NEW RELEASES: Paste will point you to Guided by Voices, Andrew Bird, and more.

BILL'S INDIE BASEMENT has Blur, Strange Ranger, and more.

STEELY DAN's long-lost Schlitz Beer commercial.  Yes, really.

BULLY covers Jackson Browne’s “These Days.”

ALEXA ROSE covers Lucinda Williams’ “Passionate Kisses.”

LANA DEL REY, working at an Alabama Waffle House.

TONY BENNETT, a singer whose melodic clarity, jazz-influenced phrasing, audience-embracing persona and warm, deceptively simple interpretations of musical standards helped spread the American songbook around the world and won him generations of fans, died on Friday at his home of many decades in Manhattan. He was 96.  The NYT also has 10 essential songs from his catalog.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Barbenheimer blows away expectations... and shatters records.  Barbie tops the chart with an estimated 155MM, when tracking suggested closer to 100MM, while Oppenheimer placed with 80.5MM, when tracking had it at closer to 50MM. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning showed with 19.5MM on a 64 percent drop, suggesting Tom Cruise was right to squawk about Christopher Nolan moving in on all those IMAX screens. Sound of Freedom was verrrrry close behind at 19MM.

THE BEGINNING OF AN ERA?  This weekend also saw a lot of buzz on Film Twitter about the Baarbenheimer phenom possibly marking a tectonic vibe shift, not just in terms of the massess returning to their local theaters, but possibly towards those audiences expressing their desire to move on from endless sequels and cinematic universes to more fresh material.  That has been the general pattern this Summer, with even the much-anticipated Mission Impossible flick (perfectly cromulent, tho perhaps not as good as the prior two installments) looking like it might not fare substantially better in the US than Indiana Jones 5.

QUENTIN TARANTINO did the Berbenheimer experience.

DUNE, PART 2 may have to move to 2024.

JAMIE FOXX spoke about his recent health scare.

THE MARVELS has a trailer online.

MIDNIGHT RUN at 35: A Shining Star of the Middlebrow Firmament.

A DOGGO cleans off at the carwash.

PENGUINS, chasing a butterfly.

A DOOGO makes its own fun with no ball in sight.

EVERYONE likes a good skritch.