Three things that might be entertaining you this spring:

1. In the final pages of Brainiac, my friend Earl calls up to ask if we want to go to a Wilco show with him, so it’s only appropriate that he would be the one to email me over the weekend about the Internet “listening party” on Saturday night for Wilco’s forthcoming album Sky Blue Sky. (The link for the stream was here, but the player’s gone now.) Any Wilco fans expecting something as noise-laden as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or as stark as A Ghost Is Born are in for a surprise. Sky Blue Sky is as intimate-sounding as the latter album, but is so straightforwardly poppy and melodic that it reminded me more of 1999’s Summerteeth. I don’t know if future sneak previews are in the offing before May, but if you’re a fan, keep an eye on wilcoworld.net. (Nonesuch, May 15)

2. The Circle, Jafar Panahi’s gripping, subversive film about the plight of Iranian women, got a pretty wide U.S. release, but it’s been over a year since his latest movie, Offside, made its Berlin Film Festival debut, and American audiences still can’t see it. (Unless, like me, you rented the British DVD.) Offside is about a group of Teheran women who, one and two at a time, try to sneak into Iran’s World Cup qualifying match against Bahrain (soccer games in Iran are men only) and get corraled by police. If you’re not used to the simple rhythms and life-like pacing of Iranian cinema, stay far far away, but if you know what you’re getting into, this is a surprisingly funny, approachable movie. Suggested title for American audiences: Bend It Like Burqa. (Scheduled for release here in the Great Satan by Sony Pictures Classics, March 23)

3. The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything operates on a simple idea: can NCAA-style brackets be used to determine the winners in every conceivable category of human endeavor, from punctuation marks to chick flicks to sports rivalries? Well, I have no idea, since Bloomsbury hasn’t sent me my author copy yet (I contributed a bracket where game show catchphrases go head to head) but it sure sounds like fun, right? This will be on shelves tomorrow, but if you’re completely desperate today to know what my winning Game Show Catchphrase was, remember: Borders pays badly and their employees can be bribed. (Bloomsbury USA, March 6)

Just kidding about Borders. Oh, in reference to the photo in Friday’s post, Dylan just asked Mindy, “Did you take that picture of FedEx and H and your block?” Heh, “H and your block.”