AP - John Mellencamp, "Life, Death, Love, and Freedom" (Hear Music)

AP - Randy Travis, "Around The Bend" (Warner Bros.)

AP - Abject misery has never been choreographed with such wit and pizazz as it is in the new production of Christopher Durang's "The Marriage of Bette and Boo."

AP - In Sam Shepard's latest play, "Kicking a Dead Horse," which opened Monday at off-Broadway's Public Theater, the iconic writer treads on familiar ground — the wide-open frontiers of the American West.

AP - It's difficult to separate the movie from its mystique.

AP - "Killer View" (G.P. Putnam's Sons. 340 pages. $24.95), by Ridley Pearson: Only Ridley Pearson could take a timeless children's tale and deftly turn it into a series of engaging thrillers.

AP - "Chasing Darkness" (Simon & Schuster. 273 pages. $25.95), by Robert Crais: Little in life is as satisfying as a new Elvis Cole novel. Each installment of Robert Crais' 20-year-old series is like meeting a good friend for lunch who you haven't seen in a long time.

AP - It's difficult to separate the movie from its mystique.

AP - Back in the Dark Ages (OK, mid-1950s) when the New York Yankees reigned supreme and the Washington Senators were perennial patsies, Broadway found musical-theater fodder in baseball.

AP - "Captain America: The Chosen" (Marvel Comics. 168 Pages. $24.99), by David Morrell and Mitch Breitweiser: David Morrell has done something totally new: The best selling author of action thrillers has written a comic-book series. It all happened because a Marvel Comics editor suggested that Morrell, who created the famous character "Rambo" in his novel, "First Blood," would make a good pairing with another military icon, Captain America.

AP - James Braly's one-man show, "Life in a Marital Institution," seems on the surface to be about his marriage and his wife, Susan — although it's really all about him. Braly seems to know that, though, which makes his storytelling about the "tantric conflict" between him and Susan even funnier, as he often laughs along with the audience.

AP - Hollywood wisdom through the ages has always been that no technological innovation — the transition from silent film to sound, black-and-white to color, hand-drawn animation to digital images — could ever make a bad movie into a good one.