Kaleidoscope

Haunted by a dissolving relationship (and by actual ghosts during the recording process, apparently), John Faye sounds like a man possessed on IKE's new Tie the Knot With All That You Got. It's still the catchy, soaring pop IKE has been known for despite numerous lineup changes, but the lyrical intensity buries the needle on the old PKE meter. Catch 'em at World Café Live Dec. 26.

After the April release of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, we spent more time here at Second and Chestnut than we should have trying to come up with other monsterfications of the classics (Jurassic Mansfield Park, anyone? A Tale of Two Cannibals?). But the cover of Quirk Books' spring 2010 catalog puts us to shame: It's a photo of a bookshelf with an impressive collection of fake (or future?) Quirk Classics, including titles like Great Infestations, Lady Chatterly's Braaaaains, Crime and Dismemberment and my personal favorite, A Farewell to Arms and Legs. All of which are much cleverer than Georgian pterodactyls.

The New Yorker's Calvin Tomkins wrote that the speakers in Bruce Nauman's "Days" and "Giorni" (through April 4 at the Art Museum), were like "discrete ribbons of sound." Really? They looked like tiny, rectangular, off-white robots from the future to me. The speakers continuously play more than 20 recordings of men, women and children reciting the days of the week, which accidentally makes haunting, disorienting music — and provides greater artificial comfort than a TV. Just what you'd need in the future, when the tiny white robots rule.

While Douglas Sirk's style is often mined by other filmmakers and cited as a major influence, two movies coming out this week — A Single Man and Broken Embraces — owe a debt of gratitude to the great director. Sirk's melodramas burst with color and life; actors live in a rococo world, where storylines often dismissed as too female-centric for serious films reign supreme. Written on the Wind (1956), Imitation of Life ('59) and All That Heaven Allows ('55) are essential, but 1954's Rock Hudson-starring Magnificent Obsession has always been my favorite.