"I didn't really get interested in poetry until I got here," explains author and Augustana College alumna Farah Marklevits, during a recent interview on the school campus. "I went on a Latin American term, and we read Pablo Neruda in Chile at, like, his house, which is on the coast. And it just captured me. We're in Chile, and there's the ocean, and the professors had a copy of his poems, and they were reading them, and it was just like ... wow."

Less than a decade after Marklevits' 1999 graduation, it's now her readers who are saying "wow."

BANGKOK DANGEROUS

There are a handful of motion-picture elements that are all but guaranteed to make my eyelids droop, including (a) mopey, droning voice-over narration by a film's tough-guy protagonist, (b) a color palette composed almost entirely of steely grays and blues, the traditional template for the "serious" action thriller, and (c) Nicolas Cage. Consequently, I hit the narcoleptic's jackpot with Bangkok Dangerous, a determinedly, even absurdly solemn outing by directing brothers Danny and Oxide Pang. The film is a remake of the siblings' 1999 Thai-language release of the same name, but not having seen it, I can't imagine that the Pangs' original endeavor could be more glum and exhausting than this revamp; I'm pretty certain it was only my constant head-shaking, at the continued waste that has become Cage's career, that kept me awake.

Next week, The Cure will add another teaser for its forthcoming album, following the series of monthly singles that debuted in May with an EP that benefits the International Red Cross. Containing four songs from the upcoming album, each track on Hypnagogic States is a tweaked remix rather than the original. Rounded out by a mega-mix by tour mates 65 Days of Static, other knob-twisters on the Geffen Records CD include Jared Leto of 30 Seconds to Mars, Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, and Pete Wentz and Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy.

HAMLET 2

Hamlet 2 has been designed as a broad farce, but I'll tell you: In the movie's climactic number, when Hamlet and Jesus took their time machine back to the night of Hamlet's death, and Hamlet prevented Gertrude from drinking the poisoned wine, and Hamlet found it in himself to finally forgive his father, and the Tucson Gay Men's Chorus sang Elton John's "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," it was pretty damned moving.

Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd write.