Across 1 “You’re the Top” songwriter Porter 5 Like Fellini’s vita 10 “Beat it!” 14 Race track shape 15 Long, hard one of construction workers 16 Game played astride the well-hung 17 Gay romance drama of 1996 20 Walks like Sue...

You can tell a lot about a person from his or her choice in a Bloody Mary. Some people try a little too hard to butch up the drink with seven kinds of hot sauce. Others are all about flair, bedazzling the drink with enough...

Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey Alfred A. Knopf 784 pages $35 hardcover Let this incisive biography stand as an object lesson in the perils of denial: Without casting judgment, it makes clear that Cheever—dead more than a...

Mitchell takes Eckhart and Kidman down the Rabbit Hole Why is that so many hack directors crank out movie after movie while the really talented filmmakers make us wait? John Cameron Mitchell took five long years after Hedwig and...

You know what Africans love? AIDS. Getting it, spreading it—doesn’t matter. It’s their favorite thing. I mean, it must be, right? Because why else would the HIV/AIDS rate be so high over there? It can’t possibly have anything to...