Search results for

NPR's Robert Siegel talks with writer Gilbert Sorrentino about Hubert Selby, Jr., author of Last Exit to Brooklyn, who died Monday. Sorrentino grew up with Selby, says he made literature out of a kind of language that few writers dared use before. He was not the rough hewn person characterized in his prose. His inspiration was growing up on the streets.

The Motion Picture Association of America is considering whether to sue individuals who illegally download movies online, much the way the music industry went after those who pilfer music. Faster technology allows for faster downloads of large computer files such as movies. NPR's Kim Masters reports.

A spate of films that take critical, satirical looks at corporate and political power are set to hit theaters this spring, many aiming to reach the wider audiences at multiplexes. New films in the genre include Supersize Me, The Yes Men and The Corporation. The Disney Corporation is blocking its Miramax division from distributing director Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, a film critical of the Bush administration. David D'Arcy reports.

The new film The Girl Next Door appears to be a typical teen comedy with an adult twist: what happens when a stunning former porn star moves in next door to a lucky high school senior. Some critics find its attempt to make the world of pornography seem mainstream disturbing. Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan has a review.

Each year since 1992, the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression in Charlottesville, Va., has presented its Jefferson Muzzles award to people and organizations who have stood in the way of free speech. NPR's Bob Edwards speaks with center director Robert O'Neil about "winners" of the 2004 award, being announced today.

Graham Parker's sarcasm and anger were the trademark of his Squeezing Out Sparks. Nearly three decades after making quintessential bar-band rock with his group The Rumour, the sharp-tongued Englishman releases a more folksy, roots-oriented CD called Your Country. Meredith Ochs has a review.

It's been seven years since detective Jane Tennison last applied her world-weary determination to solving a case on Masterpiece Theatre's Prime Suspect. But on April 18, acclaimed British actress Helen Mirren revives Tennison's character, returning to PBS in Prime Suspect 6: The Last Witness. Mirren speaks with NPR's Lynn Neary.

A new movie is selling out theaters in Iran but angering some of the country's religious leaders. Government censors delayed the release of The Lizard, and some leading clerics want it banned altogether. Hear NPR's Steve Inskeep and journalist Roxana Saberi.

NPR's Liane Hansen meets former CIA official Frederick Hitz at Washington, D.C.'s Spy Museum. Hitz's new book, The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage, compares spy novel secret agents with real-life operatives.

A report published in the Journal of Death Studies finds that poets die younger than novelists, playwrights and other writers. James Kaufman, a researcher at California State University at San Bernardino, suggests poets may die young because they tend to be more tortured and prone to self-destruction. NPR's Bob Edwards reports.