Rather than slogging through a lake of reviews to find something you’re just going to put down after 30 minutes, Cult of Mac has compiled this list of the best new movies, albums and books to come out this week.
Enjoy!
Best New Books
Hatching Twitter
by Nick Bilton
In 2005, Odeo was a struggling podcasting start-up founded by free-range hacker Noah Glass and staffed by a motley crew of anarchists. Less than two years later, its days were numbered and half the staff had been let go. But out of Odeo’s ashes, the remaining employees worked on a little side venture . . . that by 2013 had become an $11.5 billion business – Twitter.
That much is widely known. But the full story of Twitter’s hatching has never been told before. It’s a drama of betrayed friendships and high-stakes power struggles, as the founders went from everyday engineers to wealthy celebrities featured on magazine covers, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Daily Show, and Time’s list of the world’s most influential people.
New York Times columnist and reporter Nick Bilton takes readers behind the scenes as Twitter grew at exponential speeds and gets inside the heads of the four hackers out of whom the company tumbled: Ev Williams, Jack Dorsey, Christopher Stone, and Noah Glass.
Rob Delaney: Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage.
by Rob Delaney
Rob Delaney is a father, a husband, a comedian, a writer. He is the author of an endless stream of beautiful, insane jokes on Twitter that force you to pause with their absurdity. He is sober. He is sometimes brave. He speaks French. He has bungee jumped off the Manhattan Bridge. He enjoys antagonizing political figures. He broke into an abandoned mental hospital with his mother.
He’s also one of the funniest stand-up comics I’ve seen in person with a weird cornucopia of recklessly imaginative jokes that are both hilarious and repulsive at once. His new book – Rob Delaney: Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage. – reveals the hilarious and heartbreaking true stories of how Rob came to be the funniest man on Twitter today.
Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football
by Rich Cohen
For Rich Cohen and millions of other fans, the 1985 Chicago Bears were more than a football team: they were the greatest football team ever–a gang of colorful nuts, dancing and pounding their way to victory. They won a Super Bowl and saved a city.
In Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football, Rich Cohen tracks down the coaches and players from the team to find out what made the fantastic offense of Walter Payton and QB Jim McMahon work so well. Did they really hate the guys on the other side? Readers who don’t even like sports will still enjoy Cohen’s story about the love of his favorite game. The end result is a portrait of not just a team, but a city and a game: its history, its future, its fallen men, its immortal heroes. But mostly it’s about being a fan, about loving too much.
Best New Albums
Cut Copy – Free Your Mind
Melbourne’s Cut Copy came to ether in the early ’00s, when the rediscovery of ’80’s electro and dance pop was in full flower. Yet one of the group’s great strengths is the fact that it is a group, with a flesh-and-blood rhythm section–not just one person behind a bank of gear. The Aussie quartet’s fourth album reinforces that notion, putting crucial yuan muscle behind the sparkling synth riffs. Sure, tunes like “Footsteps” are fueled by an Italo-disco-flavored, club friendly feel. But it’s Ben Browning’s bass guitar lines that lend the greatest gravitas to the elegant synth-pop of “In Memory Capsule,” while Mitchell Scott’s analog drum kit brings a bit of vital rock ballast to “Dark Corners & Mountain Tops” and the luminous, power ballad-esque “Walking in the Sky.” So while there’s little on Free Your Mind that couldn’t drive dancers to exhaustion, the album’s essence is more than just momentum.
M.I.A. – Matangi
“Paper Planes” launched M.I.A. into fame but if you’re not familiar with the singer’s entire musical arsenal, her latest album provides a fun and crazy take on pop culture. Matangi is the fourth studio album by English-Sri Lankan recording artist M.I.A., released on 1 November 2013 on her own label, N.E.E.T. Recordings, through Interscope Records.
The album, which is the follow-up to her 2010 album Maya, features collaborations and production from The Weeknd, Switch, Hit-Boy, Danja, The Partysquad, Surkin and others.It also features songs like “Bad Girls,” “Bring The Noize,” “Come Walk With Me,” and “Y.A.L.A.”
Eminem – The Marshall Mathers LP 2
Few figures in hip-hop have changed the game as fundamentally as Marshall Mathers. The Detroit emcee’s cutting wordplay and playfully sadistic wit have earned him fans beyond hip-hop’s borders and made him one of the best-selling musicians of all time. The Marshall Mathers LP 2 –Eminem’s first solo endeavor since 2010’s multiplatinum Recovery–comes charging out of the gate with “Bezerk,” a Rick Rubin-produced track that chopps up the heavy guitars of Billy Squier’s “The Stroke,” name-checks Public Enemy, and delivers a flurry of jabs at celebrities. In short: classic Eminem.
Combining forces with Rubin and longtime collaborator Dr. Dre, The Marshall Mathers LP 2 is gritty, raw, and an appropriately provocative sequel to Eminem’s groundbreaking 2000 release. Huge, hard-hitting singles like “Survival” and “Rap God” make it one of the artist’s most uncompromising albums to date.
Best New Movies
Blackfish
Killer whales are beloved, majestic, friendly giants, yet infamous for their capacity to kill viciously. Blackfish unravels the complexities of the dichotomy, employing the story of the notorious performing whale Tilikum, who–unlike any orca in the wild–has taken the lives of several people while in captivity. Blackfish expands on the discussion of whether it’s ethical to keep orcas and other whales in captivity, as well as the consequences of continuing to do so.
We’re The Millers
David Clark is a small-time pot dealer who likes to keep a low profile. His clientele includes chefs and soccer moms, but no kids. He learns the hard way that no good deed goes unpunished when he tries to help out some local teens and winds up getting jumped by a trio of gutter punks. Stealing his stash and his cash, they leave him in major debt to his supplier, Brad. In order to wipe the slate clean–and maintain a clean bill of health–David agrees to become a big time drug smuggler for Brad and bring a shipment over from Mexico. What could go wrong?
The comedy finds David twisting the arms of his neighbors to create a fake family and roll their RV to the border of Mexico and back during Fourth of July weekend where everything ends with a bang.
2Guns
Okay get this, there’s a cranky undercover operative who’s a total badass–played by Academy Award winner Denzel Washington–who begrudgingly joins forces with a young, up-and-coming badass undercover operative–played by none of than Mr. Funky Bunch himself, Marky Mark Whalberg.
The two badass undercover operatives then take on a drug cartel but it blows up in their faces. Once they join forces everyone suddenly wants them dead so they have to strip themselves of the hatreds for each other and work together to get out alive. Yes, it’s your buddy-cop action movie with a new twist, but there’s no one funner to watch on the screen than Denzel Washington strutting around like the coolest cop to ever walk the planet.
