Downtime

By Lev Grossman, Rebecca Winters Keegan, Belinda Luscombe, Josh Tyrangiel

UNAVOIDABLE FAVOURITE WORST NIGHTMARE by Arctic Monkeys; out April 24

Arctic Monkeys' second album--their debut was merely the best rock record of 2006--kicks off with a 30-sec. run of thundering drums and earth-quaking bass. Despite the fact that all four members are in their early 20s, this is not a band that lacks confidence, and the chief difference between their first two records is that this one is even louder and faster. D Is for Dangerous and Fluorescent Adolescent swagger by on ferocious guitar swells, but they also swing, with unpredictable pace shifts perfect for dancing and allowing singer Alex Turner to show off his wit. "Do the bad thing/ Take off your wedding ring," he snarls, reminding you that in rock the bad thing can still feel pretty damned good.

UNNECESSARY FRACTURE Rated R; opens April 20

It's good to see Anthony Hopkins being that terrifying, omniscient bad guy again. He murders his wife, who's cheating with a police officer, who comes unawares to the crime scene and compromises everything. And Ryan Gosling has fun as the scrappy, cocky A.D.A. who goes after him. But for an audience used to three flavors of Law & Order and three of CSI, crime movies have to be a little harder to put back together again.

UNMISSABLE

HOT FUZZ Rated R; in theaters April 20

A hotshot London policeman (co-writer Simon Pegg) is transferred to an apparently tranquil English village after showing up his superiors in this buddy-cop satire from the spoofmeisters behind Shaun of the Dead. All is not as it seems as Pegg (above right) and his lovably oafish sidekick investigate a series of bizarre deaths. The twosome pursue criminals so exuberantly and the violence is so spectacular, it's like Lethal Weapon but with brains--and scones.

NOW ARRIVING: SHIA LABEOUF

What He's Done:

Let's learn now how to pronounce the kid's name (it's Shy-yuh La-Buff) because it looks as if he's going to be around for a while. The son of a mime and a ballerina, he first got noticed as the star of the Disney Channel's Even Stevens and the big-screen adaptation of the teen-lit hit Holes. But he's growing up; he had a nude LSD-trip scene in Bobby, and his new thriller, Disturbia, just beat Halle Berry and Bruce Willis' Perfect Stranger at the box office.

What He's Going to Do:

In June, LaBeouf will swan-dive into the mainstream in the usual way, as the voice of the lead penguin in an animated movie, Surf's Up. He'll also be the human star as robots wage war on Earth in the oversize action flick Transformers. But next year it's the really big leagues: he has just been tapped to play a key role in Indiana Jones 4 alongside Harrison Ford. Oh, and soon he'll turn 21 and be old enough to share a toast at all those premieres.

REVIEW THE CHILDREN OF HURIN By J.R.R. Tolkien 313 pages

Elf Esteem

There are two kinds of Tolkien fan: the day-trippers, who have read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and let it go at that, and the hard core--the mighty Uruk-hai of Tolkien fans--who have delved into The Silmarillion and grok the deep history of Middle-earth. The latter group will snap up The Children of Hurin, a "new" tale of Middle-earth cobbled together by Christopher Tolkien out of manuscripts left behind by his dad J.R.R. But there's a lot there for the weekend warrior too.

Children of Hurin is set in the First Age of Middle-earth, 6,500 years pre-Frodo. Your hero is the good-hearted but proud and irascible Turin (son of Hurin), a human warrior who had the good fortune to be trained by elves in wicked swordsmanship. Your villain is the cowardly and spiteful Morgoth, your basic evil incarnate, who squats in his dark fortress of Angband and makes war on all that is just and beautiful. Children is written in Tolkien's full-on high-heroic style, which is sometimes hilariously dorky and faux-archaic, and as a short subject it never achieves the towering operatic grandeur of the trilogy. But it's still a huge pleasure to be back in Middle-earth and see it in a younger, wilder era. There's plenty of lore for scholars, and plenty of dwarves and balrogs and mighty smiting for the casual fan. Just one warning: it's a dark tale with a flawed hero, full of ruinous accidents and bitter betrayals. You'll have to wait till the Third Age for a happy ending.