Our five faves: "Catching Fire," "Foreverly," "Cinderella," more

1 Anyone who felt that the workmanlike adaptation of the first "Hunger Games" missed the bull's-eye, take heart. "Catching Fire" is the new "The Empire Strikes Back," a smashing sci-fi sequel that takes its blockbuster franchise into deeper, smarter, more dramatically engaging territory. New director Francis Lawrence has a solid grasp of science fiction and romance. The conflicts are clear, the characters fully fleshed, the lethal adventure urgent and the tender interludes poignant. And Lawrence leavens this fundamentally serious movie with bleak, caustic satire. It's gripping.

2 Children's Theatre has reimagined "Cinderella" as an interactive, top-40-filled, Christmas-season slapstick that will have both kids and their parents roaring with delight. The real stars are not Cinderella or the handsome prince but rather the hilarious stepmother (Autumn Ness) and her hoot-inducing daughters (Chris Farley-like Reed Sigmund, pratfall-prone Dean Holt). This fun-filled "Cinderella" is more about laughter than life lessons. www.childrenstheatre.org.

3 It might sound like a gimmicky vanity project for Broadway's favorite punk-rocker, but "Foreverly" — an Everly Brothers-inspired duets album by Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones — is actually an impressive musical change-up with deeper undertones. The largely acoustic, track-by-track reproduction of the Everlys' gospel-tinged 1958 album "Songs Daddy Taught Us" does the classic two-part harmonies surprising justice. Considering Armstrong's recent personal struggles, the songs' original healing power comes through loud and clear, too. Out Tuesday.

4 Greg Baxter's haunting, lovely "The Apartment" is a perfect December read — mysterious, slow-moving, steeped in winter and snow. The narrator is an American in his early 40s who has come to an unnamed city in what is perhaps Eastern Europe, perhaps Germany, to escape his dark past in Iraq. The book unfolds over a single day as he and a young woman criss-cross the city in search of a place for him to live. Not much happens — they chat, play pool, do a little shopping — but it is the narrator's internal life that holds the book's power. A beautiful meditation on brutality and culture, which are sometimes one and the same.

5 The Minneapolis Institute of Arts has totally reworked its African art collection, buying new things, sending others to storage, adding technological whiz-bang and reinstalling it all in renovated galleries. The result is a stripped-down display of about 125 objects, only a sliver of the 2,100-piece African collection. Arranged thematically, they are a mix of masterpieces and utilitarian objects from across the continent. To give visitors an intimate experience, the museum has largely dispensed with display cases and incorporated touch-screen maps, iPad pictures and engaging, jargon-free labels. www.artsmia.org