Gather

Britney Spears Songwriter Heather Bright: Pop Stars Get Co-writing Credits for Doing Nothing

"HELLO! Wake up everybody! NONE OF THESE ARTISTS WRITE THEIR OWN SONGS!!!!!!"

Mad Men Haiku Contest: We’ve Got Winners!

Read the winning haiku.

One of Julie Taymor’s Actors Comes to Her Defense

"Would a male director receive the lashing Julie has received?"

Jay-Z Has Launched a Lifestyle Site, and It Is Bonkers

Fashion bloggers! Shoe designers! Soccer!

Billy Crystal Describes Rob Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally Orgasm in Loving Detail

We're all having what he's having ...

David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King Gets Thoughtful, Glowing Reviews

It's not perfect, but in places it comes close.

Game of Thrones Author Hated the End of Lost Too

Damen Lindelof fired back on Twitter, natch.

Last Night on Late Night: Tracy Morgan Bitter About Comedy Award Loss to Alec Baldwin, Reminisces About 40-Ounce-Drinking Award

Plus, James Franco explained the lazy film-school game that spawned his new film, on our regular late-night roundup.

This Weekend’s Concerts, From the Strokes to LCD Soundsystem

Plus: Cut Copy, Kings of Leon, Steven Tyler ...

After Show Two, Charlie Sheen’s Fans Are Back and Protecting Him From Mean Patton Oswalt

So much for the emperor having no clothes.

Patrick Stump on Leaving Fall Out Boy, Losing Weight, and ‘Betting the Farm’ on His Solo Album

"I’m kind of gambling everything on this. If it doesn't take off I’m gonna go broke, and I don’t care."

Strong Debuts for Killing, Kennedys, and Borgias

A big night for cable premieres.

Five Things We Learned From MTV’s Britney Spears Documentary, I Am the Femme Fatale

Including Britney's 'Real Housewives' inspiration.

TV Arithmetic: Breaking Down The Killing

Two parts 'Prime Suspect' + one part Tommy Carcetti, and so on.

Dramatic Advances in the Kings of Leon–Ryan Murphy Peace Process

Murphy: "Who am I to say 'F--k you?'"

The Other Place

Last season, the great Laurie Metcalf (still best known as Jackie on Roseanne) gave one of the year's most underrated performances in the New Group's revival of A Lie of the Mind, playing Meg, a matriarch who's had the "arch" beaten out of her by life. This year, she's back in one more mother of a role in Sharr White's The Other Place: Juliana, a pharmaceutical researcher suffering from the degenerative brain disease she's spent her career trying to cure. The situation sounds like the cheapest of ironies, but it's beside the point. The exploratory, inside-out approach of White's script and the laser-scalpel delicacy of Joe Mantello's direction give Metcalf (pictured with Dennis Boutsikaris) the room to disassemble Juliana right before our eyes.

MORE TODAY:

readarting  The Andy Monument

theater  Born Yesterday

reading  Myla Goldberg and Friends