PICKS & PANS

This week's reviews: 'Thirteen Conversations,' Pet Shop Boys, more

(PEOPLE) -- This week, PEOPLE.COM looks at film "Thirteen Conversations About One Thing," Pet Shop Boys' new album, "Release," and "Bobbie's Girl" on Showtime.

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Movie review: 'Thirteen Conversations About One Thing'

Matthew McConaughey, left, strikes up a "Conversation" with Alan Arkin -- one of many pithy exchanges.

A college physics professor (John Turturro) tells his class, "Let's turn our attention to entropy." In examining the random disorder that overtakes the lives of characters in several overlapping tales, "Thirteen Conversations About One Thing" presents a shrewd and affecting look at how and why things fall apart -- and sometimes come back together in joyous ways. Or, as another character (Clea DuVall) says, "Amazing things happen all the time."

Director Jill Sprecher ("Clockwatchers"), who wrote "Thing" with her sister Karen, creates an elegant, humming beehive. The ensemble cast, including Matthew McConaughey as an attorney and Alan Arkin as an aging executive, knows this is quality stuff and rises to the occasion. (R)

Bottom line: Listen up

Music review: 'Release'

Pet Shop Boys (Sanctuary)

Since the mid-'80s this British dance-pop duo has craftily used electronic beats to lure listeners into their digital playground. On their latest disc, though, the Pet Shop Boys have put away many of their techno toys, favoring a more organic, less synth-based sound that shows how far these blokes have come from their 1986 hit "West End Girls."

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Incorporating guitar more than ever before -- courtesy of former Smiths strummer Johnny Marr, who plays on seven tracks -- Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe reinvent themselves as melodic pop rockers on. Although some of the cuts on "Release" still have danceable grooves, the focus here is on the songwriting.

The witty, wistful ballad "Love Is a Catastrophe" evokes the Smiths at their most beautifully melancholy. And though Tennant and Lowe may not exactly be Lennon and McCartney, the shimmering '60s throwback "I Get Along" is positively Beatlesque.

Bottom line: Boys to men

TV review: 'Bobbie's Girl'

Showtime (Sunday, June 9, 8 p.m. ET)

Ireland looks pretty in this mélange of a TV movie, even if the characters have no good reason for being there -- or being, period.

Bailey (Bernadette Peters) and Bobbie (Rachel Ward) are a lesbian couple who run the Two Sisters pub in a seaside village near Dublin. Bailey, an excitable American, supposedly had a 20-year career as a Broadway actress; Bobbie is English and enigmatic. How do they happen to be together on the Emerald Isle, along with Bailey's chatterbox brother David (Jonathan Silverman)? Who cares about details? Everybody comes out of left field, including Bobbie's nephew Alan (Thomas Sangster), a suddenly orphaned 10-year-old who joins the Two Sisters family. "Your brother and his wife were smashed to pieces by a real big truck," Bailey tells Bobbie. There, so you wanted information.

Bobbie's breast cancer and Alan's self-esteem problems are apparently designed to add emotional weight, but the whole story is as sketchy and unconvincing as Bailey's theatrical resume.

Bottom line: Erin go blah