Performance artist Miranda July hits a grand slam as the writer, director and of her first film. It's a moonbeam romance laced with tling wit and gravity. July plays Christine, a video artist who earns money by driving an elder-cab and sees shoe salesman Richard (John Hawkes) as relationship material, even though he set his hand on fire when his wife left him. Richard has two sons: Robby (Brandon Ratcliff), 7, who chats up adult women on the Internet using his own personal fixation with poop as a lure, and Peter (Miles Thompson), 14, who lets two older girls fellate his penis in a blow-job competition.

It's July's gift to locate a common humanity in the strangest of bedfellows. There's not an ounce of shame or arty superiority in her hilarious and heartfelt film. Her unique take on the world is cause for celebration.

“I'm Yours”

Jason Mraz re-emerged after his disappointing second album with this lead single, a Jack Johnson-esque ditty about giving yourself fully to someone else. The success of the reggae-tinged song (it earned two Grammy nods and a spot on the Billboard singles chart for well over a year) was something the folk-pop singer never predicted when he wrote it in 15 minutes at home. "I played a happy-hippie chord progression that would probably work without 50 different Bob Marley songs," he told Rolling Stone. "I thought, 'It's too novelty. This is a nursery rhyme,'" concluding that "you can never guess what's gonna be a hit."