Arts & Life

Jacqueline Woodson: What Is The Hidden Power Of Slow Reading?

9:22am September 20, 2019

by NPR/TED Staff

Novelist Jacqueline Woodson is a slow reader. Taking her time lets her savor each word brings her closer to each story, and it lets her pay respect to her ancestors who weren't allowed to read.

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Books
Arts

'Heaven, My Home' Is A Complicated Place

7:00am September 20, 2019

by Bethanne Patrick

Attica Locke returns to the world of Highway 59 in Heaven, My Home, which finds Texas Ranger Darren Mathews dealing with the disappearance of the young son of an imprisoned white supremacist leader.

Jim Carter returns as Charles Carson for a royal visit in Downton Abbey.

Arts

In The 'Downton Abbey' Film, A Royal Visit Proves Rather A Spot Of Bother

8:01pm September 19, 2019

by Glen Weldon

The new film is "less a victory lap than a cakewalk." Everything about the TV series — those aspects you loved, and those you didn't — is reproduced here with astonishing fidelity.

More like DAD Astra am I right? Brad Pitt stars as astronaut Roy McBride chasing the ghost of his father across an unforgiving solar system in Ad Astra.

Arts

'Ad Astra' Soars

6:52pm September 19, 2019

by Chris Klimek

Distance — both interplanetary and emotional — is the subject of James Gray's "stirring sci-fi epic" that stars Brad Pitt and Tommy Lee Jones.

Toni Servillo stars in Paolo Sorrentino's film, which was recut from a two-part Italian TV series about the decadent life of Silvio Berlusconi.

Arts

'Loro': Sorrentino's Portrait Of Berlusconi As A Once-Powerful Lion In Winter

5:01pm September 19, 2019

by Mark Jenkins

This "stylish but overloaded satire is less sober narrative than drunken tone poem — a buzzing, throbbing attempt to simulate" what it was like inside the mogul-turned-prime-minister's circle.

Roy Cohn, pictured here sitting on a senate investigation subcommittee, is remembered as a master political manipulator in Where's My Roy Cohn?

Arts

Documentary 'Where's My Roy Cohn?' Suggests He's Closer Than You Think

5:00pm September 19, 2019

by Ella Taylor

Matt Tyrnaeur's documentary posits that Cohn, a notoriously ruthless and amoral political operative, set the ground rules by which today's politics play out.

Books
Arts

In 'Obviously,' Comedian Muses About Growing Up In A Small Kentucky Town

4:38pm September 19, 2019

NPR's Ailsa Chang speaks with comedian Akilah Hughes about a collection of short essays in her new book, Obviously.

Arts

'Downton Abbey' Movie Brings You Up To Speed With The Crawleys

4:38pm September 19, 2019

by Bob Mondello

The Crawleys are back, and the big screen has them this time, in a story that picks up a few years after the TV show ended.

Constructing Jazz Inside Fine Art, And Vice-Versa

3:16pm September 19, 2019

by Nate Chinen

The jazz pianist has pulled the curtain off his polymathic abilities, bringing his fine art exhibition — which includes video, installations and performance — home to New York.

Reflecting on his decision to go public with classified information, Edward Snowden says, "The likeliest outcome for me, hands down, was that I'd spend the rest of my life in an orange jumpsuit, but that was a risk that I had to take."

Edward Snowden Speaks Out: 'I Haven't And I Won't' Cooperate With Russia

2:58pm September 19, 2019

by Dave Davies

In 2013, Snowden showed journalists thousands of top-secret documents about U.S. intelligence agencies' surveillance efforts. He's been living in Russia ever since. His new book is Permanent Record.

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