Mountain Men

Ralph Lauren vs. Warren Miller. Plus: Ben Affleck's latest comeback

October 16, 2007

MOVIES: Calling Gone Baby Gone the best thing Ben Affleck has done in years may be a backhanded compliment, but it’s also true: The guy’s a much better director than action hero (damn, there we go again). And, for the record, Casey’s pretty good, too. Elsewhere, Mark Ruffalo and Joaquin Phoenix star in Reservation Road; Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal frown their way through Rendition, and Benicio Del Toro and Halle Berry star in Things We Lost in the Fire (among them: chemistry). Finally, blow-up doll enthusiasts in Ohio can rejoice: Lars and the Real Girl is opening wide.

BOOKS: The Year of Ralph continues with Ralph Lauren: The Inspiration of Four Decades, while our pals at Details offer up their first-ever Men's Style Manual. In My Last Supper, 50 chefs (Ramsay, Batali, et al.) describe their perfect last meals (recipes included), and Tom Perrotta is back with The Abstinence Teacher. Also out: James Lipton’s Inside Inside, which really should’ve had an audio version by Will Ferrell.

MUSIC: Neil Young’s Chrome Dreams II is a “sequel” to an unreleased album from 1977, while Aretha Franklin mines her archives for Rare & Unreleased Recordings from the Golden Reign of the Queen of Soul. R.E.M. Live includes some (though not enough) of the band’s oldies, and fellow Athenians (Georgia, not Greece) Pylon finally release the 1980 classic Gyrate on the hot new format of 1985: CD.

DVD: Skip Transformers and Planet Terror (a.k.a. the tedious half of Grindhouse) for the music aisle: Both Jimi Hendrix: Live at Monterey and the three-DVD live box AC/DC: Plug Me In have a pleasingly high guitar solo-to-song ratio. Even better: No Boundaries, the three-disc box set of Warren Miller flicks. And is it just us, or is Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: The Complete Series a little thin?

TV: Anything above interest you? Go for it, because, aside from the season finale of Mad Men (Thursday night on AMC), there’s absolutely nothing worth watching this week.