Short List

1 | MOVIE

Slumdog Millionaire Everybody say namaste to director Danny Boyle’s hurtling epic about a poor kid (Dev Patel) who improbably answers tough posers on the Indian edition of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? A masala of romance and history, with true grit plus a fabulous production number–it’s what movies ought to be.

2 | DVD

The Sopranos: The Complete Series It won’t tell you whether Tony got whacked (which you might expect for $400 a pop). But this definitive collection of HBO’s definitive drama offers such extras as Q&As with creator David Chase and two trivia-filled cast roundtables held, natch, over dinner.

3 | THEATER

Celebrity Autobiography Joan Lunden’s wake-up routine. Neil Sedaka’s food diary. The Burt Reynolds–Loni Anderson divorce–from both sides. These and other excerpts from star memoirs are read off-Broadway with deadpan glee by a rotating cast in the funniest docu-theater stunt of the year.

4 | MOVIE

JCVD His career and life on the skids, movie stud Jean-Claude Van Damme comes home to Brussels and gets tangled in a bank-heist drama. Director Mabrouk El Mechri weaves real and reel life into a dark meta-comedy. As for the star, he deserves not a black belt but an Oscar.

5 | CDS

The Spoken Word The British Library culled its archives for recordings of famous authors, with astounding results. A jovial, elderly J.R.R. Tolkien! A wise, patrician Virginia Woolf! And Ian Fleming interviewing Raymond Chandler, who sounds more pickled than hard-boiled.

Arts Online For more reviews and openings this weekend, go to time.com/entertainment