Sometimes these updates of Shakespeare's plays work well, whether they junk the text (10 Things I Hate About You) or stick with the iambic pentameter (Michael Almereyda's Hamlet). This is not one of those times. O, a modern spin on Othello, is a bumpy ride that is nonetheless worth taking. Set in a Southern prep school, the film shows the tragic consequences that occur when basketball champ Odin James (Mekhi Phifer) – no, they don't call him O.J. – falls hard for Desi (Julia Stiles), the dean's daughter. It's not their interracial romance that makes waves in this all-white school, it's the jealousy awakened in Odin by his court "bro" Hugo (Josh Hartnett). Hugo thinks his dad, Coach Duke (a hammy Martin Sheen), likes Odin better then he does his own son.

Phifer and Stiles put real heat into their performances. Hartnett, who survived the debacle of Pearl Harbor, is less successful in wrestling with his role as a modern-day Iago." Despite a colloquial script by Brad Kaaya, O relies on plot mechanics from the Bard that make no sense in a contemporary context. Nor does it help that director Tim Blake Nelson lays on a heavy hand that you don't see in his work as an actor (he played the spaciest convict in O Brother, Where Art Thou?). The film ends with a climactic shootout that litters the campus with bodies. Nelson doesn't overplay the shootings, but O has sat on a shelf for two years because Miramax, the film's original distributor, feared releasing a kids-with-guns film in a post-Columbine climate. Now, with Lions Gate stepping in for Miramax, O – flaws and all – has a chance to find an audience willing to engage the film on its own provocative terms. It's about time.)

“Is It True”

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."