modern city and shows readers how it formed its modern identity in the early 17th-century to become the capital that would revolutionize our concept of the city and urban life.
iTunes – $10.99
Shotgun Lovesongs
by Nickolas Butler
After growing up together in Little Wing, a small town in Wisconsin, four friends are reunited years later for a friend’s wedding. Trying to escape the town by becoming a commodities trader, rodeo cowboys and a rock star, they are tied to together by their attraction to Beth. In this novel, the American heartland is just as much a character as the protagonists who struggle to find the meaning of adult friendship and love.
iTunes – $12.99
Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time
by Brigid Schulte
You’re not alone in feeling like you have too many time conflicts between, work, family, and play. Author Brigid Schulte sets out in her new book Overwhelmed to understand why we all feel so overextended and what to do about it. As she darts around the globe from a time research conference in Paris, neuroscientists at Yale who are studying whether feeling overwhelmed actually shrinks your brain, to new lawsuits about workplace bias, Schulte finds answers that are both illuminating and perplexing in this interesting study on human behavior.
iTunes – $10.99
