Having phone sex with Drew Barrymore, Justin Long yells, "I want to come all over you." And so it goes in Going the Distance, a sappy-sweet romcom that seems to have been invaded by a screenwriter – one Geoff LaTulippe – with delusions that he's David Mamet. Fuck that. Director Nanette Burstein (On the Ropes, American Teen) is a solid documentarian with no flair for the stupid (that's a compliment). Rated R for "sexual content including language throughout, some drug use and brief nudity," the movie has a decent premise: Can love survive between two people in dying professions (she's in newspapers, he's in music) who live in different places (he's in Manhattan, she's in San Francisco). Barrymore and Long are both appealing, but not enough to sustain audience interest in the cinematic equivalent of dry-humping.

“Alison”

On Elvis Costello’s country-tinged ballad, the lyric does not get too sentimental in recalling an ex who had since been with one of the singer's "little friends" and is now married. Some believe the song is about murder, due to lines like “Sometimes I wish that I could stop you from talking,” "Somebody better put out the big light" and, of course, "My aim is true,” which became the title of Costello's debut album. In 2002, Costello told Rolling Stone, “It isn’t [about murder]. It’s about disappointing somebody. It’s a thin line between love and hate, as the Persuaders sang.”