Al Gore's lecture on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, is doing boffo business this summer, so there's hope for filmmaker Chris Paine's compelling, fighting-mad documentary about what happened to the EV1, the electric car (no gas, no oil, no polluting carbon-dioxide exhaust) that General Motors leased to a few lucky California customers in 1996, only to mash its fleet into scrap metal in the Arizona desert six years later. Though Martin Sheen is the film's narrator, it's not just the political lefties who can guess the culprits behind the plot to take the EV1 on its last ride. Part conspiracy thriller, part cautionary fable, here's an activist movie that might actually raise consciousness and do some good. Let's hope it's not crushed on its way to the multiplex.

“1999”

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.