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For a woman who sometimes breaks down in tears during concerts and walks off stage (whether she’s a victim of pathological shyness or an art-rock-related behavioral disorder, we’re not sure), Chan Marshall is showing real guts. To record her new album, she recruited some of the greatest soul players around, including guitarist Mabon “Teenie” Hodges, who wrote “Take Me to the River,”his brother Leroy “Flick” Hodges, and drummer Steve Potts, who played with Booker T. and the MGs. What they made of the scrawny white girl with the mousy little voice is anyone’s guess, but one thing’s for sure: Good things happened in Memphis during the making of this newfangled old-fashioned soul album. Marshall, who grew up in the South, admirably gooses up her normally wavering and plaintive vocals to meet the demands of this sexy, funky brand of soul. The Greatest pays tribute to a great moment in music history without simply imitating it. This is still a Cat Power album, but with a louder heartbeat.

David Letterman seldom interviews musicians when they perform on his show, and that might have something to do with the legacy of Tom Snyder, whose The Tomorrow Show aired on NBC from 1973 to 1982 before being replaced by Letterman’s own program. During his run, Snyder hosted a notorious slew of punk rockers, most of whom were studiously unprepared for their time on the talk show hot seat. Johnny Rotten was as easy to interview as a junkyard dog; the Ramones stared shyly at their feet, slouching and shuffling and buried in hair; and, perhaps most memorably, Wendy O. Williams blew up a vehicle onstage in an inspired performance Snyder was clearly not expecting. This DVD set uniquely documents the Tomorrow Show’s punk years with interviews and performances by PIL, the Ramones, Patti Smith, Elvis Costello, Iggy Pop, the Jam, the Plasmatics, and others. Raw, unrehearsed, and occasionally repellant, these stripped-down appearances captured punk rock as it was meant to be–loud, rude, and fun. Even after two decades of marketing-created musical “outlaws,” they still feel like a revelation.

Enjoy the silence? Nah. Give us music anytime. On New Year’s Eve, the Bell Auditorium hosts Twin Cities acts Fog and Traditional Methods to respectively score the silent films The Naked Island and Tabu, A Story of the South Seas. Kaneto Shindo’s 1960 film The Naked Island follows the daily toils and trials of an island family in Southwest Japan, for which Fog’s minimalist keyboard and guitar should provide a resonant backdrop. Tabu, a Polynesian love story, won an Academy Award in 1931 for its gorgeous cinematography, and hip-hop act Traditional Methods ought to give this steamy vintage classic new edge and nuance.

Novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, former grouse-beater for the Queen Mother, tries to drive an Oscar from the Hollywood moors by writing this original screenplay for the celebrated Merchant Ivory production team. Ismail Merchant’s death in May makes The White Countess the duo’s final production, and it’s a strange one. Against the backdrop of pre-World War II Shanghai, a blind diplomat struggles to keep his sanity after the death of his family. He falls in with a disgraced Russian countess who supports her family by working for tips in a sordid nightclub. The Redgrave women (Natasha Richardson, mother Vanessa, and aunt Lynn), Hiroyuki Sanada (the “Tom Cruise of Japan”), and Ralph Fiennes, in his sixth film of the year, give this bizarre and complex tale a sheen of elegance.

Some people are masters at creating their own mystique. Notable examples include Greta Garbo, J.D. Salinger, and, more recently, J.T. LeRoy, who may not even exist if you ask the New York Times. Terrence Malick would be high on such a list as well. A filmmaker who declines interviews and doesn’t like to be photographed, Malick has forced judgment based solely on the merits of the small number of films he’s directed: Badlands, Days of Heaven, and The Thin Red Line. Lucky for him, and for the filmgoing public, each of his offerings has been gorgeous and brilliant. In Malick’s films, nature is grand and expansive, creating an enveloping context for his characters. Each setting–whether it’s a Texas wheat field filmed at the “golden hour” or a South Dakota prairie barren enough to encapsulate the psyche of a bored, murdering teenager–serves as a nuanced and complicated character unto itself. No doubt the same is true of Malick’s latest, The New World, which retells the fabled story of Pocahontas (Q’Orianka Kilcher) and Captain John Smith (Colin Farrell), who helped found Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607.

The masterful Julian Barnes returns with an epic, complex, and fascinating tale of two men brought together by a third, fictional character: Sherlock Holmes. In the midst of grieving the death of his wife, Holmes’ creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is roused from a deep depression when he receives a letter from a man who has been wrongfully convicted of bizarre crimes, requesting the assistance of the writer (and his legendary deductive skills) in proving his innocence. Loosely based on true events, the tale unfolds so gracefully that the identity of the famous writer isn’t immediately obvious. Barnes manages to transform one of the most storied–and critically examined–personalities in literary history into a vivid figment of his own imagination, and turns this interesting historical episode into an engrossing mystery all his own.

Phil Donlay’s Category Five is the sort of ripping good yarn that real guys are supposed to like. All the archetypal, Ian Fleming elements are in place: a hot-shot zipping around the world in hot airplanes and cars, a brilliant and beautiful love interest, and plenty of personal and political intrigue. And to keep things clipping along, the plot whirls around in the vortex of a Category Five hurricane that is about to destroy a major American city. The flying sequences are hair-raising, so we’re not sure we can in good conscience recommend this as an airplane read, although Donlay could perhaps calm our fears with some more prosaic stories from his real life: When he’s not writing, he flies jets for a living. And as real guys will understand, that’s cool.

Kaye Gibbons took her own sweet time in getting around to writing a sequel to her debut novel, Ellen Foster–twenty years, actually, but who’s keeping track? The Life All Around Me catches up with Ellen Foster while she’s still in her teens, so if it’s been two decades for you as well, it may behoove you to reread the first book before plunging into the latest. Don’t think of it as required reading so much as an opportunity to revisit one of the best and earliest works in the “sick and twisted American childhood” genre (which seems to be dominated by Southern women). Gibbons’ elegant and emotional prose creates oddly uplifting material out of tales of child abuse, which is no small feat. Fortunately, her protagonist has moved beyond all that in this book, and applies all of her hard-earned wisdom and pluck on her way to a spectacular new grown-up life. You’ll doubtless hear more about the travails of Gibbons’ heroine, and about the other, highly praised volumes she wrote during the incubation of her long-awaited sequel, at this reading and discussion.

Pedicord Apartments, the installation in which viewers/voyeurs to walk down the hallway of an apartment building and eavesdrop on the “tenants,” has always been one of the more popular artworks at the Weisman Art Museum. Now the Minnesota History Center takes Ed and Nancy Kienholz’s idea a few steps further. In the Railroad Island neighborhood on St. Paul’s East Side, an entire house has been outfitted with the domestic and cultural ephemera of various people who have lived there since the Victorian era, including German, Italian, African-American, and Hmong families. Photographs, furniture, toys, and personal effects, along with home movies and oral histories recorded by past Railroad Island residents, intertwine American home life and the immigrant experience. 470 Hopkins St., St. Paul; www.mnhs.org

This tribute to the fleeting beauties of urban living includes the obvious (photographs of neighborhoods that face the wrecking ball, by Mike Melman, taken just before dawn), the subtle (an installation of teacups representing the teahouses of Japan, by Tetsuya Yamada), and the surreal (David Lefkowitz’s cityscapes built from Styrofoam packing materials)–plus work from seven other international artists who interpret city life through a diverse range of media. 405 21st Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-624-6518; nash.umn.edu