Movie Interviews

Documentary Shows George Plimpton's Best Story Was His Own

6:40pm May 22, 2013

by Joel Rose

A new documentary about writer George Plimpton uses its subject's own voice to tell the story of his career as a path-breaking "participatory journalist" and longtime editor of the Paris Review. The film also uses the voices of Plimpton's friends and colleagues to defend him against the charge of dilettantism that dogged him throughout his career. NPR's Joel Rose reports.

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Actors Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze in Kathryn Bigelow's 1991 action film, Point Break.

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The Movie Katie Aselton Has 'Seen A Million Times'

6:18pm May 19, 2013

by Lily Percy

Actor-director Katie Aselton could watch Kathryn Bigelow's Point Break a million times. "It totally scoops you up and takes you for a ride," she says.

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For her latest film, Stories We Tell, Sarah Polley turns her camera on her own family.

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A Polley Family Secret, Deftly Pieced Together

3:04pm May 15, 2013

In a striking documentary, Sarah Polley turns the camera on her own family. The director and actor, known for films such as Away from Her and The Sweet Hereafter, was teased growing up about not looking like her actor father. At 27, she discovered that it wasn't a joke.

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Director Noah Baumbach has made a name for himself with films such as The Squid and the Whale and Margot at the Wedding.

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Gerwig, Baumbach Poke At Post-College Pangs

2:33pm May 14, 2013

In Frances Ha, a 27-year-old (Greta Gerwig) navigates New York City — and the transition from prolonged adolescence to proper adulthood. Gerwig and director Noah Baumbach co-wrote the script; they join Fresh Air's Terry Gross to talk about the project.

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A scene from Hayao Miyazaki's 1988 film, My Neighbor Totoro.

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The Movie Mark McKinney Has 'Seen A Million Times'

6:51pm May 12, 2013

by Lily Percy

Writer-comedian Mark McKinney could watch Hayao Miyazaki's anime film My Neighbor Totoro a million times. "It still makes me laugh, it still makes me smile," he says.

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Parvati and Saleem (Shriya Saran and Satya Bhabha), born in tandem at the birth of independent India, are at the center of Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children. Thirty years after the book's publication, filmmaker Deepa Mehta has committed the story

Arts

An Epic Of India Gets A Canvas Its Own Size

6:54am May 09, 2013

by Bilal Qureshi

Midnight's Children, from Oscar-nominated filmmaker Deepa Mehta, is a sweeping big-screen adaptation of Salman Rushdie's great novel of modern Indian history. NPR's Bilal Qureshi talks to the two storytellers about their collaboration on the project.

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In the new film The Reluctant Fundamentalist, the Pakistani-British actor Riz Ahmed plays Changez, a self-described "lover of America" who moves back to Pakistan to educate activists.

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Riz Ahmed: Shifting Across Identities And Roles

3:32pm May 07, 2013

by Bilal Qureshi

Both as the lead character in the film The Reluctant Fundamentalist and in his life outside the cinema, British actor Riz Ahmed navigates many identities.

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Barbra Streisand is Joyce Brewster in The Guilt Trip. The multitalented performer has won an Oscar, an Emmy, a Grammy and a Tony — a feat achieved by fewer than a dozen artists.

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'Guilt Trip': Streisand On Songs, Film And Family

8:04am May 06, 2013

Singer, actor, writer, director and producer Barbra Streisand plays a well-meaning if overbearing Jewish mom in The Guilt Trip. The star says her own mother both encouraged her talents and was jealous of them.

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'The Great Gatsby': Retold Again, With A Distinct Treatment

11:53am May 04, 2013

Host Scott Simon talks to director Baz Luhrmann about his new film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic American novel, The Great Gatsby.

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Bradley Cooper was nominated for an Academy Award for his 2012 role in the film Silver Linings Playbook.

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Bradley Cooper Finds 'Silver Linings' Everywhere

12:37pm May 03, 2013

The actor, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in David O. Russell's film which is out now on DVD, talks about watching movies with his father as a kid in Philadelphia. He currently stars in The Place Beyond The Pines with Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes.

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