Arts

NPR's Susan Stamberg has talked to everyone from focus pullers to foley artists. She finds that in the last 10 years, technology and out-of-state tax incentives have been Hollywood game-changers.

Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov's classic, The Master and Margarita, ridiculed Soviet leaders and bureaucracy. It wasn't published until 27 years after his death, but it still resonates with Russians.

"Research among U.S. populations of kids indicates that this ability to articulate a moral theme develops fairly slowly, emerging only around age 9 or 10," says researcher Seeta Pai.

Author Stewart O'Nan says that in the late '30s, Fitzgerald was at the bottom of a bad spiral. But in Hollywood, "he finds himself again: He finds his love of writing, he finds his love of the world."

In New York and Tehran, visitors in both cities are invited to enter a portal for 10 minutes or longer to communicate with a stranger, as though they're standing in the same room.

Haruki Murakami is a best-selling author and perennial Nobel Prize contender, but rarely gives interviews. For a limited time, a website is giving fans a chance to engage with the reclusive writer.

The Iranian-American comic came to the U.S. when he was 6 years old, just before Iran's 1979 revolution. His new memoir is I'm Not a Terrorist, But I've Played One on TV.

NPR movie critic Bob Mondello says the Argentine nominee for best foreign language film, Wild Tales, is an anthology of darkly comic stories that definitely lives up to its title.

In movies, crowd noise, hospital waiting room chatter and barroom brawl sounds are created by voice actors called loopers. "If it's done right, you shouldn't even notice it," one sound mixer says.