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‘Cloverfield’ is a Can’t Miss monster film

The SAG awards show and a remastered album from Marvin Gaye are  also among the week’s best offerings.
/ Source: msnbc.com contributor

Movies

Iamge: Cloverfield
Paramount Pictures

OK, so the clever “Blair Witch”-style promotional campaign is finally over. We don’t have to watch little clips of a cell phone video and a mysterious monster anymore. Now we can watch an entire 85-minute feature film of a cell phone video and a mysterious monster. The reviews are in and they’re mostly positive. The audiences have lined up dutifully to shell out their entertainment dollar. “Cloverfield” has set records for the weekend. And you know what’s coming next, don’t you? Imitators. Between now and next year, there will be at least 10 to 15 scary stealth campaigns to hype new monster movies. So get in on the ground floor now of this monster mash before you get eaten alive. (Paramount Pictures, in theaters now)

Television

Image: Screen Actors Guild awards
Unfinished statuettes cast in solid bronze seen before a green-black patina finished is applied, called \"The Actor\" are created for Screen Actors Guild (SAG) at the American Fine Arts Foundry in Burbank, Calif., Thursday, Jan. 17, 2008. The Actor weighs 12 pounds and stands 16 inches tall. The 14th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards ceremony, honoring the best in film and television acting for 2007, will take place on Sunday, Jan. 27, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)Damian Dovarganes / AP

Some awards shows are worth watching, others are not. At this moment, however, there aren’t many to choose from. Usually at this time of year, the high-end goodie bags are flowing, and so are the post-ceremony cocktails. But because of the writers’ strike, many of the awards shows have been cancelled. But the 14th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards will go on, because they and the writers are kindred spirits – not to mention bargaining pals – and the WGA gave SAG the green light. The SAG awards are a lot of fun anyway, even in a crowded awards landscape. Actors know how to party and to give kudos that don’t sound like they’ve been scripted, with or without a writers’ strike. (TNT, Sunday, Jan. 27, 8 p.m.)

Music

Image: Marvin Gaye's 'Here, My Dear.'
Hip-o Select

Marvin Gaye made an album in 1978 called “Here, My Dear,” that was buried and forgotten. Most of the songs had to do with his messy divorce from wife Anna, who was the sister of Motown head and founder Berry Gordy. The label didn’t promote it, and critics ignored it. But it’s one of Gaye’s best, mixing rhythm and blues with elements of funk, soul, jazz and pop in a creative concoction that is spiced heavily with the bitterness of a failed relationship yet still is musically uplifting. Some of the highlights include the nine-minute “A Funky Space Reincarnation” and “You Can Leave, But It’s Going to Cost You.” This new, digitally remastered two-disc set has the original album on the first disc plus a second one of remixes by a group of contemporary artists and producers. The two discs together are a marriage made in musical heaven. (Hip-O Select)

DVD

Image: This Sporting Life
Criterion Collection

Lindsay Anderson drew acclaim for some documentary shorts he made early in his filmmaking career. It was that attraction to gritty realism, and a belief that all classes of British life should be examined on film, that led to some memorable works. One of his best is “This Sporting Life,” which stars a young Richard Harris as a sullen coal miner who excels at rugby. Even though he begins to fall in love, he has trouble finding happiness in his bleak surroundings. “This Sporting Life” is out on DVD this week with the full Criterion treatment: a two-disc set that includes a newly restored high-def transfer of the film, Anderson’s first documentary short from 1948, “Meet The Pioneers” and much more. Paul Greengrass is carrying on this tradition of realism today, but he is doing so thanks to pioneering directors like Anderson. (Criterion Collection)

Books

Image: Every Last Cuckoo
Algonquin Books

In grief, many people withdraw. That may have been Sarah Lucas’ first instinct after the 75-year-old resident of rural Vermont lost her husband, Charles, because of an injury during a tough winter. Instead, Sarah recalled her days growing up during the Depression, when her parents took in boarders and shared what they had. Sarah decides to do the same with a strange collection of misfits in “Every Last Cuckoo,” the debut novel by Kate Maloy. Sarah’s choice to fill up her empty house brings with it some unexpected developments, each making her life richer in some way. Maloy wrote a well-received memoir called “A Stone Bridge North” about her Quaker faith and life in Vermont. “Every Last Cuckoo” is an impressive step in a new literary direction. (Algonquin Books)