Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Pat Dowell

  • Lewis, whose comedic duo with Dean Martin launched him to the peak of showbiz, starred and directed in dozens of films. He was perhaps just as famous for his charity work fighting muscular dystrophy.
  • Godard, who has been making films for more than half a century, shared the 2014 Jury Prize at Cannes for his 3-D film, Goodbye To Language.He likes 3-D, he says, because "there aren't any rules."
  • The star of Blue Velvet follows up her Webby-winning Green Pornoseries with another cheeky look at animal behavior. In Mammas, she channels mothers of many a species, challenges the belief that mothers are universally self-sacrificing — and eats an offspring or three.
  • The film The Act of Killing is the most talked about movie of the year. It's a film that is both fiction and nonfiction. Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer talked to the old men in charge of the death squads in Indonesia in the 1960s that killed somewhere between 500,000 to 2 million civilians in the name of thwarting communism.
  • 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.
  • British filmmaker Sally Potter gained worldwide attention with her 1992 film Orlando. Like all of her movies, it was unconventional in its story and structure. Her new film, Ginger & Rosa,is more realistic and direct.
  • No One Knows About Persian Cats tells the story of Iranian musicians trying to put together a band in a country where heavy metal, rock and hip-hop are illegal. The film won two prizes at last year's Cannes International Film Festival, and opens in this week in the U.S.
  • The Boston-based composer is remembered, 100 years after his birth, for a string of three-minute pops-concert classics such as "Sleigh Ride," "The Typewriter" and "The Syncopated Clock."
  • Volker Schlondorff is an Academy Award-winning German filmmaker who has focused on many aspects of German culture and history, but vowed never to make a movie about concentration camps -- until now. The Ninth Day tells the story of a priest who is torn between what is best for the church and his people.
  • Productions Peter Pan have reflected changing social attitudes toward children over the years. The result is that until recently, Peter, the boy who wouldn't grow up, was played by a woman. NPR's Pat Dowell explores the history of the character.