The entertainment world, at least where it pertains to technology, morphs, twists, turns, and fires so fast it’s hard to keep up. But that’s exactly why we love it. For the lowdown on the latest and most interesting releases in PC entertainment, consoles, DVDs, CDs, and just leisure and lifestyle stuff we (for the most part) love and recommend, read on.

Audio Video Corner DVDs by Chris Trumble, CDs by Blaine A. Flamig

AUDIO

Bob Dylan—“Together Through Life”
$18.97
Columbia Records
www.bobdylan.com

Optimistic hope or realistic pessimism: It's difficult to discern which way Bob Dylan is leaning on the 10 songs on "Together Through Life," a remarkable work drenched in Mexican-border blues, Southern swampy seduction, and romance rotting at the core. Weathered, cracked, and tormented as to how to self-heal in a world seemingly devoid of any wonder he hasn't already experienced, Dylan croons, bemoans, warns, and recollects as only a troubadour as traveled, experienced, and wise as he can.

With his flawless touring band steaming underneath, Dylan steers us into "Together Through Life" with the border town-sounding "Behind Here Lies Nothing," an end-of-the-road romantic lament soaked in Mexican horns and the landscape-sweeping accordion of Los Lobos' David Hildago, who along with longtime Tom Petty guitarist Mike Campbell, gift "Together Through Life" with relaxed but expert playing. As Dylan croaks, "Beyond here lies nothing/Nothing but the moon and stars" to his love interest, it's as if he's saying, "I've seen it all, and this is as good as it gets. Let's enjoy it while we're able."

The romantic themes continue on "Life Is Hard" with Dylan singing over a lilting mandolin and brushing beat, "I pass the old school yard/Admitting life is hard/Without you near me"). Like the majority of the album's songs, "Life Is Hard" takes its sweet time to paint it recollections, and the song and album are the better for the slowly paced direction. Even on the biting "My Wife's Hometown," on which Dylan turns Willie Dixon's Chess Records classic blues stomp "I Just Want To Make Love To You" on its head, Dylan oozes through the track rather than attack it, telling us repeatedly "I just want to say Hell's my wife's hometown." When Dylan does break the album's hypnotizing trance, he breathes fire on the stabbing "Shake Shake Mama" ("Some of you women, you really know your stuff/But you grow so heart-torn, and your language is a little rough").

Dylan reportedly co-wrote all but one of the album's songs with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, a previous Dylan collaborator. Still, it's difficult to believe that Dylan wasn't the driving force behind such mocking, culture-denouncing instant classics as "It's All Good," on which he's his most masterful, morphing the tired American catchphrase into a new dagger, "Even in the country/People on the land/Some of them so sick/They can hardly stand/Everyone would move away if they could/It's hard to believe, but it's all good/Yeah."

Now 68 and 33 albums deep into a career like no other before or after, Dylan has preached better, sung better, and constructed better arranged songs than those on "Together Through Life," but he's rarely combined all these traits and into a collective as simply satisfying. Otherworldly but grounded to the present, Dylan, as always, is in a league of his own.



Wilco—“Ashes of American Flags”
$19.98
Nonesuch
www.wilcoworld.net

Arguably America's best working band, Wilco does its flat-out best to prove the point on this live concert DVD that finds the six-piece band that Jeff Tweedy founded touring small clubs, concert halls, and theaters in Nashville, New Orleans, Mobile, Tulsa, and Washington D.C. Unlike the 2003 DVD "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart," which chronicled Wilco's tumultuous and nearly band-killing recording of 2002's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," "Ashes Of American Flags" is all about the music and why it emanates the way it does from this confident, immensely capable band whose members are genuinely in tune with one other and the material at hand.

Intimately co-directed by Christoph Green and Brendan Canty of legendary punk outfit Fugazi, "Ashes" is as much a road movie as it is a musical recounting, mixing portraits as filmed and seen from a tour bus of the once flourishing small towns and urban neighborhoods now decaying in the shadow of America's technological and capitalist progress. Each band member offers his own philosophies on these scenes, road life, America's changing landscape and ideologies, and how they all influence their playing and songwriting. Though these frozen, timeless moments are too fleeting, they succeed in giving us better insight into Wilco's songs as the band masterfully plays them onstage.

For non-fans, taking in a Wilco performance can be a challenge, as Tweedy has moved the band miles away the country roots, Americana foundation it was built on into a sonically experimental juggernaut fueled on Tweedy's risk-taking song arrangements and Nels Cline's stellar, genre-bending guitar solos. Still, at the core, "Ashes" is a stunning depiction of how we all view life's passing moments in divergent but common ways, as evidenced on "Heavy Metal Drummer's" crowd-pleasing nostalgic look back at more simple times, "War On War's" unifying proclamation that "You have to learn how to die/If you want to be alive," or "At Least That's What You Said's" honest portrayal of taking ownership of a sinking relationship.

Grounded, pleasingly simplistic, and fueled on amazingly tight performances, "Ashes Of American Flags" isn't a typical concert DVD—and that's a good thing.

The Reader
$29.95
The Weinstein Company
www.thereader-movie.com

Are there certain sins that are never forgivable, even if the sinner in question is someone we love undyingly and without question? That's just one of the many weighty questions that director Stephen Daldry ("The Hours") poses in "The Reader," a slow-burning but hard-hitting, twist-filled story of the unlikely, lifelong love affair between a mid-30ish Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet) and Michael Berg (David Kross as a teen; Ralph Fiennes as an adult) in 1958's post-WWII Berlin.

After meeting by happenstance, Michael and Hanna immediately dive into a torrid summer-long affair that finds Hanna giving Michael adult lessons on love, life, and independence but also sees Michael educating Hanna, primarily by reading her everything from Lil' Abner to Homer's "Odyssey." The fact that Michael never sees Hanna reading herself doesn't don on him until long after she unceremoniously disappears one day, leaving Michael with a shattered heart.

Fast forward several years and Michael is attending a criminal war crimes trial with his fellow law school students when he encounters Hanna, who is one of those on trial for her past as an SS guard at Auschwitz. The encounter paralyzes Michael with guilt, shame, and uncertainty. As the trial progresses and Hanna is repeatedly taken advantage of by her fellow defendants and the court system in general, Michael realizes that her inability to read or write proves she couldn't have done much of what's she's being accused of. Still, despite knowing this information could lessen the life sentence she ultimately receives from the court, his shame prevents him from coming forward. Subsequently, his life becomes tormented by guilt and solitude.

Expertly acted (Winslet won an Oscar for her role) and consistently probing, "The Reader" challenges our ethics, judicial beliefs, and notions on love's limitations by reducing such a massive topic as Auschwitz to a personal level. Daldry accomplishes this through "The Reader's" characters, not heavy-headed lectures. Rather than make Hanna a heartless monster knowingly involved in the deaths of Jews, for example, he and Winslet make Hanna a flawed, scared everyday woman forced to adapt to a world she has no control over. Though her plight can't match those of the prisoners she once guarded, Hanna's remaining years become about surviving.

Michael, meanwhile, has his own demons to face down, including an apparent lack of resolve in the face doing what's right. Only near "The Reader's" conclusion, as a middle-aged Michael seeks out a former Auschwitz prisoner Rose (a brilliant Lena Olin) to carry out Hanna's dying wishes, do we learn of Michael's true connection to Hanna. In the unenviable position of both defending and denouncing Hanna, Michael finally realizes we all are conflicted and flawed but always capable of righting ourselves.

What Doesn’t Kill You
$24.96
Sony Pictures
www.whatdoesntkillyoumovie.com

Sadly overlooked upon release, "What Doesn't Kill You" tells the gritty, based-on-real-events story of two lifelong friends raised in South Boston who grow up to squeak out livings as glorified errand boys for neighborhood crime boss Sully (Will Lyman). Though first-time director Brian Goodman, who co-wrote the screenplay with Paul Murray and Donnie Wahlberg based on his life's events, doesn't break new ground in terms of depicting the unsavory life of small-time criminals, he's deftly managed to present familiar plotlines in an entirely new light. The result is a scorching portrait on criminal life that junks the typical glorification of crime's riches and instead focuses on the toll that a life of crime takes on the soul.

As Brian and Paulie, Mark Ruffalo and Ethan Hawke masterfully show on their faces in each scene the hopelessness that's inherit to those born into nothing with nothing to look forward to—other than the slight chance of making a score so big, they'll never have to worry about scrounging the streets again. For Brian, the weight of such hopelessness is especially ominous due to his responsibilities to his wife (Amanda Peet) and two young sons, which he takes seriously but doesn't always feel capable of pulling off. When Paulie, Sully, and temporary escapes via drugs and alcohol all fail to provide Brian long-term relief, only a prison stint and feeling himself slip back into the streets' grasp upon his release make Brian see that obtaining happiness is something that only lies within himself.

Hawke and Ruffalo are both outstanding throughout "What Doesn't Kill You," but Ruffalo especially takes his game up several considerable notches, making us genuinely care about Brian's outcome. As Brian begins to fall back into old, unsavory habits, we feel his indecisiveness and limitations, as well as the mundane existence of working a straight job where no get-rich-quick fixes exist. As Brian, Ruffalo also makes us feel the desire a father has for his son's respect and what such respect can make us capable of.

Tragically uplifting, "What Doesn't Kill You" refrains from glorifying the usual eye-candy associated with crime-based films, including wielding power, wearing expensive clothes and jewelry, driving fast cars, and so on. Instead, Goodman and company give us gritty reality set in cold, wet, unforgiving surroundings that may seem inescapable but are still conquerable.

7/7

Kath & Kim: Season 1
Mystery Science Theater 3000: XV
John Barrymore Collection



7/14

Eldorado
Mad Men: Season 2



7/21

The Great Buck Howard
Pushing Daises: The Complete Second Season
G.I. Joe A Real American Hero: Season 1.1



7/28

Dollhouse: Season One
Life On Mars: Series 1 (UK)
Repulsion

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