Movies

Duncan's summer is filled with awkward — and often adult-initiated — situations involving the girl next door (Annasophia Robb).

Arts

Oscar Winners Rash And Faxon Team Up For 'The Way, Way Back'

6:13pm July 08, 2013

by NPR Staff

Renee Montagne talks to Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, the writing and directing team on the new film The Way, Way Back. The coming of age movie focuses on a 14-year-old boy's tough summer vacation with his mother and her new boyfriend.

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Dustin Hoffman made his directorial debut with the film Quartet. He has starred in such classics as The Graduate, Kramer vs. Kramer and Tootsie.

Arts

'Quartet': Dustin Hoffman, Behind The Camera

11:03am July 05, 2013

The veteran actor recently made his directorial debut with a film about four aging opera singers who stage a concert at their retirement home. Starring Maggie Smith and Tom Courtenay, the film explores friendship, memory and the time that remains.

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Armie Hammer stars as the Lone Ranger in a new Disney adaptation.

Arts

'The Lone Ranger': Summer Fun With Manifest Destiny

1:42pm July 03, 2013

by David Edelstein

Director Gore Verbinski and star Johnny Depp have turned in a busy, expensive take on the masked lawman of the Wild West. It's long, tone-deaf, and ultimately crushingly bad.

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Pamina (Amy Carson) and Tamino (Joseph Kaiser) in Kenneth Branagh's production of Mozart's The Magic Flute.

Branagh Imagines Mozart's 'Magic Flute' In Wartime

4:41pm July 01, 2013

by Lloyd Schwartz

Director Kenneth Branagh has given us fresh Shakespeare and witty modern comedies of manners, and some years ago he turned to opera, with an adaptation of Mozart's classic set in World War I. It's finally available in the U.S., and critic Lloyd Schwartz says the results are disappointingly mixed.

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Tomi Ungerer's 1967 book Moon Man follows its lonely protagonist as he visits Earth for the very first time.

Books
Arts

From Kids' Books To Erotica, Tomi Ungerer's 'Far Out' Life

4:00pm July 01, 2013

The famed author and illustrator broke the rules of American children's literature in the '50s and '60s, but many Americans have never heard of him. A new documentary, Far Out Isn't Far Enough, looks at his life and work.

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Arts

Casting Call: Hollywood Needs More Women

7:35pm June 30, 2013

by NPR Staff

Women make up half of movie viewers, and yet they are underrepresented on the big screen. Many more films are made by, for and star men, according to surveys by the Annenberg School. So as Hollywood changes and evolves, can this disparity be fixed?

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Arts

The Movie Paul Feig Has 'Seen A Million Times'

7:07pm June 29, 2013

by Lily Percy

Writer-director Paul Feig could watch the James Bond film Casino Royale a million times. "Daniel Craig really embodies Ian Fleming's James Bond," he says.

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Carl Brisson stars as sideshow boxer "One Round Jack" in Alfred Hitchcock's 1927 film The Ring. That and eight more of the master's early silent features have restored by the British Film Institute.

Arts

Rescued, Hitchcock's Silent Films Flicker Anew

7:07pm June 29, 2013

by Pat Dowell

Alfred Hitchcock is best known for suspense films like Psycho and Vertigo, but the British director actually began his filmmaking career during the silent era. The Hitchcock 9 is a collection of his silent films, and the only way to see them is the old way — going to the theater.

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'Heat' Stroke: The genius of this buddy-cop comedy is in its pairing of Sandra Bullock (left, as a by-the-book process nerd of an FBI suit) with Melissa McCarthy, who plays a sloppy Boston detective with no patience for procedure.

Arts

Bullock And McCarthy, Packing 'Heat' (And Laughs) In Boston

9:22pm June 28, 2013

by Bob Mondello

Director Paul Feig and writer Katie Dippold have found a perfect pair of leads for their cop comedy. Critic Bob Mondello says Oscar winner Sandra Bullock and Oscar nominee Melissa McCarthy turn out to have enviable comic chemistry.

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Saoirse Ronan plays Eleanor, an ancient (and uncharacteristically ethical) vampire in Neil Jordan's Byzantium.

Arts

Two Master Moviemakers, Two Singularly Fine Films

3:01pm June 27, 2013

by David Edelstein

Pedro Almodovar's ensemble comedy I'm So Excited is set on an airplane with mechanical problems; Neil Jordan's Byzantium centers on a pair of itinerant English vampires. The two films couldn't be more different, but the two filmmakers are very much in command of their craft.

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