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American Gangster, a film based on the life of Harlem drug lord Frank Lucas, hits movie screens this weekend starring Academy Award-winning actor Denzel Washington. This week's Next Big Thing looks at pop culture's fascination with black gangsters through the years. Mark Rowland, producer of a new BET series on gangsters of color, is joined by filmmaker Marc Levin to discuss America's fascination.

The curtain will go up Thursday on most of the Broadway shows that have been closed for 19 days by a stagehands strike. Stagehands and theater producers reached a tentative agreement Wednesday night on the fight, which has kept more than two dozen shows in the dark.

From Darth Vader to Scarlett O'Hara, the best fictional characters reflect something about who we are and how we got here. In Character, a six-month series from NPR, explores indelible American characters from fiction, folklore and pop culture.

Three big auction houses — Christie's, Sotheby's and Philips de Pury — are selling works whose value they estimate at more than $900 million. Lindsay Pollock, a journalist specializing in the art market, considers whether the contemporary art bubble could burst.

Actor Hugh Grant auctioned the painting for $21 million.

The Writers Guild of America strike is heading into day four, with chants and signs that leave a little something to be desired. These are the folks who right sitcoms and movies, and the best they've got is "No Money, No Funny." Dimassimo Goldstein copywriter Annie O'Rourke debuts some new possibilities.

Josh Brolin, who plays laconic Llewelyn Moss in the much-praised new Coen Brothers thriller No Country for Old Men, talks about his appetite for surprising characters and working with the filmmaking brothers.

In five decades of filmmaking, director Sidney Lumet has shepherded some of Hollywood's biggest stars to Oscar nominations. His latest film, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, also has a pretty stellar cast, and Oscar may just come calling again.

Chazz Palminteri returns to the stage with the semi-autobiographical tale of his youth titled A Bronx Tale. Palminteri was unemployed when he wrote the one-man show, which debuted in Los Angeles in 1989. Almost 20 years later he brings his show to Broadway.

Like the early Coen Brothers films Blood Simple and Miller's Crossing, this thriller is a genre exercise — controlled, precise and exquisite in its imagery as it makes an audience cringe.