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(He also gets in not one, but three Top Tens. What a trouper!)

Francis Davis presides over the prestigious Voice Jazz Critics Poll, wherein top listeners tell us what was choice in 2009 (Vijay Iyer, among others). You get his Top Ten, and also Tom Hull's, as well an honor roll of jazz greats gone in the year and the full results and ballots (with audio extras!).

Among the things Tom Robbins clearly admires about Robert Morgenthau: that he doesn't suffer fools gladly even when they're Mayor of New York, that he tells great stories (like one about seeing Supreme Court Justice Byron White walk through the SCOTUS building "with an open can of Budweiser"), and that he's a first-class man who made a first-class Manhattan D.A..

Director Michael Haneke (Funny Games, Cache) returned to Germany to make The White Ribbon. The result, says J. Hoberman, is "Village of the Damned as re-imagined by Thomas Mann..."

Revivals of Shaw and Horton Foote; a musical version of The Importance of Being Ernest. Reviews and historical perspective by Michael Feingold.

Sonali Cuisine's lamb pasanda, says Robert Sietsema, is "one of the richest and tastiest dishes ever to grace a stainless-steel salver in a South Asian restaurant." And that's just in the first paragraph!

Plus more Music, Art, Theater, Film, Books, Dance, Restaurants, Free Will Astrology, Ask a Mexican, Dan Savage, and assorted sides.