Movies

Doris Day's somber 1958 version of "Hooray for Hollywood," which was included on an album of the same name, better reflects the song's creatively complicated lyrics.

Hollywood's 'Hooray': Hardly A Happy Hymn

11:41am February 11, 2013

by Susan Stamberg

It's Oscar season, meaning that classic toe-tapper "Hooray for Hollywood" will soon be booming out of TV speakers everywhere. But the cheery cinema hymn has a more complicated compositional past, as NPR's special correspondent Susan Stamberg explains.

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Brutus (Salvatore Striano) fixes a wild stare at the witnesses and conspirators after Julius Caesar's murder, in a scene from Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's Caesar Must Die.

Arts

'Caesar' Comes Alive In An Italian Prison

1:09pm February 08, 2013

by David Edelstein

In Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's new film, Caesar Must Die, a group of prisoners put on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. It's barely an hour and a quarter, and it's physically small-scale, but it's so compressed it wears you out — in a good way.

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Tyler Perry stars in the action thriller Alex Cross, which is now out on DVD.

Arts

Tyler Perry Transforms: From Madea To Family Man

1:09pm February 08, 2013

Best known for being the man behind Madea, Perry recently starred in the action thriller Alex Cross which is now out on DVD. We listen back to an October interview, in which he told Fresh Air's Terry Gross that his Madea character is a cross between his mom, his aunt and Eddie Murphy.

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The surprise hit Lost in Thailand, a road comedy that cost less than $5 million to make, has become China's highest-grossing domestic film.

World News

Move Over James Bond, China Has An Unlikely Box-Office Champ

9:32am February 08, 2013

by Frank Langfitt

Hollywood blockbusters usually do well in China. But last year, Lost in Thailand, a scrappy, slapstick comedy that cost less than $5 million to make, raked in $200 million in just seven weeks. It's now the highest-grossing Chinese film ever. It begins a limited run in the U.S. on Friday.

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Nicholas Hoult, Rob Corddry and Teresa Palmer lurch through a scene in Levine's zombie romantic comedy.

Arts

'Warm Bodies' Director: Teen Romance, Undying

7:50pm February 07, 2013

by NPR Staff

Director Jonathan Levine joins NPR's Audie Cornish to explore the ins and outs of young (zombie) love — the subject of his new romantic comedy, which topped the box office in its first week.

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

Arts

Bradley Cooper Finds 'Silver Linings' Everywhere

1:14pm February 07, 2013

The actor, nominated for an Academy Award for his role in David O. Russell's film, talks about watching movies with his father as a kid in Philadelphia, his childhood fascination with soldiers and being up against Daniel Day Lewis for an Oscar.

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Jackie, Lynn and Sue — pictured here at age 7 — are three of the children featured in the landmark 1964 documentary 7 Up. The series returns this year with 56 Up, checking in with a group of 14 men and women whose lives have been documented since they

Arts

Michael Apted, Aging With The '7 Up' Crew

2:39pm February 05, 2013

Every seven years since 1964, the director has caught us up on the lives of 14 everyday people in his acclaimed 7 Up series. Apted was 22 when the series began, and the subjects were 7. In the latest episode — 56 Up — the subjects are well into middle age.

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Stefan Kudelski poses with the Ampex-Nagra VPR-5 portable recorder in an undated photograph. The devices were used to record the 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico.

Stefan Kudelski, Who Made Sound Recording Portable, Dies

2:29pm February 04, 2013

by April Fehling

Stefan Kudelski, inventor of the first portable professional sound recorder, has died. His Nagra tape recorder, created in 1951, revolutionized film by giving filmmakers the freedom to record scenes at virtually any location.

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Jon Voight and Jane Fonda in a scene from the Hal Ashby film Coming Home.

Arts

The Movie Jonathan Levine Has 'Seen A Million Times'

6:16pm February 03, 2013

by Lily Percy

Writer-director Jonathan Levine could watch Hal Ashby's Coming Home a million times. "I think that the distinctive thing about Coming Home is the love story," he says.

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Science

How Owls Turn Heads

1:03pm February 01, 2013

A mystery of the animal kingdom: how do owls turn their heads 270 degrees without damaging their blood vessels? At last an answer, published this week in Science. Fabian de Kok-Mercado and Philippe Gailloud dissected and x-rayed owls to discover how the birds do the twist.

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