The Best Music, DVD & Book Releases

It's a shame that Block Party's producers didn't manage to get The Fugees' or Kanye West's music on the film's soundtrack. After all, these artists were the most mainstream musicians to appear in Dave Chappelle's documentary, and are key players in getting the audience to open up to lesser-known MCs, like Dead Prez and Mos Def.

Ultimately, by excluding these two huge names, the soundtrack becomes a more exclusive recording of underground hip-hop that isn't entirely representative of the diverse and encompassing nature of the film. So if listening to the performances of hip-hop's underground elite is your thing, you can't go wrong with this disc. But if you're looking for live versions of "Jesus Walks" and "Fu-Gee-La," you can continue holding your breath.

If there's one reason that E-40 should be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame, it's for introducing the world to "fo'shizzle" and "fo'sheezy," the "forget about it" and "without a doubt" of a generation. But regardless of previous cultural milestones, E-40 seems intent on making the supremacy of "Hyphy" rap (the California cousin of Krunk music) his legacy. And to achieve his goal, E-40 has enlisted some the biggest names in West Coast and Southern rap (such as Lil Jon and Mike Jones) to bring his campaign for a Hyphy world to the people. So if an E-40 administration is what you want governing hip-hop, you can start voting with your dollars when My Ghetto Report Card drops March 14th.

Viggo Mortensen, Ed Harris, Maria Bello. Now that the Oscars are over, it's time to stop being told what the best films of the year were and begin finding out for yourself. Luckily, most of the movies that dominated critics' top 10 lists are now storming on to DVD. On this note, two of the year's best films came out for home viewing this week, and the first one manages to leave a pit in your stomach the size of a garbage can. A History Of Violence focuses on a small-town average Joe (Mortensen) who is forced to reveal his disturbing past to friends and family after swiftly and efficiently disposing of two would-be robbers.

The DVD features a plethora of intriguing extras for fans of Violence. Director David Cronenberg (a hero to creepy, white film students throughout the country) provides commentary for the flick and deleted scenes, while an hour-long documentary about the movie should provide enough background on the production to successfully destroy any suspension of disbelief the audience might have had before watching it. In addition to extras centered on the making of the film, other featurettes on the DVD focus on the impact of the movie following its release, most notably a comparison between the American and international cuts of the film and the aftermath of Violence's appearance at the Cannes Film Festival.

In this day and age, it's pretty damn hard to find one American willing to throw mud on Abraham Lincoln's name. That's why Manhunt is such a great and compulsive read. The book successfully brings to light the divisions that existed at the end of the Civil War by revealing just how easily Lincoln's assassin found sympathizers and safe houses which allowed him to evade Secretary of War Edwin Stanton for almost two weeks. One of the most disturbing points in the book happens to be the revelation that, if it wasn't for Booth's poor navigation skills which led him to flee back into Maryland, Lincoln's assassin could have probably made it to the hospitable American South where he might have permanently avoided capture.