[dl] Misc.

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Worth Your Time

Here are four entertainment options to see with your eyes or listen to with your ears.

CD: Nectar (ESL Music, $16)

LADIES FIRST:Natalia Clavier is the first female artist signed to label ESL Music,an outfit based in Washington, D.C., and best known for backingelectronic artists like Thievery Corporation (whose founding duo ofEric Hilton and Rob Garza are owners of ESL). But don’t let thatassociation fool you. Though the album does have techno touches, it ismuch less Moby than it is Norah Jones -- a Spanish-language NorahJones, that is. Clavier is a native of Buenos Aires and the wife ofArgentinean musician and ESL Music labelmate Federico Aubele. She cuther musical teeth singing jazz in Barcelona, Spain.

CRY FOR ME, ARGENTINA:Nectaris dominated by romantic tunes featuring Clavier’s lilting voice. Youcould easily imagine it as the soundtrack to a haunting foreign filmabout heartbreak. And if the almost lullaby-like “Mi Mentira” doesn’tmake you a little teary on first listen, then you, friend, may be deadinside.

OUR TAKE: Sorry, Madonna, but this is what Argentina really sounds like.

IN STORES: June 10
-- J.R.

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BOOK: The Forger’s Spell(HarperCollins, $27)

PREMISE:In World War II–era Europe, a small-time Dutch artist named Han vanMeegeren passes off six of his own paintings as 300-year-old works byfamed painter Johannes Vermeer, the genius behind Girl with a Pearl Earring and The Milkmaid.

YOU DON’T NEED A DEGREE IN ART HISTORY: Author Edward Dolnick won the Edgar Award for his previous book, The Rescue Artist, a thrilling and at times hilarious account of the maverick art investigator who recovered Edvard Munch’s The Screamafter it disappeared from Norway’s National Gallery in 1994. Dolnickadopts a more subdued tone here, but the book is no dull still life. Hedeftly covers the historical background of Nazi-occupied Holland andthe plunder of Europe’s art treasures while also offering entertainingchapters in which reformed fraudsters discuss the techniques forcreating new old masterpieces.

OUR TAKE: Unlike Van Meegeren’s paintings, Dolnick’s book is a genuine treasure.

IN STORES: June 24
-- Kristin Baird Rattini

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TV SHOW: MVP: The Secret Lives of Hockey Wives

PREMISE: Like the BBC’s Footballers Wives and the CW’s The Game,this series, originally produced for the Canadian Broadcasting Companyand now about to air on SoapNet, follows the off-field competition towin the affections of pro hockey players.

TAKE OFF, EH?Given that hockey players are oft depicted as slick-haired, toothlessthugs, you’d think that hockey fans would be thrilled with a seriesthat shows them instead as sex symbols. But not everyone is. Considerthis, er, critique from HockeyBeat.com: “I hope Canada turns their backon it. It’s so HBO, and Canada is so not HBO. Canadians love hockey,and, like, 70 percent of us (or something) are hockey families -- noone wants to think that the awesome hockey wife or hockey mom is asex-crazed, two-timing tramp!”

OUR TAKE: Good-looking men plus good-looking women plus scandalous behavior equals a hat trick.

SEE IT: Premieres on SoapNet June 19
-- John Ross

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DVD: 10,000 BC (Warner Home Video, $29)

PREMISE: The story line is as old and as classic as Homer’s The Iliad.A beautiful woman is carried away by a rival group. The man who lovesthe beautiful woman decides to bring her back at all costs. But whereasHelen of Troy’s abduction (or willing departure, depending on your ownreading of Homer’s text) launches -- as Christopher Marlowe later putit in Doctor Faustus -- athousand ships, the abduction of Evolet, played by Camilla Belle,launches a thousand spears. Also, there are saber-toothed tigers. Grrr!

SERIOUSLY, GRRR!National Geographicthis ain’t. So, if you like your prehistoric creatures -- both man andbeast -- all fossilized and historically accurate, you might want tostay away from this film from director Roland Emmerich, who also helmedIndependence Day. But if you like movies to be big and loud and bright and -- did we mention loud? -- this is the film for you.

OUR TAKE: The movie is best appreciated viewed at home in a high-definition format, with the speaker volume turned way up.
-- J.R.

Would You Believe ... that Get Smart and The Incredible Hulk have a lot in common? So do some of June’s other big releases. By Joseph Guinto

MOVIE	Get Smart	The Love Guru	Wanted	WALL-E	The Incredible Hulk
TV STAR IN A STARRING ROLE?	The Office’s Steve Carell takes Don Adams’s Maxwell Smart from the small screen to the big screen.	It’s former Saturday Night Live funnyman and sometimes Dr. Evil, Mike Myers.	James McAvoy has done his share of British TV, but he’s best known as Mr. Tumnus, the faun, in The Chronicles of Narnia.	Cheers’ John Ratzenberger provides one of the few human voices in this animated movie.	Edward Norton (who replaces Eric Bana as Bruce Banner for this secondHulk film) is no Bill Bixby, and the computer-generated Hulk is no LouFerrigno.
OUTRAGEOUS PLOTLINE?	The incompetent Smart falls all over himself and all over just abouteverything in his path -- literally -- in his effort to save U.S. spycontrol from the evil KAOS organization. It’s like the Pink Panthermovies, but with fewer faux French accents.	Myers plays an American who’s raised in India by gurus. Wearing robesand a silly beard, he returns to the West to try to reap riches. Hisfirst assignment is in Canada, where he attempts to repair therelationship of a star hockey player and his wife.	McAvoy is recruited by a fraternity of assassins because he has therare ability to fire a bullet that curves after it comes out of a gun.Also, he throws a fantastic toga party.	Rampant consumerism has so polluted Earth that humans have rocketed offto live elsewhere, leaving robots behind to clean up. Only one of theoriginal robots survives: WALL-E. He also falls in love.	An accidental dose of radiation turns a guy into a big green monsterwho is usually angry but, confusingly, can also occasionally be niceand do the right thing. Kind of like your boss.
BEAUTIFUL COSTAR?	Anne Hathaway as Agent 99	Jessica Alba as the owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs	Angelina Jolie as the tattooed assassin who trains McAvoy	Only if you find animated robots beautiful	Liv Tyler, who replaces Jennifer Connelly as Bruce Banner’s love interest, Betty Ross
KOOKY CAMEO OR COSTAR?	Forget Dwayne “Don’t Call Me the Rock Anymore” Johnson, who plays Agent23. The best wrestler in this movie is the seven-foot-two Dalip Singh,who World Wrestling Entertainment fans know as the Great Khali.	Take your pick: Mini Me Verne Troyer as the coach of the Maple Leafs orJustin Timberlake as a curly-haired, mustachioed, Speedo-wearingQuebecois hockey star.	Kooky is not among the adjectives we’d use to describe Morgan Freeman.	Kathy Najimy -- anybody who was in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit definitely qualifies as kooky.	Robert Downey Jr., who just so happens to be starring in Iron Man,which just so happens to have opened in May and just so happens to alsobe a Marvel Comics story, is in this film too. Weird, huh?
A BOX-OFFICE BONANZA?	Though Carell’s movies have had more ups and downs than the Dow JonesIndustrial Average, we’re betting this one will not, as Smart wouldsay, “miss it by that much.”	Hate to break it to you, Mr. Myers, but hockey season ends in June.	It’s difficult to get tired of seeing Angelina Jolie on the big screen. But how many times is she going to play an assassin?	Robots, cartoons, voices like R2-D2’s -- what’s not to like?	As the Hulk might say, “Hulk smash prior box-office take, but set no records.”