In keeping with its subject, "The Notorious Bettie Page" is principally a work of gorgeous surfaces, shot mostly in silvery black-and-white film by the cinematographer Mott Hupfel, with an occasional splash of saturated color.

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The Notorious Bettie Page - Review - Movies - New York Times

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Herb Alpert and Sergio Mendes, long associated with the carefree pop music of the 1960s, are back in record stores after long absences.

Alpert broke into pop consciousness with his band the Tijuana Brass, whose song "Lollipops and Roses," from the1965 album Whipped Cream and Other Delights, found its way into millions of American homes.

Forty years after helping add exotica to the American music scene, Alpert has collaborated with heavyweights of electronic music for a disc of remixed versions of his songs. The new album is called Rewhipped.

Sergio Mendes, Alpert's Brazilian protege, is following a similar path with will.i.am, of the pop-rap group the Black Eyed Peas. The pair have updated hits by Mendes' group Brazil 66 for the CD Timeless.

In addition to will.i.am, Mendes worked with Stevie Wonder, India.Arie and Jill Scott, among others. The songs range from old classics like "Mas Que Nada" to the new "Please Baby Don't," written and sung by John Legend.

Electronic Exotica: Alpert and Mendes, Remixed

Comedy Central TV came to Orange County, but the joke was on those attending a panel discussion they thought was being filmed for a serious documentary.

Some locals are furious about the ruse, worried that they might end up looking foolish on national television.

Panelists Duped by Fake News Show Are Not Amused

"I was both enthusiastic and doubtful," he says. "The old school part of me was brainwashed into thinking that writing on the Internet was a form of slumming or self-cheapening, kind of like publishing your own book at Kinko's." On the other hand, the editor assigned to the project was Meghan O'Rourke, formerly a fiction editor at the New Yorker and hardly an illiterate Web nerd.

The result is "The Unbinding," a serialized Web novel and a rumination on technology today, its first segment posted at Slate.com in March with postings continuing twice weekly through June. Kirn depicts technology as a looming Orwellian force, spying on the citizenry, turning our insides outward; yet Big Brother is not an ominous other but we, the people: We've internalized the totalitarian apparatus, and thus technology becomes at once our attempt at salvation, connection, love, meaning, and the vehicle of our own oppression. The loss of privacy makes for comedy, at first, and then for a sense of foreboding as trampled boundaries refuse to reappear.

In short: Everybody's spying on everybody (including themselves).

Weaving a tangled web

For five years, the most wildly popular talent contest on American television has been dominated -- thoroughly, totally and completely -- by kids from Southern Hicksville, USA. Seven of the eight top-two finishers in the first four years were from states that once formed the Confederacy, and five of the seven remaining finalists this season are, too.

... And yet, "Idol" does terribly in Knoxville, Houston and Nashville, the official home of country music.

Who Put The Y'all In 'Idol'?

Why does this lovely record seem destined for some kind of long cult life, and what is it doing in a column devoted to pop and jazz?

It is the new volume of "Ethiopiques," an astounding series of folkloric and pop music from Ethiopia.

Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou

J.J. Abrams, a creator of "Alias" and "Lost" and writer and director of "Mission Impossible III," lives in a four-bedroom Cape Cod in Pacific Palisades with his wife, Katie McGrath, and their three children.

His greatest hits: I wrote and recorded the theme songs to my television shows — "Felicity," "Alias" and "Lost." There's also a little recording I did for "Mission" with my friend the musician Thomas Dolby.

Did you know that?

Favorite item of clothing: I designed and made a T-shirt based on the distinctive 1940's-style "Do Not Disturb" signs at the Chateau Marmont hotel in Hollywood. The hotel should really make those shirts themselves.

I'd like one of those.

Obsession: I think boxes are an amazing art form that no one really considers.

Weird, but interesting. Boxes as origami?

What he drives: A Toyota Prius. I used to have a Porsche, and I miss it like crazy.

L.A. Confidential

Considered by many to be Spain's greatest living writer, Goytisolo is in some ways an anachronistic figure in today's cultural landscape. His ideas can seem deeply unfashionable. For him, writing is a political act, and it is the West, not the Islamic world, that is waging a crusade.

The Anti-Orientalist

The incident was more than ego-deflating — it was demoralizing. It signified that to the younger generation Macdonald was an unidentified relic of unknown occupation. Talking about himself in the past tense brought him face to face with the erosion of his reputation and name recognition after a swashbuckling career as critic, editor, protester, provocateur and all-around word warrior.

Dwight Macdonald at 100

indie-style films increasingly resemble low-budget versions of studio business, too often leaving the truly independent movie without a home.

as a rule the art-house studios and their peers now tend to seek films with clear marketing elements, as witnessed by the bidding war at the last Sundance festival over the humorous romp "Little Miss Sunshine," which wound up with Fox Searchlight.

That leaves little room for films that don't fit into obvious niches, or that can't be sold to clearly identifiable audiences.

Mr. Norton said he was drawn in particular to the film's questioning of modern life and its unabashed nostalgia for a more rugged past.

"I get heartbroken flying into L.A.," he said. "It's just this feeling of unspecific loss. Can you imagine what the San Fernando Valley was when it was all wheat fields? Can you imagine what John Steinbeck saw?"

Mr. Norton predicted that it would find its audience: moviegoers who seek substance at the theater. "We wanted to create a western for our crowd, about the westerns we knew and grew up with," he said. "David is committed to raising questions that he doesn't answer, and he leaves you to do the work."

Edward Norton and the Shoot-Out at the Indie Corral