The Hype Line: Five Things We Can't Look Away From This Week

July 13: M.I.A.'s  /\/\/\Y/\

M.I.A.’s media antics and outsized personality too often overshadow her mostly solid discography. A few weeks ago, for instance, she got mad at a New York Times reporter after an interview, so she tweeted the reporter's cell number. (Even Kanye would at least try to absolve himself with an all-caps apology on his blog after a stunt like that.) But none of that nonsense can take away from how catchy, original and occasionally mind-blowing Arular and Kala are. Her first two albums will be joined this week by the abstractly titled /\/\/\Y/\. So, you can either waste time debating her sociopolitical bona fides, or just dance. We know which we’re doing.

July 15: The Surf Guru, Doug Dorst

Graduating from Iowa Writers’ Workshop, publishing in McSweeney’s, and winnnig on Jeopardy! is pretty much the ultimate hat-trick for the literate, used-Volvo-driving set. Doug Dorst did all those things and still found time to pen signature works of fiction. The stories collected in The Surf Guru read like dioramas, with their big, palpable characters tethered to the pages by Dorst’s devious narrative structures. When you pick up a book written by a guy who knows that a “chigoe” is a sand-dwelling variety of a flea (Jeopardy! Episode #4985, for $400), you’re pretty much guaranteed some great, left-of-center storytelling.

July 15: Talking to Girls about Duran Duran: One Young Man’s Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut, Rob Sheffield

Rob Sheffield is something like an American Nick Hornby (save for the fact that Sheffield, like most Americans, doesn’t do fiction). The critic’s heartstring-tugging first book, Love Is a Mixtape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time, tracked and soundtracked his relationship with his departed wife. With Duran Duran, he rewinds to a decade before Mixtape: the ‘80s, that pivotal era that saw MTV giving suburban adolescents like Sheffield their first taste of musical rebellion. This light-hearted memoir takes us to a bygone time when a “gig” was a rock show and not a fraction of an iPod. And we kind of like it there.
 
July 16:  Inception, Christopher Nolan

Inception is the kind of movie that they don’t make so much of anymore, a dark, heady science-fiction than seems comfortable next to our dusty VHS copies of Dark City and Cube. Make no mistake, though; Inception isn’t a flick that only sci-fi buffs will like. For example, Leonardo DiCaprio is the star? If you can find a person that doesn’t love at least one movie he’s been in, please send him or her to us so we can show you that he's not a person, just a watermelon wrapped in a blanket. But us non-watermelons, we’re definitely excited about any big summer movie that will appeal to both our Criterion Collection side and comic book collection side.  

July 16-18: The Pitchfork Music Festival

Pitchfork is the Urban Outfitters of music sites: everyone goes, but no one wants to be seen there. The annual Pitchfork-curated party in Chicago, however, isn’t burdened with such bashfulness (two of its three days are sold out), since it just so happens that many of the bands Pitchfork covers are really, really good - like LCD Soundsystem, Big Boi, and Pavement good. And if singing along isn’t your thing, there’s always the comedy: Michael Showalter, Eugene Mirman, and Wyatt Cenac will also appear. And word is the afterparty’s at one of the three Urban Outfitters that Google Maps says is within ten minutes of the festival.