Blog Post: 5 Things in Pop Culture Worth Getting Excited About in March

The month has just started and is looking quite rich, at least from a pop culture standpoint. Here are five things worth getting all gooey about in the coming month.


1.) Infinite Space for Nintendo DS (Platinum Games, $30, March 16th)

Platinum Studios has been responsible for two of the most indelible, original, and plain fun games of the past few months – Mad World, a witty, original, hyper-violent, black-and-white kill-athon for Nintendo Wii and Bayonetta, which has set the bar incredibly high for action games this year (it came out in parallel versions for the PS3 and Xbox 360); and it's got two more games to go this year. The first is Infinite Space, a sci-fi-ish RPG for the cuddly Nintendo DS that was released in Japan last year to outrageous acclaim and Cabbage Patch Kids-circa-1985 sales. I don't know much about the game, besides its emphasis on customizable space ships, but it's got the Platinum Games logo on the box, and that's all I really care about.

2.) Sparta, USA by David Lapham and Johnny Timmons (Wildstorm Comics, $2.99, monthly starting March 3rd)

Those of us that loved David Lapham's Young Liars, a book he wrote and drew for Vertigo (and was unceremoniously shit-canned last year), should be especially stoked for this. I've deliberately avoided reading about it and since the first issue is out this week, I should pick it up on my weekly binge in the next couple of days, but the generally gist is that it's set in a world where football is EVERYTHING. And not just Friday Night Lights everything, like, life-and-death everything. Lapham, who also did an admirable stint on a 30 Days of Night spin-off last year and is currently halfway through illustrating a two-part "Fables" arc, is a true comic book original and I hope that Sparta, USA survives a little longer than his crazed, sex-and-violence epic which, even if you couldn't make heads or tails of it, remained arresting until the bitter end.

3.) Days of Heaven on Blu-ray (Criterion, $39.99, March 23rd)

There are a lot of really awesome titles hitting high definition this month (Toy Story and Toy Story 2, Red Cliff, Chan Wook-park's Vengeance trilogy, Where the Wild Things Are), but this takes the cake in terms of the one disc I'd sell my gold fillings for. (Editor's note: I don't have gold fillings. But it'd certainly give me an undeniably "dangerous" edge.) Terrence Malick's sprawling, lyrical love story is one of my favorite movies ever (resting alongside Jaws and Don't Look Now), one of immense power and pleasure, both of which will be amplified and clarified with this (courtesy of the good folks at Criterion). Just thinking of this movie makes me all swoon-y.

4.) Goldfrapp, Head First (Mute, $14,99, March 23rd)

Goldfrapp is one of the best pop bands on planet earth. Period. Exclamation point. End of paragraph. End scene. Game over. With each album they reinvent themselves while staying true to their breathless, sensual roots. With this album they seem to be going in a decidedly frothy pop direction (peep this video for first single "Rocket") and I'm practically peeing in anticipatory glee. It may not be the best album released this month because, well, that Gorillaz album is a tough motherfucker to top (it really is a masterpiece, front to back), but it'll still make for a great, roll-down-the-windows-and-breathe-in-the-spring-air party starter.

5.) Solar by Ian McEwan (Nan A. Talese, $26.95, March 30th)

I'm not a huge Ian McEwan but he's an undeniable talent that can weave poetry about out the most nothing of nothingness (Saturday was pretty enveloping even if nothing happened at all), so I'm more than a little curious about this, which the New Yorker recently excerpted, which seems to be about the climate change debate but also has a twinge of sci-fi-ish-ness to it, too. Putting one of McEwan's dreary, fucked-up sad sacks into a global catastrophe is kind of brilliant and whatever it is, it should at least be a better popular novel than a little something called State of Fear by the late, occasionally great Michael Crichton. RIP.