UCLA student Ana Lily Amirpour is in Park City at a film festival and just saw Paul Giamatti. "At the screening we went to, he was just hanging out in the lobby," Amirpour said. "He's really cool." However, she's not at the Sundance Film Festival, but the Slamdance Film Festival, the other festival in town that originated as a reaction to the perceived commercialization of Sundance, and she's having a great time. "It's got a really warm, down-to-earth vibe. Sundance ... is a totally different ballpark." Read more...

Whether he’s writing poetry or songs, teaching or editing, David Lehman has been an influential man in the literary world. Author of six books of poetry, editor of a new edition of “The Oxford Book of American Poetry” and the head of the poetry department of the New School’s graduate writing program in New York, Lehman wears many different hats. Read more...

Goodbye, detached monochrome. Farewell, greater length and slim cuts. Auf wiedersehen, underground associations. Excuse the melodrama, but what I'm trying to say is that American Apparel is in the process of being absorbed by the mainstream, and I know exactly who to credit/blame. Read more...