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

Chekhov put it best. He said every happy man should have an unhappy man in his closet, with a hammer, to remind him that not everyone is happy.

The Stuff of Fiction

More than one critic has offered "Cache" as a nifty companion piece to Steven Spielberg's "Munich." The way both films consider personal responsibility makes that true enough. But the recent opus that came to mind was David Cronenberg's "A History of Violence," a movie also about a man, his family, and the vagaries in his past. Cronenberg turned a commentary on the proverbial sins of the father into an action movie. With his cheesy-satirical smokescreens, however, Cronenberg wanted us to laugh with him. Haneke is determined to haunt us. Maybe Georges's ghosts are ours, too.

Cache (Hidden) Movie Review

It is, as I have said, a small movie, and there will be those who'll think it's little ado about even less. Others will find in it a reminder that everything can change even when nothing seems to be happening. "Duck Season" hits every one of its modest marks and then some. It's the kind of movie to send you out looking at strangers on the street with newfound appreciation and something close to love.

Duck Season (Temporada de patos) Movie Review

Biology was his field, but in his mid-twenties he became a research assistant at what he described as a "kind of clearinghouse for scientific literature" in many disciplines coming into Poland from around the world. Meanwhile, he was reading widely in literature and philosophy, and he embarked on a career as a writer of science fiction.

Stanislaw Lem 1921-2006