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Cute, cuddly and armed with prison-worthy vocabularies, drinking problems and other nasty puppet disorders, the cast of “Greg the Bunny” specializes in deadly parodies of beloved independent films. “The Passion of Greg the Bunny: Best of the Film Parodies, Vol. 2” does not have anything as hilariously vile as the ace “Auto Focus” parody “Sex, Button Eyes and a Video Ape,” from “Vol. 1,” but it comes close many times. So, keep the kids away — these are not Elmo’s friends.

Created by Sean Baker, Spencer Chinoy and Dan Milano, “Greg the Bunny” began as a snark-filled 2002 Fox series starring Seth Green, but found more receptive ground at the Independent Film Channel in 2005. At IFC, Greg, Warren the Ape, the Wumpus, Pal Friendlies and Count Blah were put to work doing stop-on send-ups. “Vol. 2” takes aim at David Lynch in “Blue Velveteen” with Warren inhaling the nitrous oxide, while “Wacky Wednesday” shows Greg and Warren body switching in time for the ape’s most recent brush with decency laws.

While other indies such as “Monster” and “American Movie” take their hits, no segment gives it out better than “Fur on the Asphalt,” the 2005 reunion special aiming at “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” “Rainman,” Jon Favreau’s “Dinner for Five” and at least a few other classics. With help from guests Sarah Silverman, Adam Goldberg, Green and Favreau, “Vol. 2” is a cornucopia of bad puppet behavior — fuzzy filth for film fans.

This morning, ATO announced the reissue of Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville, a deluxe repackaging of Phair’s landmark 1993 debut, complete with bonus songs from the sessions and a DVD documentary, Guyville Redux, featuring an introduction by ATO co-founder Dave Matthews (more on this later), and Phair conducting interviews with Matador Records’ Gerard Cosloy and Chris Lombardi, John Cusack, Urge Overkill, Steve Albini and “This American Life” host Ira Glass.

In an essay that will be included on Guyville, scheduled for release June 24, former Spin editor Alan Light writes that “Exile in Guyville is miles more complex than the porn-star manifesto it was often considered. Phair spoke for the uncertainties facing a new generation of women, struggling to find a balance between sexual confidence and romance, between independence and isolation… Exile in Guyville sat at the center of a culture in transition.”

It has almost become cliche to complain about Phair’s post-Guyville output, though my problems with Phair’s increasingly compromised material began following her great third album, 1998’s Whitechocolatespaceegg, a polished but refreshingly honest adult rock album. Five years later, Phair returned with an unfortunate self-titled disc that seemed to be (unsuccessfully) aimed at 13 year olds, and Phair frequently threw her old fans under the bus during interviews promoting the album. The old fans then proceeded to run to the nearest first aid station, get patched up, undergo physical therapy, run back to the street, wait for Liz to return, and then threw her under the bus. When she returned two years later with the more mature Somebody’s Miracle, she was without a constituency.

Now, as Pitchfork astutely noted this morning, it might be time for a good number of us to stop giving Matthews the high hat. His label is home to My Morning Jacket, Radiohead, Crowded House and now Phair, who will release new material this fall. Given all his recent signings, Matthews might just be the coolest record executive this side of Merge Records’ Mac McCaughan. Live with that.

And hopefully, finally, truly, madly and deeply, Phair will now release something worthy of the considerable legacy of Exile in Guyville.

1. The Bird and the Bee, “How Deep Is Your Love?” Inara George sings the Gibb classic with such sweetness, delicacy and a desire to make it her own without resorting to desecration, she liberates the song from its disco-era moorings. No mean feat.

2. Black Moth Super Rainbow, “Forever Heavy.”

3. The Streets, “Never Went to Church.”

4. Club 8, “Whatever You Want.”

5. Al Green, “Thought It Out.” A leaked track from Green’s ?uestlove-produced next disc, “Thought It Out” sounds more like a classic Willie Mitchell-production than either of Green’s Mitchell-produced comeback discs of the past decade. But never mind the sonics – this is a magnificent vamp from Green, who sounds every bit as lean and ravenous as he did 35 years ago. Al Green is superhuman.

6. Dave Sardy and Liela Moss, “Giant.”

7. Liam Finn, “This Place is Killing Me.”

8. San Serac, “That Obscure Object of Desire.”

9. Wale, “Back in the Go-Go.”

10. Jim Noir, “All Right.” An airy dance track from Noir’s great new self-titled solo disc suffused with Vocoder and multitracked backing “ahhs” that split the difference between Brians Eno and Wilson, “All Right” is a beautifully dreamy rollerskating jam — prepare to wipe out on the rink due to head-in-the-clouds distraction.

Ryan Phillippe and Channing Tatum in “Stop-Loss.”

Kimberly Peirce’s “Stop-Loss” depicts the human side of war. It is an uneven but occasionally searing film about the camaraderie between soldiers, the ingrained rules of battle that can bleed over into the civilian world, and the effects of a semi-obscure regulation that keeps soldiers fighting long after they thought they were home for good.

Ryan Phillippe stars as Sgt. Brandon King, a decorated soldier from West Texas who returns home from Tikrit, Iraq, with his Fort Hood unit, ready to get on with a post-Army life. But war is difficult to leave behind. His childhood friends, fellow soldiers Steve Shriver (Channing Tatum) and Tommy Burgess (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), both show acute signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Brandon is ready to process out of the Army but learns at the last minute he is being “stop-lossed”: returned to the front lines despite being technically eligible for an honorable discharge. This is too much for Brandon, who disobeys a direct order from his commanding officer (Timothy Olyphant of “Deadwood”) and goes AWOL, hoping to talk to his senator about being sent back.

Meanwhile, Tommy is drinking too much and getting in trouble with local police, and Steve, also due to get out soon, ponders a re-enlistment bonus and sniper school to the dismay of his long-suffering fiancee, Michelle (Abbie Cornish). Michelle decides to help Brandon look for options, but few appeal to a small-town guy who wants his life to become less complicated, not more so.

“Stop-Loss” is Peirce’s first film since 1999’s “Boys Don’t Cry,” and she brings some of the same sharp observational skills to these characters as she did with that film. Much of the first act of “Stop-Loss” possesses the look, feel and rhythm of soldier videos from Iraq or Afghanistan. Peirce gets the language and tone of military service and the catchphrases that populate soldiers’ existence with dead-on precision.

Where “Stop-Loss” falls short is when Brandon gets “stop-lossed.” The script becomes filled with explanatory phrases that play like textbook readings, and certain scenarios involving soldiers avoiding stop-loss rely too heavily on exposition. The realism of scenes in Iraq and Texas becomes scarce as “Stop-Loss” moves forward.

Even so, Peirce populated her film with strong performances, particularly from Gordon-Levitt, who imbues Tommy with realistic rage and confusion. Cornish, the Australian actress known best for more delicate roles in “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” and “A Good Year,” slips perfectly into her tough rural character.

“Stop-Loss” has real value for education. Not many people who have never worn the uniform know the reality of service, whether it’s fighting war or fighting bureaucracy. It could have achieved it with more grace and nuance, but then again, those things aren’t present much in life during wartime.

Kate Bosworth and Jim Sturgess in “21.” 

Robert Luketic’s “21” tells the mostly true story about young mathematics wizards who formulated a fail-safe way to beat the tables in Las Vegas. It is a fun and exhilarating ride with predictable twists, but great visuals and a solid young cast answering to ringleader Kevin Spacey helps “21” deal out a good story.

Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) is a hard-working Massachusetts Institute of Technology student. But the stresses of financing an Ivy League education are starting to wear at him. He works afternoons at a suit shop, which will hardly put a dent in the $300,000 it will cost to enroll in Harvard Medical School, and he spends free time with buddies Miles (Josh Gad) and Cam (Sam Golzari) trying to build a better robot.

Then opportunity knocks when professor Mickey Rosa (Kevin Spacey) sees real genius in Ben. The teacher is running an after-hours team of card counters, using mathematical principles to win at blackjack. Along with his dream girl Jill (Kate Bosworth) and fellow players Choi (Aaron Yoo, “Disturbia”), Fisher (Jacob Pitts) and Kianna (Liza Lapira), Ben starts living the high life on weekend junkets to Las Vegas, where they clean up at the tables and party until Sunday night. The only hitch is a security expert (Laurence Fishburne) who gets wise to the team’s system.

As a trustworthy document of how the fabled MIT blackjack team raked in the chips at Vegas, “21” feels like a bluff — and it is. Based on Ben Mezrich’s “Bringing Down the House,” which gave the players pseudonyms, “21” extrapolates even further, fictionalizing the key card counters and bringing their early ’90s reality into the present day, where they can wear Paul Smith suits and guzzle energy drinks between exhaustive, all-night rounds at the tables.

But that’s hardly the film’s point. Luketic (“Legally Blonde”) makes this story fun; “21” gets straight to the high-flying fantasy, the menace, the betrayals and the romance, and it all flows like the fountains at the Bellagio.

Spacey is great in the iconic Kevin Spacey role (a snide but erudite leader who cannot be trusted). He’s a welcome presence as an evil den mother for a group of young high rollers taking Vegas for stacks of cash.

Sturgess does most of the heavy lifting; he is in nearly every scene, and his charisma helps make Ben Campbell a sympathetic and relatable character. This might be a low-stakes drama, but “21” ups the ante on pure fiscal fantasy.

Michelle Borth and Luke Kirby in HBO’s ”Tell Me You Love Me.” 

With “Deadwood,” “The Sopranos” and “The Wire” now consigned to history, HBO’s original programming now seems mired in “misery television.” Both “Tell Me You Love Me” and the recent “In Treatment” focus on miserable people in miserable relationships engaging in miserable therapy sessions. If it were not for the copious sexual couplings, “Tell Me You Love Me” would be borderline unwatchable.

“Tell Me You Love Me” centers on three couples seeking help from therapist May Foster (Jane Alexander). Thirty-something Carolyn and Palek (Sonya Walger and Adam Scott) cannot have kids despite continual intimacy, while 40-something Katie (Ally Walker) and David (Tim Dekay) have kids but no intimacy. Meanwhile, 20-something Jaime (Michelle Borth) is intimate with everyone except her fiancé, Hugo (Luke Kirby). And it is a feast for people who love to watch men and women stew angrily when they aren’t tearing each other’s hearts out.

At its best, “Tell Me You Love Me” plays like a high-minded version of late-night programming on HBO’s perpetually adolescent kid brother, Cinemax, but it never lasts. Walger, a semiregular on “Lost,” plays the most complex character, but Carolyn’s emotional apexes frequently end with crying over a dissatisfying home pregnancy test. It is hard to love “Tell Me You Love Me,” and HBO needs to fall back in love with its former sense of narrative adventure instead of mistaking mere misery for captivating drama.

Snarling, teenage Nashville pop-punks Be Your Own Pet bounded out of the kennel in 2006 with their self-titled debut, and it was a gloriously ramshackle mess. Feral child Jemina Pearl does not sing as much as she rants, doing so in front of a band that barrels forward, breaks down and explodes at will.

As a title, “Get Awkward” is misleading, since BYOP sounds much more assured on this follow-up collection. Hanging 10 on a surf-punk wave, the teenage mayhem anthem “Super Soaked” plays like the flip side of the Dead Kennedys’ “Police Truck,” and “The Kelly Affair” is possibly a great indictment of San Fernando Valley teen parties or a condensed version of “Valley of the Dolls.” Either way, it is extravagant, brink-of-disaster madness.

Produced by Steven McDonald of Redd Kross, “Get Awkward” never loses energy and bassist Nathan Vasquez, guitarist Jonas Stein and drummer John Eatherly only downshift for the power-pop anthem “You’re a Waste.” Its best moments are its most unhinged — the titles “Bummer Time” and “Food Fight” say it all. Pearl shouts and squeals like a less art-damaged Karen O, and her caterwauling in Be Your Own Pet makes “Get Awkward” a strong case against maturity in rock.

Left to right: Neo maxi zoom dweebies. 

Welcome back, John Hughes.

The master of mid-’80s teen comedies such as “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “Sixteen Candles” and “Weird Science” has not directed a film in 17 years, and he hasn’t even collected a story credit since the dawn of the decade. But “Drillbit Taylor,” the shockingly funny teen comedy featuring a story by Hughes (credited to Edmund Dantes) and co-written by Seth Rogen, captures the spirit of classic Hughes.

In “Drillbit Taylor,” high school dorks Wade (Nate Hartley) and Ryan (Troy Gentile) find themselves the constant targets of psychotic bully Filkins (Alex Frost) and his toady Ronnie (Josh Peck). Painfully skinny Wade and big-boned Ryan cannot make headway with the school principal or get much help from their unsympathetic families, so they come up with a solution: hire a bodyguard.

Along with Emmit (David Dorfman), a tiny hanger-on with even fewer social skills, the lads advertise for some hired muscle, but all the applicants are too expensive — except for Drillbit Taylor (Owen Wilson). Drillbit is not so much homeless as he is a bum, a beach-dwelling ne’er-do-well familiar to pawn shop brokers for his constant stream of stolen booty.

For Drillbit, the boys are patsies — he’ll take them for all Wade, Ryan, Emmit and their parents are worth, while offering only mild protection. For the boys, Drillbit is their last hope: Adolescence can be hellish, and these kids are getting roasted by high school’s social Darwinism.

Directed by Steven Brill, “Drillbit Taylor” works so well because its script by Rogen and Kristofor Brown (who collaborated with Rogen on producer Judd Apatow’s superb-but-short-lived series “Undeclared”) grafts the writers’ modern sensibilities to Hughes’ nostalgic storytelling style. New wave love songs have been replaced by gangsta rap, and Los Angeles supplants suburban Chicago, but while Team Apatow’s superbad exterior is on display, the beating heart belongs to the bard of Shermer, Ill.

Wilson is hardly the star of “Drillbit Taylor.” He is amiable but lacking much of his characteristic wit and energy. The real stars of this are Hartley and Gentile.

Hartley’s Wade makes Farmer Ted from “Sixteen Candles” look like captain of the football team, and Gentile is an effective and funny stand-in for Rogen. As long as actor and writer Rogen (“Knocked Up,” “Superbad”) is in the spotlight, chubby kids with curly hair have a winning shot in Hollywood, and “Drillbit Taylor” is a great revenge fantasy for past-and-present “neo-maxi-zoom-dweebies.”

Last night, Britney Spears appeared on one of my favorite trad sitcoms, “How I Met Your Mother” (7:30 p.m. Monday, CBS), a show that succeeds due to great, disciplined writing; one of the best ensembles on current television; and something I’ll call an uncommon internal logic system — more than half of the events on the show only make sense or are funny because of who these people are and what they have done since the series premiered. In short, there are few random moments on “How I Met Your Mother,” or things that a recent Harvard Lampoon staffer has had rattling around in his Ivy-cultivated mind for a few years and could hardly wait to deploy on his first gig, no matter how inappropriate.

I was ambivalent about Spears appearing on “Mother,” mainly because (a) I don’t like anything about her, but (b) she is notorious enough to gain exposure for a show deserving of attention but underperforming at Nielsen. Spears played a ditzy receptionist/intern at a dermatology clinic, where Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) is getting a butterfly tattoo removed from his butt (a long story involving heavy booze and spite).

Was she any good? Well, she did not figuratively leave Radnor, Jason Segel, Alyson Hannigan and Cobie Smulders in a hot car while she went into Starbucks for a latte, but it was typical stunt casting. The wheels ground to a halt whenever Spears showed up in frame, because (1) she is who she is, (b) she was okay in a “high school production of ‘You Can’t Take It With You’” kind of way, and (Γ), it felt like they shoehorned her character into what was otherwise a typically great episode — the “moustache bet” was the best bit, and it had nothing to do with a pop star frantically trying to rebuild her crumbling economy.

But Us Weekly raved about it on the “Today” show. Vindication! Renewal! Phoenix rising! Meh!

1. Midnight Movies, “Nights in White Satin.” The Los Angeles psych-rock band comes on like Jefferson Airplane doing Days of Future Passed. Singer Gena Olivier lays off all that “Breathe deep — the gathering gloom” hoo-ha, choosing instead to let the band end it all with a Summer of Love breakdown/freakout.

2. Gipsy Kings, “Hotel California.”

3. The Perishers, “Trouble Sleeping.”

4. Ween, “Joppa Road.”

5. Rhymefest feat. Michael Jackson, “Foolin’ Around.” Again, if you have not downloaded Man in the Mirror, do it now. Mixtapes are it. Next up, Wale’s tribute to Seinfeld, A Mixtape About Nothing. Seriously, and like Rhymefest, he put it together with Mark Ronson. More on him later.

6. Roy Ayers, “Everybody Loves the Sunshine.”

7. Miles Davis, “Blue in Green.”

8. Shea Seger, “Clutch.” Shea! Come back!

9. Battles, “Rainbow.”

10. Mark Ronson and Kasabian, featuring the Dap-Kings, “LSF.” When I spoke to Tom Meighan of Kasabian a few years ago, he fired a miniature lash-out at me when I invoked Happy Mondays. In a sense, I don’t blame him, since Kasabian is much more rockist (especially on last year’s follow-up, Empire), and he’s much more of a Stone Roses acolyte. Still, “LSF” sounds exactly like something off Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches. But if that puts you off your feed, you should hear this amazing rethink of the song, in which Ronson (pictured above with random record executive) brings in his buddies in the Dap-Kings to give it some real, gone classic soul grease. Amazing what some R&B chops can do.