Miranda July (author, "No One Belongs Here More Than You"; director/writer, "Me and You and Everyone We Know")
Book: Israeli writer Etgar Keret's book of short stories "The Nimrod Flipout." I read this book in bed beside my boyfriend who was reading a much less interesting book and I kept shouting "Wow" and "No way" and "Oh my god" and my boyfriend would say, "What? what?" and I'd shake my head and say, "You wouldn't get it. You just have to read it." After I finished the book I immediately became more deadpan, more ridiculous and more in touch with my own mortality. My boyfriend was impressed with the new me and I told him, "It's that book, 'The Nimrod Flipout' -- it's opened up a whole new world for me." Now he's reading it, just so we can stay on the same plane of reality together.
Junot Díaz (author, "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao")
Book: I have to break my own rules and recommend for the 1,000th time Mohsin Hamid's "The Reluctant Fundamentalist." Just one of those achingly assured novels that makes you happy to be a reader.
Daniela Sea (actor, "The L Word," "Itty Bitty Titty Committee")
Book: Jim Harrison's "The Beast That God Forgot to Invent." In this book of three novellas, nature seeps out from every line. It was at the same time painful and inspiring to read such open and frank truths written in the poetic language he is famous for. My heart was elated and broken apart all at once.
Music: La Monte Young's "The Well Tuned Piano." These records are amazing and move me so fundamentally. They are like nothing I have ever heard before ... truly magical, all on a differently tuned piano.
Movie: "Away From Her," directed by Sarah Polley. I saw this movie for the first time at the Berlinale Film Festival and was truly amazed. Sarah Polley is my hero for making this her directorial debut. Julie Christie, one of my all-time favorites, plays a woman who is dealing with Alzheimer's. It's one goodbye after another, as her mind's lights slowly go out.
Christine Vachon (producer, "I'm Not There")
TV: "Aliens in America" is the funniest show I've ever seen -- awkward and sharp and adolescent. I love all the actors and think the teenage casting is spot-on, but the parents rock too.
Luc Sante (author, "Kill All Your Darlings" and "Low Life")
Book: "The Long Embrace" by Judith Freeman. This creatively obsessive study of Raymond Chandler's marriage restores literary biography to what it stopped being long ago: a genuine engagement with the subject's soul.
Music: "Untrue" by Burial. Shards of dance-hall music stretched and twisted until it sounds like a heap of ruins, but shot through with elegiac shafts of light. I hear jungle in this, of course, as well as, weirdly, a vein of English classical music, from Purcell to Vaughn Williams.
Movie: "Out One," by Jacques Rivette. Yes, it was shot in 1969 or so, but it wasn't shown anywhere until recently, and not in the U.S. until this year, and it's so much deeper and more ambitious than any current commercial release it's not even funny. It's a collective portrait of disillusioned revolutionaries, a treatise on the art of acting, a mystery story in which you first have to find what the mystery is, and much, much more.
Eric Roth (screenwriter, "Munich" and the forthcoming "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button")
Book: I have been a longtime admirer of the author Denis Johnson and there was no finer experience for me than reading his "Tree Of Smoke," which reminded me again that deception defines every human in every war, and that I could only wish I was half the writer he was. Philip Roth's "Exit Ghost" is just that, the perfect stage direction for us all. "John Fowles, the Journals, Vol. II," because you know before he does what his life is to become, and you watch with fascination, affection and horror, as it unfolds. A helluva good read is "Caught Stealing" by Charlie Huston, which just keeps kicking the holy shit out of you.
Movie: In the area that I have worked for far too long, the movies, of what I have seen to date I would name five: "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," for its stark realization of Ron Hansen's non-narrative muse on the price of fame. David Fincher's "Zodiac," for the movie's respect for the rule of law ... probable cause as a forgotten linchpin of democracy. The Coen brothers for their "No Country for Old Men," because they understand we are defined by our landscape, for good or for evil. "The Darjeeling Limited," which made luggage as important as "Sullivan's Travels" did. And "Knocked Up," because Judd Apatow knows his dick from a hole in the ground.
Tom Colicchio (restaurateur and head judge, "Top Chef")
Book: "The Many Lives of Tom Waits" by Patrick Humphries -- a glimpse into the life and art of one of my favorite musicians.
Music: Iron & Wine's "The Shepherd's Dog" -- Sam Beam's most orchestrated album. Reflective and cool.
Movie: "American Gangster" -- New York City in despair and disorder, and two actors at the top of their game.
Van Hunt (musician, "The Popular Machine")
Book: "Mr. Untouchable." I enjoyed the read. I could empathize with the anguish of a person who, though because of his own actions, is at the mercy of his failing relationships.
Music: Bach cello suites. This is simply the most complete musical statement that will ever be made with one instrument.
Fenton Bailey (director/producer, "Inside Deep Throat" and "The Eyes of Tammy Faye")
Book: "The 4-Hour Workweek." We all know that workaholic America could never embrace European-style idleness. So Timothy Ferriss does it by packaging it as a do less, get-rich, self-help regimen, kind of like eat yourself thin. A fabulous heresy that dares to declare e-mail is pointless, shopping a waste, and modern life rubbish.
Music: "Blackout" by Britney Spears. This is not a perverse choice. "Blackout" is a near-perfect concoction of Disco Noir and is a record you can actually listen to and -- if so moved -- write a thesis about. With a lurid self-exploitational feel that's compellingly icky, it explores the Matrix-like layers of Hollywood narcissism. An album I bet that both the Pet Shop Boys and Madonna wish they had made.
Movie: "Julia Attacks!" is a TMZ video in which Julia Roberts chases down and gives a telling off to a paparazzi. Julia -- absent from our screens for too long -- is completely convincing in this role as an angry mom. The car chase is excellent and the cinematography visceral and immersive. Some moviegoers might be disappointed that this movie is less than a minute long because Julia has her costar turn off the camera before she delivers her speech about children and paparazzi, but most movies are too long anyway.
Next page: KT Tunstall, David Cronenberg, Curtis Sittenfeld, Bobby Flay and more