PC DIY Blockbuster The Movies: Stunts & Effects Expansion Pack Attention, aspiring auteurs: Don’t blow your money on a camera, buy a new graphics card instead. Machinima met tycoon simulation in the 2005 PC game The Movies, which let players build the ultimate Hollywood studio, cast and costume actors, dress sets, and output the result as an MPEG video. Now the Stunts & Effects expansion pack allows wannabe Spielbergs to upgrade their productions with camera movements, special effects, car crashes, stunt doubles, and greenscreens for inserting photo backdrops in post. After just 10 minutes, I had a stuntwoman in a chopper facing off against a horde of flying saucers. I call it Simdependence Day. 
– Scott Stein
Music Rather Ripped Sonic Youth SY’s latest proves yet again that the kind of inertia that led to an avant-punk manifesto like Daydream Nation is unsustainable: Cutting edges dull, other bands absorb the style and run with it, and the once-pioneering act periodically raids its bag of tricks to make albums that, despite flashes of brilliance, are ultimately unsatisfying. 
– Jon J. Eilenberg
Music Impeach My Bush Peaches Dirty P is back with her signature brand of electrosmut. Tracks like “Tent in Your Pants” and “Downtown” synthesize her stuttery drum blips with more acrobatic beats, and guest singers Joan Jett, Feist, and Gossip’s Beth Ditto saturate My Bush with souped-up sound that’s a lush respite from the gritty grind of Peaches’ earlier albums. – Jenna Wortham
Screen (Theater) The House of Sand Marooned in the Brazilian desert, a woman briefly connects with a team of astronomers, forever altering her relationship to time and nature. Winner at Sundance for best science-themed film, this meditative, multigenerational epic suggests that big ideas reverberate to the very edges of civilization. 
– Jason Silverman
Screen (TV) The Tailenders Evangelicals call them hand-crank: Tape players powered by turning a handle, and LPs that play on the cardboard boxes they come in. This clear-eyed PBS documentary contemplates lo-fi systems that deliver the Gospel, in more than 5,000 languages, to remote communities – whether they want it or not. – J.S.
Books Play Money Julian Dibbell Why spend $760 on a house that exists only in a game? To find out, Wired contributor Dibbell quit his day job and became a black marketeer in the MMORPG Ultima Online – a pursuit that left his personal life in disarray. The resulting first-person account is a sad yet lively look at virtual economies and game addiction. – Chris Baker
Books The Futurist James P. Othmer J. P. Yates, the hero of this crass, funny satire, gets rich peddling sham trends and buzzwords to corporations. Then he goes on a bender, admits he’s a hack, and stumbles into a spy plot. Othmer deftly spoofs globalization’s elite, checking plenty of names (TED, Davos, the Google guys) along the way. – Douglas McGray
PLAY
| Graphic Violence, Meet Graphic Novel
Reviews
| Playlist
