The films of Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness, Storytelling) read the same forward or backward — they rub the grotesque in our faces, the better to see ourselves, my dears. His latest shocker, the tling and powerful Palindromes, casts eight actors to play Aviva, the pregnant thirteen-year-old girl who runs away from home after her mother (a superb Ellen Barkin) talks her into an abortion. The actors range from Emani Sledge, 6, and Jennifer Jason Leigh, 43, to a preteen boy (Will Denton) and an overweight black woman (Sharon Wilkins). It's a gimmick that works when a truck driver (Stephen Adly-Guirgus) picks up Aviva, screws her, then brings her to Mama Sunshine (Debra Monk), a good Christian who houses disabled kids and preaches death to the wicked, notably abortionists. Solondz likes to put the screws to moral hypocrisy. As always, he goes too far. As always, you don't want to look away.

“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."