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1. Jamie Foxx breaks somebody's hand in Miami Vice
Some critics are comparing director Michael Mann to avant-garde filmmakers in his abstract approach to narrative, but — even beyond the heroes' threats to splatter a bad guy into a Jackson Pollock pattern — I saw painterly influences, like Franz Kline's slashing blacks and Ed Ruscha's bruised-purple skies. Which is not to say the movie is static: Yes, the shoot-out in the white supremicists' trailer makes your blood pump faster, but I also love the smaller moments, as when, early on, Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx move through a nightclub and Foxx casually, in insouciant bodyguard style, cracks the hand of a thug approaching his partner. Beautiful, brutal stuff — finally, a summer movie that pays off in emotion as well as action.
2. Scritti Politti, White Bread Black Beer
(Rough Trade/Nonesuch)
The first album in eight years by the fluttery-voiced British one-man-band Green Gartside, White Bread is filled with pure-pop confections that yield emotional nourishment. Listen to the mini-epic ''Dr. Abernathy'' for a ferociously cavalier drug-use tale that's colder than Steely Dan in their prime; listen, for range and contrast, to ''Snow in Sun,'' a gorgeous dream about how sunlight looks on fresh snow, which brings you up short with the abrupt realism of its lyrics (''Looks like maybe we'll lose our home/ Out of pocket and all alone...'').
3. Poetry magazine
July/August ''Humor Issue''
The best humor in this determinedly wacky issue (it spells its name, just this once, as ''Peotry'' — har-har) comes from Dean Young's ''Sean Penn's Anti-Ode'' (''Must Sean Penn always look like he's squeezing/ the last drops out of a sponge and the sponge/ is his face?...'') and Mark Halliday's impeccably poet-self-absorbed parody ''All Me.'' Oh, and Halliday's back-page contributor's note: ''Mark Halliday teaches at Ohio University. Due to some quirk of genetics or fate, his opinions about poetry are never wrong.''
4. Pink, I'm Not Dead
Picking up on an astute posting last week by reader ''djm,'' I agree that this woefully underrated album is a bold, fun chunk of music. While djm digs ''I'm Not Dead,'' I also love ''Dear Mr. President''; it's not often a pop star gets this specific without seeming like a knave or a tool. Pink is the total opposite: a wise woman who's deepening her music every time out.
5. George Pelecanos, The Night Gardener
(Little, Brown)
Seems like every thriller novelist writes serial-killer stories these days, and the results verge on the obscene (it's so easy to render remorseless multiple murders). But Pelecanos actually does something with this subgenre: He brings a sense of moral indignation that's never pious and a sense of history that's never ponderous, and his depictions of Washington underclass life give equal human weight to whites and blacks. By not exploiting anyone, he actually provides more thrills than all of the exploitive-thriller hacks out there on the bookshelves.
So, what do you think of my picks, and what are your 5 reasons to live this week?
