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 Albums

Ryan Hemsworth – Guilt Trips

 Canadian DJ and producer Ryan Hemsworth has made a name for himself by producing a mountain of spacey instrumentals for rappers like Deniro Farrar,  Shady Blaze, and Berkley’s 100s while also creating some hot remixes from artists such as Kanye West, Frank Ocean and Cat Power, but Guilt Trips marks Hemsworth first solo record, and what a joy it is.

Hemsworth’s sound teeters along the edge of hip-hop and dance music without fully crossing over into either for a truly unique and grounded sound that’s sprinkled with enough R&B to keep it away from being “too experimental” for casual listeners without drowning in pop.

After releasing his Still Awake EP in May, Hemsworth’s Guilt Trip focuses on adding clarity to his sound by reining in his wandering instrumentals and giving vocals a stronger emphasis. You won’t find any superstar guest appearances on the album, but featured verses from spitters like Haleek Maul and Kitty prove that Hemsworth can produce hit pop tracks like the best of them.

iTunes – $9.99

Poliça – Shulamith

If Shulamith proves anything, it’s that the Minneapolis group’s sudden success is no fluke. Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon once famously said that POLIÇA was the best band he ever heard, and he sings along to the mysterious lyrics of “Tiff.”

The ambling percussion of “I Need $” shares the brio and aesthetic of hip-hop as Channy Leaneagh glides and freestyles over the song’s icy plains. Her haunting processed vocals meld with the echoing effect of two drum kits, a super-funky bass guitar, and the trip-hoppy exhalations of an alien synthesizer. I wall makes a potent statement: to be a modern creature is to reside in the surreal space between the digital and the organic.

iTunes – $9.99

Katy Perry – PRISM

A lot’s changed since Katy Perry catapulted into superstardom with her breakaway hit “I Kissed A Girl” in 2008. Marriage, divorce and an ocean of fame have led to some of Katy’s bluntest lyrics to-date on her third album.

PRISM is chock full of the bouncy pop tunes Perry’s become famous for while also covering some rocky ground in the singer’s personal life. As the lead songwriter of the album’s opening track, “Roar,” Perry kicks off her third studio endeavor with stadium-sized guitars, a stomping beat and an epic sing-along hook. Perry’s assertive return is underscored by other early tastes from the album, including “Dark Horse,” which features a menacing bass line, crackling beat, and a sharply styled guest verse from Juicy J of Three 6 Mafia fame. PRISM’s parade of singles continues with the banging house-influenced groove and whistling hook of Perry’s euphoric, party-all-night anthem “Walking on Air” while tracks like “By the Grace of God” divulge into the heartbreak of Perry’s failed marriage to Russell Brand.

iTunes – $11.99

Best New Books

The Goldfinch

by Donna Tartt

“The Goldfinch” starts off with a bang – literally – as a 13-year-old New Yorker named Theo and his mother are rocked by an explosion at a New York museum. Theo survives the blast, but his mother doesn’t, leading to 800-pages detailing the aftermath of his experience over the course of a decade and a half.

Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don’t know how to talk to him and tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small 17th-century painting that he jacked from the museum during the chaos of the explosion.

The book moves us through the life of Theo as an adult, as he drifts between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of antiques in his shop. He is alienated and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle as the novel unfolds with a healthy serving of suspense.

iTunes – $10.99

Allegiant

by Veronica Roth

Teens who have been sucked into Veronica Roth’s Divergent series will be ready to lock themselves away to finish Roth’s final book in the Divergent trilogy – “Allegiant.”

The story picks up with Tris Prior who’s witnessed the downfall of the faction-based society she’s believed in her whole life. So when offered a chance to explore the world past the limits she’s known, Tris is ready. Perhaps  she and Tobias will find a simple new life together, free from complicated lies, tangled loyalties, and painful memories.

But Tris’s new reality is worse than the one she left behind. Old discoveries are quickly rendered meaningless. Explosive new truths change the hearts of those she loves. And once again, Tris must battle to comprehend the complexities of human nature—and of herself—while facing impossible choices about courage, allegiance, sacrifice, and love.

If you liked “The Hunger Games” and “Twilight” and are looking for a new teen series to dive into, try this. But get started now if you want to finish before the Hollywood adaptation hits theaters in March 2014.

iTunes – $6.99

Provence, 1970

by Luke Barr

“Provence, 1970” is about a singular historic moment. In the winter of that year, more or less coincidentally, the iconic culinary figures James Beard, M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, Richard Olney, Simone Beck and Judith Jones found themselves together in the South of France. They cooked and ate, talked and argued, about the future of food in America, the meaning of taste and the limits of snobbery. Without quite realizing it, they were shaping today’s tastes and culture, the way we eat now.

The conversations among this group were chronicled by M.F.K. Fisher in journals and letters—some of which were later discovered by Luke Barr, her great-nephew. In “Provence, 1970” he captures this seminal season, set against a stunning backdrop in cinematic scope—complete with gossip, drama, and contemporary relevance.

Best New Movies

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Extended Cut)

Just in time to prepare fans for the wide-release of the “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug,” Apple has released an exclusive extended cut of “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” this week that contains tons of new Extras that almost double the length of the original film.

Set in Middle Earth 60 years before the epic Lord of the Rings trilogy, the movie follows the adventures of Bilbo Baggins, who is conned swept into an epic quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom from the fearsome dragon Smaug.

Hardcore LotR fans might take offense that the plot of the movie doesn’t exactly follow the details of the book, but casual fans will be enthralled with Bilbo’s journey after he’s approached by the wizard Gandalf to join a company of dwarves set on retaking their homeland. What follows is steady medley of action and suspense as Bilbo and the dwarves find themselves caught in a series of goblin tunnels on their march East. Oh yeah, and Gollum and his Precious make a brief appearance too, so you finally find out where Bilbo got the all-powerful One Ring in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

iTunes – $19.99

The Conjuring 

Halloween is fastly approaching, which means its time to gather your friends and load up the scary movies at night to scare the living shit out of each other. Classic horror movies are always a great choice, but if you’re looking for something freaky and new, try “The Conjuring.”

The film details the horrifying “true story” of world renowned paranormal investigators Ed and Lorrain Warren who are called out to help a family terrorized by a dark presence on their secluded farm. After waking up with a mysterious bruise and finding their dog, Sadie, dead, mom Carolyn calls the paranormal investigators for help. As you can imagine, all hell breaks lose once Ed and Lorrain arrive at the house, making for a truly terrifying movie experience.

iTunes – $14.99

Turbo

Over the last decade Hollywood has given us animated movies about rats, Kung-Fu pandas, dragons, ants, and clown-fish, so why not give a nitrous oxide-charged snail a shot at the big screen?

Voiced by Ryan Reynolds, “Turbo” is a tale about a misfit snail with a need for speed as he strives to earn a slot in the Indy 500. While Turbo craves speed all of his fellow snails — including his brother Chet (voiced by Paul Giamatti) — seem to savor the slow life. At one point, Turbo gets sucked into the intake valve of a speeding muscle car. After getting spit through the volatile nitrous oxide that fuels the car, Turbo is imbued with new masterful speed powers that allow him to travel at speeds up to 200 miles per hour.

Armed with his speedy new powers, Turbo’s journey is far from over as he realizes his dreams are finally within reach, but runs into a number of obstacles on his way to the Indy 500. Other actors appearing in family-friendly movie include Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Peña, Bill Hader, Luis Guzman and even Snoop Dogg

iTunes – $14.99

In the early 90s, I drove across the States in a clapped-out Mustang, from the East Coast to California. It was a leisurely drive. I was in my mid-20s and drifting.

I stayed for a stretch in a seedy motel on the Las Vegas strip, at one point sleeping one week for free in exchange for building a wall by the front entrance. I don’t know why the motel owner agreed to this. My roommate – a hitchhiker I’d picked up — and I had never built a wall before. We stretched the work out for a week. But as it grew higher, it became more unstable and we were evicted when it fell over in a shower of bricks.

The night before I’d met a French guy. He claimed to be ex-Foreign Legion. Short but muscular, he radiated fitness and strength. He told me about the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. Most of the injuries, he said, occurred in the week before the actual running of the bulls. People gather in the streets to drink all night and brave young men climb the lampposts to jump off, trusting the crowd will catch them. Sometimes they plunge right through the upstretched arms.

My roommate and I split up and I drove with the French guy to Death Valley. He claimed to know a remote cabin in the mountains above the Valley floor. It was a three-hour, 13-mile hike, he told me, but the cabin was full of food and we could stay as long as we liked.

Although it sounded a little fantastical, I parked the car off the highway. He advised me to hide it as best as possible – we didn’t want anyone breaking in.

As we hiked across the valley floor toward the distant mountains, he told me how he’d nearly been executed in South America. He was travelling alone in the jungle and was sleeping in the trees to stay safe from jaguars. One morning he woke to find himself covered in blood. There was sticky blood all over his body, from head to toe. At first he suspected that something had been killed in the tree above him, but then he realized it was his own blood. He had been attacked by vampire bats in the middle of the night and they’d drooled his own blood onto his skin.

Afraid of a rabies infection, he headed for the nearest settlement. But he crossed the border into a neighboring country and was locked up by the army, which was battling local rebels. In the cell, he started to exhibit the first symptoms of rabies. But he had more pressing troubles. The army accused him of being a rebel spy and threatened to execute him. They didn’t believe his cockamamie story of solo jungle hikes and vampire bats. It took days of beatings and interrogations – plus his advancing rabies — to convince them of his innocence.

We crossed the Valley floor and started to climb upwards, following a rocky dry river bed full of huge boulders. I was getting more and more nervous. The French guy was crazy! There was no cabin here. Free food and board? In Death Valley? What was I thinking? He was luring me off the road to kill me. He’d take my Mustang keys and disappear. No one knew where I was. Not a soul. The name of the place began to gnaw at me, ringing in my head like a crazy mantra: Death Valley, Death Valley, Death Valley!

When I was a kid, my friends and I hitchhiked everywhere. We hitchhiked to school most days. We hitchhiked all across the country for camping holidays. We’d just take sleeping bags – no tent – and bed down in open fields. This was Britain in the 1980s, which didn’t seem particularly dangerous. But like the US, the UK is high up on UNICEF’s ranking of countries for child abuse.

I have my own kids now, and the thought of them hitchhiking wherever they please seems crazy. I’d never allow it. But they take buses all over San Francisco, and I have no problem with them hailing a car using Uber or Lyft. Because they are using an app, they’re not getting into a car with a stranger.

Likewise, we’ve swapped our house with strangers several times (AirBnB – read on for my wife Traci’s account) and I regularly buy used goods from Craigslist and eBay.

These apps affirm my deeply held belief that most people are fundamentally decent.

I digress: back to Death Valley. I kept trying to get behind the French guy so that I could pick up a boulder and smash his skull in. But he took my falling back as a sign of tiredness and he’d wait up to help me.

I was getting desperate. Death Valley! Death Valley! And then there was the cabin. Sitting on flat near the river bed, just shy of the lip of the mountain. An old miner’s cabin built around the turn of the century. It had four cots and, as promised, it was full of dry and canned food left by previous visitors. Over the years, it had accumulated into quite a hoard. We stayed for a few days, exploring the abandoned mine and mountaintop, which had unbelievable views across Death Valley in one direction, and across the Nevada desert in another.

When we hiked back down to the car, it was just as we left it, except someone had used their finger to write a message in the dust on the back windshield: “Clean Me.”

We often underestimate the experience of having wireless headphones, but once you try the Air-Fi Runaway Bluetooth headphones, you’ll understand the hype.

They’re sleek, comfortable, wireless, bluetooth compatible, they sound great, and they’re 50% off at just $49.99 – and they include shipping to continental USA customers.

Yes, Kickstarter projects are still a dime a dozen, but this game is worth your attention.

It’s Sentris, a music-creation tool that masquerades as a puzzle game. Want to play a music or rhythm game without having to figure out how to hold a plastic guitar? Sentris is the game for you.

We saw Sentris last month at the 2013 Seattle Indies eXpo (SIX3), which was co-located with the Penny Arcade Expo in downtown Seattle.

Developer Samantha Kalman hopes to release a full game–she’s only put together a stunning prototype at this point–and she’s taken time to explain why in the video below.

There’s nothing I like better than a game that charms from the get-go, and delightfully indie Towncraft is one of those games.

Developer Flat Earth Games has created a gentle yet deep crafting game that plays as equal parts Sim City and Minecraft, with hundreds of crafting recipes, super cute music, and adorable artwork.

What’s not to like?

Take a look in your local bike emporium and you’ll see zillions of options for mounting your iPhone onto your handlebars. Wahoo’s PROTKT, as its name suggests, goes for boxy protection above all else, although the iPhone within remains quite usable. But should you go for this coddling case, or would you be better off with a super-simple silicone band?

Nice Weather 2 – Weather – Free

I appreciate a simple, uncluttered interface, and that’s why I hate the Weather Channel app. But I’ve replaced that table-laden monstrosity with Nice Weather 2. It’s a jumble-free program that has all the information you need that still manages to look neat and clean. The curved line at the bottom represents the temperature over time, and you can drag that little ball along it to get actual numbers. You can also check humidity and the wind’s speed and direction, and the high and low temperatures are marked for your convenience.

Beyond that, it’s just striking to look at. And I know I’m talking about the weather here; that’s how good-looking this thing is.

Nice Weather 2

When I was younger, I had a crappy little electronic game in which I controlled a car driving down the highway. I had a little wheel that could turn the car left and right, kinda, and I was supposed to avoid hazards. It was apparently the world’s worst-maintained highway because every 10 feet, it was like, barrel, barrel, squirrel, bush ….

There were bushes growing on the highway.

Anyway, Mega Dead Pixel, a new free-to-play title from developer About Fun Games, reminds me a lot of that game, and not just because they have about the same complexity of graphics. It’s also equally moody and just as frustrating at times.

MOGA’s new gamepad for iPhone has been leaked ahead of its official debut, and I think you’ll agree that it looks pretty incredible. The device follows Apple’s guidelines for game controllers designed for iOS 7 — so it has all of the buttons that will soon become standard for iOS gamepads — as well as a built-in battery and a nifty design that closes up for portability.

Tweetbot, the immensely popular Twitter client from Tapbots, finally got its long-awaited iOS 7 update yesterday, introducing a beautiful new design for iPhone. Unsurprisingly, it’s been a massive success so far, and less than 24 hours on, it’s already the top paid app in 35 countries.

Venice Beach, California. A sunny playground full of hipsters, homeless folk, and the team behind of Cult of Mac Deals. But there’s another company that calls this chill little corner of LA home – Solé Bicycles.

We’ve partnered up with the awesome guys at Solé to bring you a ridiculously epic discount off of their exceptional two wheeled machines. Perfect for cruising the beach, the city, or your local bike path, these bikes will get you there, make sure you look good doing it, and – thanks to Cult of Mac Deals – save you 30% off in the process!

While Apple’s iLife and iWork software suites are considerably cheaper than competing products from rival companies, there’s still a bunch of people who would rather download them illegally than have to fork out the $20 fee for each app. And believe it or not, those who do will get a free upgrade to the latest versions direct from Apple.

When the Cupertino company pushed out its latest OS X apps following the iPad event earlier this week, anyone who had already installed the apps on their Mac was entitled to the latest version for free — even if the were using trial software, or they had downloaded the apps illegally.

Apple knows this, and it says it wasn’t just a bug. It also accepts that it’s easy to pirate its software — but it would rather trust you not to than implement some cumbersome anti-piracy feature.

I rely on the iPhone to get me around most places, even in my current hometown. I just really have a bad sense of direction. But ever since the advent of online maps and the GPS function of my iPhone, I’ve longed for the ability to quickly look up an address on my Mac, hit a button, and have the directions go to my iPhone.

That’s never been possible until now, with the advent of OS X Mavericks and the addition of the new Maps app to the Mac. Ideally, you’re supposed to be able to just launch Maps, get a set of directions, and then hit the little Share button to send those directions to your portable device.

I was super disappointed, then, when I went to send some directions to my iPhone from my Mac today and didn’t see my iPhone or iPad listed in the Share list.

As is their wont, gadget vivisectors iFixIt have gotten their hands on Apple’s new Retina MacBook Pros in both 13-inch and 15-inch incarnations. As usual, these aren’t the machines you want if repairability is concerned, but there’s additional bad news this time around: the battery in both the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro has actually shrunk.

Apple unveiled a couple of incredible new iPads on Tuesday, including the new iPad mini with Retina Display and the svelte, one-pound iPad Air. They even kept the low-res iPad mini for sale as an entry-level iPad at $299.

What, then, is Apple doing selling the iPad 2 still? At $399, it’s as expensive as a more powerful Retina iPad mini. It’s also less powerful than the $299 iPad mini Apple is selling at the price-tier below it. So why does Apple even bother selling them? It’s as simple as the fact that people keep buying the iPad 2.

iPad Air. Retina iPad Mini. New Macbook Pros. The new Mac Pro. Mavericks goes free. So does the new iLife and iWork. There’s a TON to talk about on our Special Edition CultCast! Join us, and special guest (and MacCast host) Adam Christianson, as we discuss our first impressions of the huge pile of hardware and software Apple unveiled at the jam-packed event.

Have a few laughs and get caught up on each week’s best Apple stories. Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let baseline roll!

Apple’s rollout of the iPhone 5s and 5c continues. After launching on September 20 with limited supplies in 11 countries, Cupertino is now expanding availability to 11 new countries.

Last month, Qualcomm representative Anand Chandrasekher called Apple’s new 64-bit A7 chip a “gimmick.” It was a hugely stupid thing to say, leading to Qualcomm actually correcting Chandrasekher’s remarks. But it also might have killed Chandrasekher’s career, at least in part, as the former chief marketing officer seems to have been sent into exile within the company.

If you read Ulysses III 1.1’s release notes, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Soulmen (Ulysses’ developers) have just aded a few features that should really have been in v1.1. But take it for a spin and you’ll see that the the app has been polished in so many places that it feels both completely familiar and full of new tweaks.

With just hours left before the weekend, the Bungajungle is unlikely to be beaten for the week’s best-named gadget. It’s also a pretty fantastic-looking iPad stand, with enough flexibility (pun most definitely intended) to double up as a stand for your MacBook.

If you thought there wasn’t much Junecloud could so to improve its already-great deliveries-tracking app Delivery Status Touch, then you’re about to be amazed. In fact, so long is the list of changes in the newly-launched v5 that I have pasted them below for your goggle-eyed viewing pleasure.

In short, it now looks great on iOS 7, can sync via iCloud if you prefer, integrates with 1Password and is way way quicker.

There’s another new e-mail app available now for OS X, and it takes a different approach to your usual e-mail clients. It’s called Unibox, and it focusses on people, not messages.

I’m forever intrigued with Booq — a bag-maker headquartered just a stone’s throw from design-crazy Pasadena — and its maverick creations. The company’s latest is the Boa Shift backpack; while it doesn’t much that’s new, it seems to gather all their signature design elements into a single bag.

We know that the new Mac Pro — and as we learned earlier this week, the new MacBook Pros — sport new Thunderbolt 2 ports, which double the speed of the initial version to a maximum throughput of 20GB/second.

All that speed is academic without peripherals designed specifically for Thunderbolt 2. So today, Promise Technology is the first company to announce Thunderbolt 2 stuff — namely, their Pegasus2 RAID storage boxes and SANLink2 Fibre Channel-to-Thunderbolt 2 SAN device bridge.

Tapbots has released its highly-anticipated iOS 7 redesign of Tweetbot, a popular third-party Twitter client. Version 3.0 is a radical departure from the iOS 6 app, and it’s available now in the App Store for iPhone.