In his screenwriting debut, Glee’s gifted Chris Colfer, 22, proves he can lace a line with sass and soul. The downside of Struck by Lightning, besides the fact that Colfer’s character, Carson Phillips, is struck dead in the first scene, is that Colfer hands himself all the best lines. In flashbacks, Carson reveals himself to be too cool for school, where he yearns for a journalism career, while the usual stereotypes (jock, cheerleader, closeted gay) reveal their stupidity. The priceless Rebel Wilson puts her own comic spin on the role of Carson’s clueless BFF. But director Brian Dannelly (Saved!) can’t unmoor a first-rate cast of pros – notably Allison Janney as Carson’s boozy divorced mom – from Carson’s orbit of superiority. Colfer makes it hard to weep for Carson, since he weeps enough for himself.

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.