Movies

Jake Gyllenhaal plays the stoic Detective Loki in Prisoners, trying to track down two missing girls.

Arts

Jake Gyllenhaal, Going After What's Real

8:08pm November 08, 2013

by NPR Staff

On a visit to the set of Nightcrawler, NPR's Audie Cornish talks to the actor about his changing career and his recent crime drama, Prisoners, where he plays a solemn detective in search of two young missing girls.

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This Blockbuster store in Mission, Texas, is franchised by Border Entertainment. The company has 26 stores across Texas and Alaska that will live on after the last 300 or so company-owned stores are closed by early January 2014.

Blockbuster Fades Out, But Some Zombie Stores Will Live On

8:08pm November 08, 2013

by Serri Graslie

Dish Network announced this week that it will shutter the 300 or so remaining Blockbuster stores it owns across the country. But in some places, dozens of the video stores will have an unlikely afterlife.

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Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) learns from his father (Bill Nighy) that he has the ability to travel back and forth through time, a power Tim uses in his pursuit of love.

Arts

This 'Time,' Supernatural Love Story Falls Flat

5:49pm November 02, 2013

by Bob Mondello

About Time, written and directed by Richard Curtis (Love Actually), follows a young man looking for love — with a little help from time-travel. NPR's Bob Mondello says that in this instance, time travel and romantic comedy don't necessarily blend well together.

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In Dallas Buyers Club, Matthew McConaughey takes on the role of Ron Woodroof, a Texas man who, diagnosed with AIDS in the 1980s, begins to smuggle experimental drugs in from Mexico.

Arts

Matthew McConaughey, Fiercely Committed To This 'Club'

6:49pm November 01, 2013

by Bob Mondello

Dallas Buyers Club tells the true story of Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey), a Texas man whose '80s AIDS diagnosis drives him to fight for access to the drugs he believes can save him. Jennifer Garner and Jared Leto also star. (Recommended)

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Arts

The Story Behind The Stunts: Remembering Hollywood's Hal Needham

3:54pm November 01, 2013

Throughout his career, Needham did the kind of stunts that would either end with a spectacular shot ... or an ambulance. On Oct. 25, Needham died of cancer at age 82. We listen back to a 2011 interview, in which he tells the stories behind some of his most daring stunts.

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In Dallas Buyers Club, Jared Leto plays Rayon, a transgender woman who is HIV-positive and struggling with a drug habit. "I always saw Rayon as someone who wanted to live ... life as a woman, not just someone who enjoyed putting on women's clothing," Leto

Arts

Jared Leto Was 'Seduced' By Role Of Rayon In 'Buyers Club'

3:25pm October 31, 2013

In Dallas Buyers Club, Leto plays Rayon, a transgender woman who is living with HIV and a drug habit. Rayon becomes an unlikely friend to Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey), a rodeo cowboy who starts smuggling HIV drugs from Mexico in the 1980s after he's diagnosed as HIV-positive and given just a few weeks to live.

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Tom Hanks stars in Captain Phillips, a film that's recently been subject to a "whisper campaign" of pre-Oscars criticism.

Arts

Word On The Street Is Oscars 'Whisper Campaigns' Have Begun

5:59pm October 27, 2013

by NPR Staff

Leading Oscar contenders are under fire as award season approaches. Journalist Scott Feinberg recently wrote in The Hollywood Reporter about the trash-talking that spreads before the Oscars to take down perceived front-runners. He talks to NPR's Arun Rath about a campaign against Captain Phillips and why such efforts often backfire.

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Blue Is the Warmest Color chronicles the love affair between high school student Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos, left) and Emma (Léa Seydoux), who is older and more experienced.

Arts

In Emotionally Charged 'Blue,' Sex Is Graphic, But Not Gratuitous

2:30pm October 25, 2013

by David Edelstein

Blue Is the Warmest Color, a coming-of-age movie about the love affair between two young women, has been criticized as pornographic and exploitive. But critic David Edelstein says the film artfully captures the intensity of sexual discovery — and dependency. (Recommended)

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Hong Kong director Tsui Hark's latest film, Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon, just hit cinemas in Asia.

Before Sherlock: An Ancient Chinese Sleuth's Enduring Appeal

12:19pm October 25, 2013

by Anthony Kuhn

The sleuthing exploits of Judge Dee, a character based on a seventh-century Chinese official, are gripping new audiences as new generations of writers, movie directors and storytellers tell his tale and build on his legend. His stories continue to inform ordinary Chinese people's understanding of justice and law.

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12 Years a Slave, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, is based on an 1853 memoir by Solomon Northup, a free black man in upstate New York who was kidnapped into slavery in 1841.

Arts

'12 Years A Slave' Was A Film That 'No One Was Making'

3:59pm October 24, 2013

Director Steve McQueen tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that he wanted to help fill a "huge hole in the canon of cinema." And actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, whose parents are from Nigeria, says he grew up feeling "a sense of unity amongst African people and people of African heritage."

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