Specials: See Sufjan! Costello/Harris tour. Arcade Fire buys a church. Terry Teachout goes to a movie alone. More.

Today’s specials:

• Now you can watch Sufjan Stevens play Morning Becomes Eclectic. He plays music from 2005’s best album thus far… Illinois.

• Get ready. Elvis Costello’s gonna tour with Emmylou Harris.

• First, The Arcade Fire release the best album by a rock band in the last two years. Then, they buy a church.

• R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe reflects on the last ten months of touring. Hopefully his enthusiasm will help him record a better album than Around the Sun next time…

• Any upcoming movie with a cast like this–Andy Serkis, Bill Nighy, Stephen Fry, Ewan McGregor, and Mickey Rourke–deserves notice.

• Terry Teachout goes to see Me You and Everyone We Know, and then he writes:
  “What to do? I treated myself to a good dinner, then went looking for a movie I hadn’t seen, which turned out to be Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know. On my way to the theater, I tried to think of the last time I’d spent an evening watching a movie by myself in a city other than New York. When I go out of town, it’s usually to visit a friend or cover a performance, so I tend not to be faced with the problem of what to do after dinner. At length I recalled that I’d seen Audrey Wells’ Guinevere in Washington’s Dupont Circle six years ago. I liked it very much, and I liked Me and You and Everyone We Know even more, but a few minutes into the film, it struck me that (A) I was watching a sad little comedy about the loneliness of postmodern urban life and (B) nobody in the world knew where I was.”
  Anybody out there like to go to movies alone? I find that when I see a movie solo, it’s a wholly separate experience. When I watch movies with others, I’m very aware of their response to the screen–whether they’re absorbed, thrilled, intrigued, discouraged, or bored. It affects my own experience significantly. Because I care, I start to get mad at the film for failing them… or I feel like telling my company what it is that they’re missing… or I feel bad about the fact that what they think is funny leaves me completely unaffected. On my own, I’m not self-aware or conscious of my neighbors (unless they’re obnoxious). I’m free to be drawn in, or disappointed, entirely based on what the film does to me. Now that I think about it, I don’t go to movies by myself often enough.

• Expect to see THIS TOY showing up in blogs everywhere.