After years of touring and intercontinental migration, singer-songwriter Sondre Lerche has finally settled down in Brooklyn, savoring old friends, a new album and a mellower lease on the high life. "We love it here,” says Lerche, motioning to his backyard. “We have parties outside, even on freezing cold days.” Thankfully, this warm late summer night promises no such thing. The 27-year-old singer-songwriter, dressed comfortably in electric-blue pants and a loose linen shirt, reclines while his slight wife, Mona, fusses over their patio table, arranging tea lights and fixing watermelon cocktails and artichoke appetizers for her guests. She makes certain not to muss her Dolce & Gabbana separates, vintage apron and silvery freshwater pearls. “My wife is a great cook,” says Lerche, smiling. “But she’s a fantastic entertainer.”

When Kellan Lutz found himself locked in a death grip with a diaper-clad baby chimpanzee on a photo shoot, he knew he had stumbled into the right business. “He was pretty strong, but I still came out victorious,” says the 24-year-old actor, best known for playing Emmett Cullen, the bulky big brother to Robert Pattinson’s Edward, in the much-obsessed-over Twilight films.

The culture of the gay Harlem houses -- the birthplace of “voguing” -- goes back as far as the 19th century. In the beginning, the gatherings that took place there were a matter of survival; by the late 1970s, they were established sanctuaries, providing family -- and safety in numbers -- to homeless street hustlers, pier queens, addicts and other lost souls. The houses took names like LaBeija, Chanel and St. Laurent, imitating the fashion houses they idolized. And they threw elaborate balls -- flamboyant 10-hour affairs, where voguing was pioneered, with the houses competing for prestige (and sometimes cash).

In Martin Scorsese’s upcoming thriller Shutter Island, Emily Mortimer runs away with the show as an on-the-lam patient who breaks down opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. Though she starred in David Mamet’s Redbelt last year, the English actress is just now earning her black belt in bitchery, by kicking around her 10 least-favorite things.

Who better to sample fermented grapes at Gordon’s, London’s oldest wine bar, than the man behind Straight No Chaser? Raise a glass to musician Mr Hudson, Kanye’s newest protégé. Ben Hudson, the Birmingham-born frontman for Mr Hudson, has earned the right to relax with a glass (or eight) of wine. In the past year, he appeared on Jay-Z and Kanye West’s latest records, traveled the world as part of West’s crew (“He’s like the Kofi Annan of pop,” Hudson says of his friend and mentor) and saw his smash single -- the glorious, West-assisted “Supernova” -- climb to the top of the U.K. charts. Still, Hudson isn’t yet ready to toast his good fortune. “As an Englishman,” he says, “I’m allergic to bombast. It’s up to the people at home to decide if I’ll be playing at Wembley in 10 years, or if I’ll be back on the dole.”

Four stars from this month’s ensemble film New York, I Love You , a romantic paean to the city that never sleeps, tell us they watch when no one’s looking.

● During the holidays, I love walking around the West Village at night. The brownstones are all lit from within, and through the windows you can see families and friends putting up decorations, having cocktail parties. There are lives and histories behind every door. --Eva Amurri

In his Panopticon writings from 1787, philosopher Jeremy Bentham described a prison with a column serving as an all-seeing eye at its center. Inmates lived in constant fear, aware of the possibility that they were being watched at all times—that, as George Orwell wrote of Big Brother in his prescient 1984, “Every sound… was overheard and except in darkness, every moment scrutinized.”

We tapped four visionaries -- Juergen Teller, The Raveonettes, Jennifer Lynch, and James Jean -- for their takes on surveillance. The works of art they created are, well, out of sight.

Above: Juergen Teller
“Ed with camera, Il Pellicano,” 2009.
Teller’s exhibition, Juergen Teller, Paradis, is on display at New York’s Lehmann Maupin gallery until October 17, 2009.

In a world of trash heaps and disposable art, digital-only records and flashback culture, it’s comforting to know that we still walk among mythic artists. Yoko Ono is one of those artists. Her observations are so direct, so simple and so devoid of bullshit that they constantly remind me to reevaluate my perceptions. Her art reduces; it is a solvent for over-thinking. The proof of this is that, for the past 10 years, I’ve opened Grapefruit—her influential, heart- and mind-altering conceptual art book—whenever I start a new project. This has been a busy year for the 76-year-old legend. She re-formed the Plastic Ono Band with help from her son, Sean Lennon, and released Between My Head and the Sky, an album of powerful, modern music that startles one minute and soothes the next. Her voice, erotic and ghostly, tangles with the album’s reflective instrumentation. Listen for rhythms that recall ticking clocks, piano chords lilting in a far-off room and the soft purr of rainfall.

He displayed certain unsettling tendencies in his first two feature films, Donnie Darko and Southland Tales, but with the release of The Box this month, director Richard Kelly fully taps into his inner creep—so we asked him to compile a list of songs made for stalking. (“Every Breath You Take” was not an option.)