Movies, music and books we're into this week

I just got back from a Mobile Nations company meetup in sunny Florida, so you'd think I'd have my mind on something equally cheery to watch this week. But, after a ten-minute conversation with Dan Rubino about how awesome Mad Max: Fury Road is, I've been hankering to revisit the wasteland.Look, Mad Max: Fury Road is a damn modern masterpiece. The epic set pieces, adrenaline-fueled chases, and Tom Hardy's general badassery will all get your heart pumping. But from a cinematic standpoint, it's also one of the best looking movies to come out in the past several years. Just watch it in HDR and tell me you're not absolutely blown away.All of that is to say: I'll be nursing my con-cold and general travel malaise this weekend with a bit of Mad Max.

I'm a huge fan of Dwayne Johnson, whether he's The Rock or some character in a movie. Skyscraper isn't a stellar movie, nor is it a flop. It's an interesting spectacle with many tropes, but stunning visuals.It's a great movie for a long-haul flight, following U.S. Marine war veteran and former FBI Hostage Rescue Team leader Will Sawyer, tasked with reviewing the security of the most advanced building built. Of course, it doesn't go to plan as his own family is put at risk.

While I'm not the biggest Spider-Man fan out there, the soundtrack paired with the newly-released animated movie remains on repeat. Packed with top rappers and hip-hop artists, the album delivers various tracks standing independently from the film, and might convince you to visit the theater too.

I'm still depressed that Tom Petty passed away in 2017. But I must admit, the posthumous release of the An American Treasure album helps. It's an amazing collection of both well-known hits and rarities from Petty and his band, The Heartbreakers.I'm fairly certain I already recommended this album here in the past, but I listened to it all the way through this week, while on a flight to Florida for a Mobile Nations and Windows Central team getaway. And I was reminded of just how great the album is. I've been listening to Petty since I was in my early teens. I'm old, so that's a while. But I have two new favorite songs from Petty — "Southern Accents" and "Insider" — that I had never heard before the release of An American Treasure. It's just a great album all around, and I couldn't recommend it more strongly.

Florida is a weird place. As mentioned above, I spent the last week there. And though my experience definitely wasn't as extreme as the Florida described in Tim Dorsey's book, I feel like you could maybe see that Florida peeking out from around the corner, or hanging around just out of sight.Florida Roadkill is a story of a bunch of scheming criminals and all-around creeps trying to trick each other and make monetary gains by any means necessary, all while bouncing around the state of Florida. It's funny, bizarre and somewhat disturbing, and it feels like an even more surreal Carl Hiaasen novel (another Floridian author) mixed with hints of Elmore Leonard crime fiction (Leonard also set some of this most memorable books in Florida). Even the protagonists in this book are, well, not exactly great people. But it's a fun, and funny, read.

As a Canadian and an avid reader, it's hard not to love Margaret Atwood. Without even scratching the surface of her enormous collection of poetry, short fiction, non-fiction, and children's books, she's the author of 16 novels, of which I've read more than a few. The novels that take a look at the way the future may at some point look like are my favorites — including the Oryx and Crake trilogy — so I'm excited to hear that a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale is expected to be published in September.The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian story in which the U.S. has been overthrown by a totalitarian state; women are entirely subjugated, to the point where they're no longer allowed to use their real names while in service to men. It's a struggle for rights and a frightening look at what could be and what has been, and I will read it again in preparation for The Testaments.