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Pure pop for now people, 2003 edition. The New Pornographers’ Electric Version is even better than their much-talked-about 2000 debut Mass Romantic—it’s easily the catchiest album we’ve run across all year, a sunny, soaring mix of harmonies and jangly chords that has more hooks than the state fishing opener. The Vancouver indie-rock supergroup—which takes its name from a Jimmy Swaggart remark about rock music being the “new pornography”—has talent to burn, with two fine songwriters in Carl Newman and Dan Bejar, not to mention the vocal power of singer Neko Case, who’s generating as much buzz for her solo country songs (and a recent fully-clothed mention in Playboy, who named her the year’s sexiest female indie rocker) as for the power-pop on parade here. When we first heard the NP’s single “The Laws Have Changed” last month, we must have listened to it 20 or 30 times in a row, and can’t wait to hear the group live; reports from cities earlier on the tour have been ecstatic. First Avenue, (612) 332-1775, www.first-avenue.com

Oh sure, you remember “Fast Car,” the strummy singalong that launched Chapman in 1988 from the subway stations of Boston to MTV and beyond. But she’s had five albums since then, mostly working below the radar—the natural result, perhaps, of someone who helped usher in the now-dated era of the politically correct college-radio singer-songwriter. New Beginnings in 1995 brought her back to mainstream radio with the straight though sedate blues of “Give Me One Reason,” and now she’s touring on the strength of last year’s Let It Rain, a quiet folk-soul album that puts her clear baritone right up front where it belongs. Orpheum, 910 Hennepin Ave., (612) 339-7007, www.hennepintheatredistrict.com

We were relieved to discover that the atrocious buzz about Liz Phair’s attempt at pop starletry was too harsh. Only some of the new record is cringingly awful. A self-imposed exile from Exile in Guyville, her celebrated debut three albums ago, and a move toward slick pop is not necessarily wrongheaded—why should the field be ceded to Britney and the other vapid airheads? But her new perky odes to breathless first love sound clumsy and pandering, and often just downright appalling—like her bubbly tribute to bodily fluids, “H.W.C.,” which we will refrain from spelling out. But there is material on Liz Phair that works; “Bionic Eyes” genuinely rocks, and Phair hasn’t turned her back on the disarmingly honest lyric, as on “Little Digger,” a knowingly sad number about her son’s emotional turmoil over mom’s new boyfriends. We just can’t help being worried about another lyric that sounds all too honest, given the artistic bankruptcy apparent elsewhere on the disc: “I can’t feel any more, but I can fake it forever.”

It took us a couple of viewings before we grasped Wings of Desire’s quiet beauty, but it’s since grown to become one of our most beloved films, one we’ve seen a dozen times over the last decade. German director Wim Wenders’ story of angels silently witnessing human joys and sorrows is constructed like poetry, meditative and ethereal, without a hint of the mawkishness you might expect from what is basically a love story about an angel renouncing his immortality for a mortal woman. A near-flawless piece of work that, like It’s a Wonderful Life, makes us glad to be alive every time we see it—not to mention changing forever the way we watch Peter Falk’s old Columbo reruns, thanks to his wonderful and largely improvised supporting role here. (It also introduced us to Nick Cave, a side benefit worth the price of admission.) The two spinoffs—the sappy American remake City of Angels and Wenders’ own ham-fisted sequel—only serve to illustrate how good the original is.

Here are two mid-50s films from French director Alain Resnais, both struggling to come to terms with the deep psychic wounds of World War Two. Hiroshima, a collaboration with French novelist Marguerite Dumas, uses the story of the love affair between a French actress and Japanese architect as jumping-off point to explore grief and survivors’ guilt, and whether love has any meaning in the face of humanity’s growing ability to carry out horrific brutality on a massive scale. The film fractures narrative chronology in a way that was then groundbreaking, in pursuit of depicting the way persistent memory can dominate our perceptions of the present. Like Citizen Kane, if it seems unremarkable today it’s because the techniques it pioneered are now an entrenched part of the language of filmmaking. Also new on DVD is Resnais’ haunting documentary Night and Fog, one of the first to document so starkly the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps and a conscious reaction against the refusal by many involved with the camps—German and otherwise—to accept responsibility.

Writer Alan Moore (Watchmen, From Hell) and illustrator Kevin O’Neill crafted the somewhat geeky premise of a Victorian-era Justice League in the graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Mina Harker, the femme fatale from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, is appointed to assemble a few literary titans to foil the nefarious plans of the late Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis, Professor Moriarty. The motley crew assembled includes adventurer Allan Quatermain, Dr. Jekyll, Captain Nemo, and the Invisible Man. 20th Century Fox has thrown Sean Connery into the Quatermain role, added art connoisseur Dorian Gray, and, in a fit of xenophobia, a Missouri problem-child-turned-international-spy by the name of Tom Sawyer. We’re choosing Mr. Hyde over the Hulk this summer, and partying like it’s 1899.

The Walker’s concurrent exhibit on boxing makes a serendipitous theme for this year’s installment of our favorite local open-air arts event. The sweet science has always been a favorite subject in American filmmaking—you could put together a series many times longer than this six-week run without coming close to running out of watchable fare. The best matchup is probably the July 21 opener, pitting opening band the Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers against the terrific Requiem for a Heavyweight, a 1962 Rod Serling-penned drama that opens memorably with a boxer’s-eye view of what it feels like to get knocked out by Cassius Clay. Other good movies in the series include The Great White Hope, with black heavyweight champion James Earl Jones fighting racism outside the ring (August 4, with buzzy local punk-popsters the Soviettes), and the Kirk Douglas noir Champion (August 11). Closing out the series August 25 is some obscure little indie film called Rocky, which we’re told had a sequel or two. Walker Art Center, (612) 375-7622, www.walkerart.org

One could approach Oak Street’s July retrospective as an aesthetic exegesis of the changing modes of cinematic expression in the mid-century heyday of the Hollywood studio system. One could seek evidence of unique directorial styles finding voice in an artistic medium defined strongly by the visions of the moneymen on top. Alternatively, one could just say “Hey, awesome, a Bogart double feature!” There are certainly plenty of excellent films to partake of here. Auteurs gathers works two-by-two from the best directors of the era, people like Howard Hawks, George Cukor and John Ford—including his 1924 career-launching silent The Iron Horse (July 16). If you’re missing Gregory Peck, who died in June, check out his 1956 performance as Ahab in Moby-Dick, costarring Orson Welles, who surprisingly does not play the whale. As for Bogey, he’s here both in the July 5-6 pairing of Hawks’ To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, and on July 25-27 in John Huston’s two great crime films, Key Largo and The Maltese Falcon. Oak Street, 309 Oak St. S.E., (612) 331-3134, oakstreetcinema.org

The truth of the matter is that we’ve blown off Aquatennial for years. Crowds make us nervous, and we certainly don’t need the imprimatur of City Fathers (or Mothers) to enjoy its most bountiful amenity—our lakes and rivers. And yet, Aquatennial has gotten so big that at least one affiliated event is actually drawing national attention these days: We understand this year’s Lifetime Fitness Triathalon (August 2) will be on network TV. Maybe we should take another look at the schedule—and take in the coronation of the Queen of the Lakes (July 25), or maybe the traditional Calhoun regatta (July 26), or the one spectacular event you pretty much have no choice but to enjoy, the mammoth fireworks show in downtown Minneapolis, July 26. www.aquatennial.org

A few months ago, Zadie Smith wrote in the New York Times about being an extra in a PBS screen adaptation of her autobiographical debut novel, White Teeth. It was a touching piece in which the writer acknowledged the shortcomings of her novel, and the bizarre experience of being an extra in the movie of your own life. (Actually, it was, among other things, the raucous story of how her biracial hippie parents met in the paisley heyday of London circa 1975.) Here, she’ll undoubtedly read from The Autograph Man, her likeable second novel, which came out last fall. Ruminator, 1648 Grand Ave., St. Paul, (651) 699-0587, ruminator.com