Movies, TV, music, and books we're into this week

I'm not the big Marvel fan in our household so predictably late I finally got around to watching Avengers: Infinity War and surprised myself with it. I guess Marvel wasn't lying when it talked up the crossover, with an all-star cast (teenage Groot is superb) and intense action right from the beginning. Trouble now is it means I want to go back and watch all the other MCU movies...

If you're looking for a not-so-serious take on the all-too-serious world of comic book movies, Deadpool 2 is probably up your alley. After the events of the first movie, in which Wade Wilson (AKA Deadpool) dispatches bad person Ajax, it looks like there's a new baddie in town, this time played by Josh Brolin.It's more of the same adult themes — this probably isn't one for the kids — with plenty of action, blood, and gunplay to satisfy the action hero in all of us.

It might have bombed at the box office, but this fun adventure is arguably one of the best video game movies ever made (and, well, let's be honest the competition isn't that great).Warcraft recreates the events of the early RTS games of the same name, made by Blizzard Entertainment. Orcs stream in through a portal into human lands in this high-fantasy medieval war movie, which features some truly stunning CGI effects and fun war scenes. For those unfamiliar with the games, the plot can be immensely confusing due to the large volume of story content that hit the editing room floor, but for fans of the Warcraft universe, it's not as bad as you've heard.

You don't have to be a Stephen King fan to appreciate Hulu's recent exclusive series, Castle Rock. But it helps. The series is a creepy horror-thriller show based on the fictional town from many of King's best books, Castlerock, Maine. And it accurately captures many of the setting's intricacies from King's novels. Oh, and tons of its inhabitants are @#$%^*! nuts.The series is very much an homage to King's greatest works, but it's made by some of the creative geniuses behind popular shows like Lost and American Horror Story. And you can definitely tell. This show is extremely well done, with great casting and beautiful camera work. It sucked me right in. And if you're not already a Hulu subscriber, you should be able to get a free monthly trial, which is more than enough time to binge your way through Castle Rock .

I was never really big into Willie Nelson until a couple years ago, and Shotgun Willie is one of my favorite albums of his. From the lead-off title track all the way through, this 1973 cut is some mighty fine country music.I spent last weekend moving and unpacking boxes, and this one saw play more than once while I toiled.

Back when I had long hair and looked like an angelic character, I attended a fair number of raves, as well as a few more laid-back sessions with some absolute classic tunes. Department of Classics' Trance album features a collection of some psychedelic hits that will either send you to another realm or get your fists pumping into the air.

Ruth Ware is the author of two recent bestsellers that I really enjoyed, In a Dark, Dark Wood, and The Woman in Cabin 10. So when I noticed that she'd released a new mystery, The Death of Mrs. Westway, I was all over it.And it's Ware's best book yet. It's the story of a young woman in an English city who's down on her luck, struggling just to get by and pay her bills. When she gets a message from a lawyer in a nearby town suggesting that she may have inherited a healthy sum of cash after the death of a very wealthy woman who seems to have mentioned her in her will, she jumps on the opportunity — even though she suspects the lawyer has mistaken her for someone else.She travels to see the lawyer and the family of the deceased in a secluded area where they live in a veritable castle. And she gets herself into a web of intrigue and murder. It's a genuinely well-written mystery with lots of great plot twists, and even more amusing British-isms, which I appreciate, working with lots of Brits on Team Windows Central.

In terms of great classical texts and stories, most of us in the Western world have heard things like Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales. But the far East has its own rich history of literature, and one of the most popular texts is known as "Journey to the West" or, in English translations, simply "Monkey."Written in the Sixteenth Century, Monkey is a fantastical piece of Chinese folklore that follows the titular mischievous monkey as he embarks on a sensational journey. The story is full of mythical and religious elements, touching on tenets of Taoism and Buddhism as Monkey exercises his wit and supernatural powers in encounters with demons, demigods, fairies, and other characters.The story has inspired countless other media in the hundreds of years since it was first put to paper, including (surprisingly) the character of Goku from Dragon Ball Z. If you've ever been curious about Eastern folklore, it's definitely worth picking up the English translation.