Will Smith is starring in the new film Ali as fighter Muhammad Ali. The film begins in 1964, the year that Cassius Clay became world heavyweight champion, announced his conversion to Islam, and took on the name Muhammad Ali. The film is directed and co-written by Michael Mann who also made The Insider. Smith also starred in the films The Legend of Bagger Vance, Men In Black, Independence Day, and Six Degrees of Separation. Smith got his start as a rapper, making his first record in high school.
Yeoh felt relieved when she first read the script for Everything Everywhere All at Once: Finally, here was a film that cast a middle-aged mother as an action hero. Originally broadcast April 2022.
Television critic David Bianculli considers the networks' penchant for the docudrama and looks at NBC's upcoming movie, "Howard Beach: Making the Case for Murder."
Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead remembers Mengelberg, who died Friday, as a "musical anarchist" who taught classical counterpoint and wrote dozens of catchy melodies.
In The Secret History of the War on Cancer, environmental-health expert Devra Davis warns that we're ignoring dozens of cancer-causing chemicals, like asbestos, benzene, vinyl chloride, and dioxin.
She writes that, like the tobacco companies, the chemical industry has managed to obfuscate the carcinogenic dangers of chemical and other toxic waste.
Davis directs the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and teaches epidemiology in the university's public-health graduate program.
A concert with singer and songwriter Loudon Wainwright III. He writes very personal, eccentric songs that take a darkly humorous, sometimes caustic view of life. He first gained fame with his hit song "Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road." His new album is titled "Therapy." (Interview with Sedge Thomson)
Film critic Stephen Schiff reviews the new film "Don Juan de Marco" starring Johnny Depp, Marlon Brando and Faye Dunaway -- a cast full of attractive magnetism.
In 2015, three Americans on a Paris-bound train stopped a terrorist attack in progress. Eastwood recreates the incident — and audaciously casts the real-life heroes as themselves — in his new film.
John Hope Franklin died March 25 at the age of 94. As a historian, scholar, and activist Franklin advanced African-American causes throughout his career. Fresh Air remembers the historian and scholar with an interview from 1990.
Attorney David Cole. Cole is a staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, and has recently taken part in court cases involving flag burning and controversial art exhibits.
The first volume of Kaoru Takamura's 1997 eccentric crime thriller has just been translated into English. Inspired by a real-life case, Lady Joker reveals its world in rich, polyphonic detail.
Ricky Gervais appears in the new film Night at the Museum, in which insects come to life after a spell is cast at The Museum of Natural History. Gervais is the creator and star of the British TV comedy series The Office, which has been adapted into a hit show starring Steve Carrell. He's won an Emmy, a Golden Globe and three BAFTA Awards. Gervais also writes the Flanimals series of children's books.
Television critic David Bianculli reviews "False Witness," a syndicated TV special that re-examines the facts surrounding the Jeffrey MacDonald murder case, the same case chronicled in the book "Fatal Vision," and the subject TV miniseries of the same name.
The FOX newS host talks about her feud with Donald Trump, and her decision to come forward in the sexual harassment case against former FOX new CEO Roger Ailes.
Soul singer Barry White, the sweet-talking, deep-voiced performer who rhapsodized about love, died on July 4. He was 58. The cause was kidney failure. His hits included "My First, My Last, My Everything," "Never Never Gonna Give Up," and "I'm Gonna Love You Just a Little More." Before he became a hit as a solo performer, White put together the female vocal trio Love Unlimited and founded the Love Unlimited Orchestra, a 40-piece ensemble, to accompany himself and the trio.
In 14 years on Saturday Night Live, Darrell Hammond did many impressions, including Bill Clinton and Al Gore. But few of his cast members knew that Hammond struggled with drugs, alcohol and self-cutting as a result of systematic childhood abuse.
The '60s sitcom was often a one-joke affair; the film's starry-eyed geek has room for nuance. You can make a case for both Maxes, but critic David Edelstein misses the tube's lovable boob. Anne Hathaway's Agent 99, now ... that's another matter.
John Barry, author of the 2004 book, The Great Influenza, draws parallels between today's pandemic and the flu of 1918. In both cases, he says, "the outbreak was trivialized for a long time."
Two kinds of people consume Christmas music: those who actually like the stuff, and folks who need something listenable on hand in case seasonal visitors insist on some ornamental mood music. For both groups, two new jazz brass albums should do the trick. Critic Kevin Whitehead reviews.
