Although Thanksgiving isn't here yet, Christmas tree lights are already starting to brighten the streets of Los Angeles, and stores are starting to carry ornaments to decorate dorm rooms and apartments. It's a gentle reminder that 'tis the season ... to start panicking about the lack of money in your bank account. Read more...

What did a gay, dead-at-29 Elizabethan secret agent who believed that God was a dog contribute to humanity? Perhaps the contents of one of William Shakespeare's plays, suggests Peter Whelan's new adaptation of "The School of Night. Read more...

"I'm a Writer But Then Nobody's Perfect," reads Billy Wilder's epitaph at the Westwood Memorial Park and Cemetery. It may be the closing line of Wilder's film, "Some Like It Hot," but it also seems a poignant reminder of the imperfection of our own human existence, the inability of writers to truly capture a particular person, place, feeling or experience. Reading it among the other tombstones this weekend at the Westwood Cemetery, I felt strangely at peace and even uplifted. Read more...

An increasing number of young filmmakers are getting into the industry not through the front gate, but through the side door off the beaten path. Read more...

You know something's up when the normally calm Internet erupts in threats of violence. That is, threats of violence that might actually come true. Read more...

Due to over-the-top essentials of sequins, sky-high weaves, and (lest we forget) feather fringe, any drag show runs the risk of becoming a tranny, hot mess. Read more...

Dancer, performer and UCLA student Sheetal Gandhi once went a year without shampoo. Standing in a supermarket aisle, she found herself despairingly confounded by a bottomless variety of choices in the product. Read more...