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The Great Movies II

He gave us brilliant critiques and commentaries in The Great Movies. Now, Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Roger Ebert continues where he left off with The Great Movies II. In this edition, Ebert collects 100 additional essays, including comments on films such as 12 Angry Men, The Color Purple, Goodfellas, Mean Streets and Scarface. The book, which also includes 100 black-and-white photos of movie stills, is a perfect crash course in film appreciation and will get you talking about movies again.

The Rough Guide 
to Cult Movies
Penguin, $18.99

The second edition of The Rough Guide to Cult Movies takes you on a weird but compelling trip through a vast number of films with cult followings. The book includes spanking-new trivia, profiles, opinions and juicy rumors from films such as This Is Spinal Tap, Star Trek, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and hundreds more. The Miscellany section will get you jazzed with topics such as "Movie Personalities and their Connections with Chicken," as will the Guilty Pleasures section where the subheading says it all: "Movies We Cannot Defend But Cannot, Alas, Resist." Also included are celebrity picks of favorite cult movies, from the likes of Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Russell Crowe.

New York: The Movie Lover's Guide, The Ultimate Insider Tour of Movie New York
Hollywood: The Movie Lover's Guide, The Ultimate Insider Tour of Movie L.A.
Richard Alleman
Random House of Canada, $22.95 each

These gems are a perfect guide to who did what and where in New York and L.A. Hollywood takes you on a juicy trip to various famous film and TV locations, from the locations of actors' homes in the hills to the house of The Brady Bunch to the office of Charlie's Angels to the hip clubs and restaurants of the stars. In New York, venture down the walkway where Marilyn Monroe's infamous Seven Year Itch blowing dress scene was filmed or to The Godfather mansion on Staten Island. New York also reveals star-studded restaurants, famous historical movie palaces and Broadway theaters.

Hitch

Bride & Prejudice
(Casablanca)
This is more of a score than a soundtrack, despite the presence of Def Jam diva Ashanti on two songs. In fact, her contributions are the weakest moments; their attempts to dress up her slinky R&B by peppering it with mildly Indian instrumentation are woefully transparent. Thankfully, most of the music is the delightfully spirited, effortlessly melodic work of composer Anu Malik and arranger Ranjit Barot (near-legendary music directors within the Indian community). The duo have some striking help from The London Session Orchestra on "Lalita Walks Away," which manages to convey more emotion with a zither than some human voices

Imaginary Heroes
(Milan Records)
Deborah Lurie and John Ottman, whose work you've heard in films like The Usual Suspects, X-Men 2 and Cruel Intentions, have created several effective and memorable themes that form the score of this poignant little film about a family in crisis. The movements included here stand on their own, which is rare when removed from the context of the images they were intended to accompany. The quirky nature of the script and characters is reflected in the choice of left-of-center acts like The Postal Service, Slim Harpo and Yellowman. Watch out for the band I-94, whose soaring song "Waterfall" is just shy of anthemic and deserves to reverberate from the world's stadia for many years to come.

-Mike McCann