1| TELEVISION Spectacle: Elvis Costello With … It’s not just the glasses–Elvis Costello really is that smart. On this Sundance Channel Q&A series, the singer, showman and wit talks pop-music history with Elton John, jazz with Bill Clinton and more. Interspersed with cover songs, Spectacle is an engaging showcase for a curious mind.
2| DVD A Colbert Christmas Stephen Colbert spikes the Xmas punch with Willie Nelson as a weed-toting Wise Man, Jon Stewart ambivalently praising Hanukkah and John Legend crooning a hilariously filthy ode to nutmeg. This is to earnest holiday specials what truthiness is to truth.
3| DVD WALL•E Pixar’s ravishing robot love story is now on three discs (one for downloading) with loads of fun extras, including a cartoon short and a doc about sound-effects genius Ben Burtt, plus commentary on the film by director Andrew Stanton. He’s a great guy to spend a movie with.
4| DVD Chungking Express Wong Kar-wai’s 1994 distillation of Hong Kong grunge and glamour weaves four top Asian stars (Brigitte Lin, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Faye Wong, Takeshi Kaneshiro) into a crazy-tender two-part romance. How can nosebleed-high art also provide fizzy delight? Here’s how.
5| DVD The Spy Who Came In from the Cold A realist’s corrective to the first flush of Bondomania, this intelligent 1965 film of the John le Carré novel saw the Cold War as a bitter stalemate in shades of gray. Richard Burton and Oskar Werner are the rival agents whose complex loyalties run into a Berlin Wall.
Arts Online For more reviews and openings this weekend, go to time.com/entertainment
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