Kaleidoscope

They sound more like Luna than Simple Minds, but I get this nagging nauseous nostalgia whenever I listen to Sweden's Shout Out Louds . (They play the Church on Monday, r5productions.com.) Just about everything on the recent Work (Merge) woulda made a pretty montage in a John Hughes movie. The synths are vibrant, the vocals gentle, the lyrics poignant and heavy. Don't you forget about me.

—Patrick Rapa

After a decade exhibiting gritty city photographs beneath the noise and hustle of the interstate, favorite daughter Zoe Strauss — Pew fellow, Whitney Biennial participant, published author — is calling Sunday her last "Under I-95" (1-4 p.m., Front and Mifflin streets, i-95-10.blogspot.com). The final show consists of 231 images spread out around two South Philly blocks, which will take serious perusers about an hour and a half to traverse. Photocopies of each deeply personal, raw shot of Philly residents and their environs are $5 a pop — a small price to pay for your own piece of the city.

—Molly Eichel

What's most striking about Paul Guest's articulate, no-bullshit memoir, One More Theory About Happiness (Ecco, May 4), is how long the poet spends tracing the immediate aftermath of a life-altering childhood accident, mapping out memories of a youth spent immobile. At 12, Guest fell off a bike and broke his neck; two-thirds into the slim volume, he's just reached his college years, still navigating the unimaginable life of a quadriplegic. It's peculiar and remarkable, painful and uplifting; the one disappointment is how rushed that last third feels in comparison. If only lengthy autobiographies were back in style.

—Carolyn Huckabay

Every field of study has its major introductory text. Just like all art history students own a Janson edition, all cinema studies students possess — and should worship at the altar of — a Bordwell. Film scholar David Bordwell has recently set his sights on the Internet, and his blog (davidbordwell.net) is an excellent source for long-form film criticism, without the academic pretenses that can bore even the hardest-core cinephile to Sirk-sized tears. With abundant pictures and no need for a deep understanding of film theory, Bordwell proves that film criticism is not at death's door, just yet.

—Molly Eichel