Weekend To-Do List: Espionage Edition

With spy chief Porter Goss vacating his seat at the CIA, and part-time IMF agent Tom Cruise widely rumored to be his successor (Cruise, unlike Goss, does his own stunts), PopWatch turns its attention to the important business of intelligence gathering. Read on, and you’ll have all the information you need to get through the weekend. (Or bomb Iran, if that’s your thing.) This intel, like all intel, can be interpreted several different ways:

MOVIES
Owen Gleiberman is a reliable informer when it comes to movies, so if he says the third Cruise through the Mission: Impossible franchise is the best yet, then I believe him.

Of course, you may be all Tommed out after this week, in which case Lisa Schwarzbaum says Somersault might be for you. This Aussie coming-of-age tale introduces us to the marvelous newcomer Abbie Cornish. Or get out of the English-speaking world entirely and trip on this Taiwanese triptych Three Times.

MUSIC
The message is “go folk yourself” as Bruce Springsteen (pictured) interprets Pete Seeger on <a href=”http://www.cmt.com/news/articles/1530216/20060504/springsteen_bruce.jhtml?headlines=true
“>a CMT documentary, promoting his great new cover album We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. That’s tonight at 9 p.m. ET and PT. (And yeah, I led with this item mainly for the “go folk yourself” pun, but I swear, the album’s great.)

At the same end of the political spectrum (if not the stylistic one), Oakland rapper Boots Riley and The Coup have their best album yet with Pick a Bigger Weapon.

DVD
Didja like <a href=”http://www.ew.com/ew/article/review/movie/0,6115,1182906_1_0_,00.html
“>The Notorious Bettie Page? Well, you’d like writer-director Mary Harron’s complete (admittedly slim) <a href=”http://imdb.com/name/nm0366004/
“>body of work, which includes I Shot Andy Warhol and the underrated American Psycho.

Haven’t seen Crumb? See Crumb. Creepy, poignant, car-crash-fabulous fun.

TV

Tom Hanks will be hosting Saturday Night Live for the cagillionth time — with musical guest the Red Hot Chili Peppers. They’ve got a great show, so stick around, and they’ll be right there.

APROPOS OF NOTHING

Weirdly entrancing and totally nerd-stalgic, Super Mario takes the stage at a Massachusetts college.

It’s weird, it’s Finnish, and it’s not these guys. But it is, as billed, the Worst Music Video Ever.