Screen (in theaters) Kung Fu Hustle At the center of Stephen Chow's bloodbath of a comedy is a small-time thief who finds his inner Buddha – and a gang of ax-wielding baddies who do a mean line dance. Kung Fu Hustle is a hilarious send-up of everything from Gangs of New York and Kill Bill to The Three Stooges and Looney Tunes (one scene has two characters in chase at Road Runner speed, complete with dust clouds). The Hong Kong filmmaker, who gave us 2001's Shaolin Soccer, returns with 99 minutes of slapstick gags and battle after battle of martial arts one-upmanship. Sure, like any chopsocky movie it borders on silly. But if you're willing to believe in a character who kills people with her Memorex-pitch screams, get ready to hustle. – Jennifer Hillner
Screen (in theaters) The Ballad of Jack & Rose An emaciated Daniel Day-Lewis rails against modernity as Jack, a defiant father trying to shield his teenage daughter from the encroaching world. They are the last residents of a New England island commune, living almost completely off the grid. But a new tract-house development threatens their way of life, and Jack's heart problem is worsening. Director Rebecca Miller (Day-Lewis' real-life wife) gets the most out of her Method maestro, building to a taut resolution that is as creepy as it is touching. – Beth Pinsker
Screen (in theaters) Layer Cake First-time director Matthew Vaughn (producer of Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) comes out of the gate gunning with a twisty drug caper that lives up to its title metaphor. A nameless hoodlum (Daniel Craig) tries to get away with the girl and the cash from a stolen shipment of "happy" pills. He does fine until he applies the laws of business to his drug franchise and all hell breaks loose. But this is a heist flick with a subtext: Vaughn manages to explain the class structure with the single act of eating cake. – B.P.
Music Prefuse 73 Surrounded by Silence Producer Scott Herren is known for chewing up and spitting out diverse samples to frenetic, bouncy effect. On Silence, he has arranged a lineup that's as schizoid as one of his best tracks. Indie rockers (Caf� Tacuba, Kazu Makino of Blonde Redhead) toil alongside cult rappers (Beans, El-P, Aesop Rock), while Wu-Tang Clansmen joust with analog enthusiasts Broadcast on this thoroughly unpredictable adventure. When you are the master of the splice, nothing ever clashes. – Hua Hsu
Music Bloc Party Silent Alarm This brilliant blend of dark disco and spunky art rock is an early contender for debut of the year. Angular guitar crashes into sobering synths on songs straight out of the Franz Ferdinand playbook. But Bloc Party isn't just riding the '80s punk-funk revival wave: Frontman Kele Okereke's Cockney yelp gives "She's Hearing Voices" a timeless, anthemic quality, while ambient instrumentation makes "So Here We Are" a lush, lovelorn lullaby. – Jolie Lash
Music Sam Prekop Who's Your New Professor Chicago's indie king serves up a platter of jazzy pop peppered with Motown rhythms and Brazilian accents. Professor is packed with elegant strings, jangly guitars, cornet horns, and even atmospheric field recordings – a combo reminiscent of Prekop's work with the Sea and Cake. His delicate falsetto ties it all together in a perfect package that effuses both Midwestern calm and the bustle of the Windy City. – Cristy Turner
Music Harold Budd Avalon Sutra For 30 years, Budd has played music that shimmers on the edge of silence. His albums with Brian Eno launched the genre known as ambient, and the reclusive pianist says that Avalon Sutra is his final recording. It's a triumphant sign-off. Scored for string quartet and sax as well as piano, Budd's musings on loss and memory are luminous, and an hour-long remix on a bonus disc by avant-pop master David Sylvian and loop guru Akira Rabelais glows with autumnal majesty. – Steve Silberman
Games (PC, PS2, Xbox) Psychonauts Talk about head trips. You're a young psychic clambering around in other people's brains and clobbering their nightmares and inner demons Mario-style. You also unlock emotional baggage – literally, weeping suitcases – to understand each character's surprisingly complex backstory. Personality dictates level design: An artist's mind is lined with black velvet, while a drill sergeant's looks more like WWII. All that's missing is a level set inside the eccentric noggin of the game's brilliant creator, Tim Schafer (Monkey Island, Grim Fandango). – Brian Lam
Games (Xbox) Jade Empire Looking for a martial arts game that aims higher than vapid Mortal Kombat-style slugfests? Prepare for interactive nirvana. Jade Empire brilliantly meshes a deep story line with visceral action. In your journey from young grasshopper to master, you learn more than 20 fighting styles and harness mythical powers like Paralyzing Palm and Dire Flame. But as you learn the intricacies of the sublime control scheme, you're also exploring a vast world teeming with rich characters, dark mysteries, and fantastic creatures. Hi-yaaah! – Scott Taves
Games (PSP) Lumines Grab some high-quality headphones to go with Sony's new handheld console – this feverishly addictive puzzle game demands them. It melds the feng shui ecstasy of Tetris with the wild improvisations of a great club DJ. Players arrange and position descending blocks while techno blares and the Kandinsky-esque backdrops explode with color. You'll be amazed at how the game rewards syncopation: Solve puzzles in time with the beats and you're treated to increasingly crazier graphics and richer remixes of the soundtrack. – Ryan Payton
Games (PS2, Xbox) NARC The 1988 arcade game NARC had a strident antidrug message. This budget-priced update is more, uh, ambivalent. You're a narcotics officer, beating up punks for info and field-testing the evidence you confiscate. Getting high influences gameplay – the green herb induces a slo-mo state, speed makes you fast (duh), coke gives you quick energy, and acid helps you spot bad guys (they sprout giant psychedelic devil heads). Just don't get addicted or you'll have to keep powering up to avoid agonizing withdrawal. – Justin Leeper
Print The New New Journalism Robert S. Boynton Tom Wolfe, John McPhee, Truman Capote – the pioneers of New Journalism brought novelistic techniques to nonfiction. The New New Journalism also celebrates storytelling, but finds its art in painstaking reporting. Fascinated by politics, race, and class, these writers include Michael Lewis, Jon Krakauer, and Eric Schlosser. In interviews with 19 new new journalists, Boynton delivers a compelling guide to the craft. One nugget: Richard Preston will rewrite the first paragraph of a story 30 to 40 times. – Bob Cohn
Print The Flight of the Creative Class Richard Florida The chronicler of the heady rise of the creative class now warns of its desperate flight from the US. By losing creative capital, the country risks its global edge, argues Florida, an economist with a soul. Amid all of the rising and fleeing, he shows that the engines of economic growth are technology, talent, and tolerance. But he leans too heavily on the alarm bell, and his ideas for preventing inequality in America fall flat. – Michael Erard
Print What the Dormouse Said John Markoff Pot smoke wafts from the pages of Markoff's disjointed, amusing take on the paleo-computing era of Stanford in the 1960s. Hippie hackers cultivate the seeds of the PC revolution behind their corporate sponsors' backs. Engineers conjure up new software interfaces while tripping on acid. Even the hardware gets stoned: At a campus AI lab tricked out with a co-ed sauna, protesters pelt a computer with rocks when a programmer reveals that the machine is crunching numbers for the military. – Josh McHugh
Print Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town Cory Doctorow Beneath all the tech, cultural references, and imaginative indulgence, Wired correspondent Doctorow's geek fantasy portrays a misfit's struggle to connect with the people around him. An ex-shopkeeper courts a reluctant-angel babe next door and helps deploy a grassroots Wi-Fi network, all while he struggles with his impossible family (his mom is a washing machine, and his little brother, Davey, is a murderous corpse). It may be flawed, but it's a noble experiment nevertheless. – Paul Spinrad
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