It's Tuesday, and that means its time for you to pony up some of your hard-earned bucks for some of the latest and greatest releases hitting shelves today. But what to buy? Luckily, Top Shelf Tuesday is here to help you navigate through the field of choices.
Music
With equal time devoted to Deerhoof's sweet, challenging and reflective sides, Offend Maggie is one of the band's most balanced albums. Shades of The Runners Four's sprawling experimentalism, Friend Opportunity's economic pop and Apple O's galloping riffs can be heard throughout these songs, but they never feel scattered -- they just feel like natural additions to Deerhoof's consistently interesting, and continually changing, body of work.
Jay Reatard spent much of 2008 releasing singles for his new label Matador, six in all. Matador Singles '08 collects all the tracks and adds one song as a bonus. The songs find Reatard moving away from the frantic wildness of earlier records and into a more mature and tuneful direction. That said, there are still plenty of rockers mixed in among the acoustic guitar-driven and melodic mid-tempo songs.
DVD
The Happening is available on both standard DVD and Blu-ray. Extra features include deleted scenes with violence that had to be cut from the theatrical film, behind-the-scenes making-of featurette, gag reel, a special effects making-of movie about the wind effects, and others.
You Don’t Mess with the Zohan is released today in a DVD 2-disc Fully Loaded Extended Version, a DVD Rated Single Disc Edition, a DVD single-disc Unrated Extended Version, and a Blu-ray Disc Unrated Version. Extra features include a featurette on stunt doubles, commentary with the director, commentary with Adam Sandler, Robert Smigel, others, and deleted scenes.
Games
As in every previous NBA 2K__ installment, there is nothing to launch NBA 2K9 radically ahead from its ancestors, but there are several slick new features to at least differentiate it slightly. Hardcore sports gamers will feel vindicated in the purchase of this title because of 5-on-5 online games, user generated players that you can upload to play in said games, and an improved defense intelligence engines.
Adding to the dramatic changes seen in the previous Crash title, Crash of the Titans, Crash Bandicoot: Mind over Mutant (which I find a delightfully alliterative title if nothing else) will be even more Titan-y. With enhancements to features like "jacking" and specifically the voodoo mask controlling feature which is what the title refers to, this feature allows you to jam a voodoo mask into your fallen enemies and then control their bodies: every boy's dream as far as I know.
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