Film critic John Powers reviews "A Simple Plan" by filmmaker Sam Raimi. The quiet rural lives of two brothers erupt into conflicts of greed, paranoia and distrust when over four million dollars in cash is discovered at the remote site of a downed small airplane.
Dr. Robert Sheets is the director of the National Hurricane Center near Miami, Florida. The Center keeps a constant watch on tropical disturbances which may turn into hurricanes. He'll talk today about what causes hurricanes, and how people who live in regions with many hurricanes can prepare for the storm season.
Peacock launches with thousands of hours of old programs, plus a sampling of new ones. Most of the new shows are just average — except for Intelligence and The Capture, which are worth catching.
In the Chilean film No, which is nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, a young ad man devises a campaign to vote the dictator Augusto Pinochet out of office using rainbows and catchy theme songs.
Harrison is the widow of George Harrison, the former Beatle. The two were married for 24 years. Harrison died in December 2001. Before his death, he began working on his Dark Horse catalogue (1976-1992), his entire body of work, plus unreleased demos. The box set (on Capitol Records) includes six albums as well as a DVD of seven restored music videos. Just this week Harrison was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Note: Audio for this feature is not available due to Internet rights issues.
Torn, who died Tuesday, won an Emmy Award for playing the gruff producer Artie on The Larry Sanders Show. In 1994, he told Fresh Air that he based his character on Johnny Carson's long time producer.
Screenwriter/actress Polly Draper and jazz pianist Michael Wolff have co-produced “The Tic Code.” The new film is about a mother and her son, a musical prodigy with Tourette’s syndrome. The syndrome is a nervous disorder that produces uncontrollable facial tics and jerky muscular spasms, as well as causing strange noises to be emitted from those who have the disorder. Polly Draper wrote the film based on the life of her husband, Michael Wolff.
Singer, songwriter and guitarist Carl Perkins died yesterday at the age of 65. He died of complications from a series of strokes. Perkins is the pioneer of a style of music called Rockabilly, which is described as "a country man's song with a black man's rhythm." He's the man who wrote "Blue Suede Shoes," the hit song sung by Elvis Presley which became the first Sun label record to sell over a million copies.
He has died at age 73. Wilson won the Pulitzer Prize for his play, "Talley's Folly." He wrote 17 full length plays and 30 one acts. Titles include "The Hot L Baltimore," "Burn This," "Fifth of July" and "Redwood Curtain," which had just come out when Terry spoke to Wilson in 1992. Wilson was one of the founders of The Circle Repertory Company in New York. He was nominated for Tony Awards for "Angels Fall," "Talley's Folly" and "Fifth of July." (REBROADCAST. ORIGINAL AIRDATE: 3/13/92)
Journalist Alex Perry wrote the new e-book The Hunt for Boko Haram: Investigating the Terror Tearing Nigeria Apart. He says Boko Haram doesn't have logical reasons for the atrocious acts it commits.
Neurologist William Langston. His work plunged him into a medical mystery, and a hot political controversy about the ethics of medicine. In 1982 Langston was called in to examine a number of "frozen" patients, young men and women in the San Francisco Bay Area who suddenly could neither move or speak, though conscious. Langston recognized the signs of Parkinson's disease, and determined that these patients had all used the same batch of tainted heroin. Langston prescribed L-dopa, a treatment for Parkinson's which only provided short-term relief.
Gay rights activist Rodger McFarlane was involved in the earliest efforts to combat the transmission of AIDS during the 1980s. McFarlane, who was 54, died May 15. According to his bother, the cause of death was suicide.
A CD set from Mosaic, full of singles and albums made between '46 and '66, confirms the variety of Armstrong's studio sides — and shows how much work went into making them sound casual.
Kin: Songs By Mary Karr and Rodney Crowell is a new collaboration between Karr, the bestselling author and poet, and the maverick singer-songwriter. Together, they've written 10 songs, which are performed on the album by a variety of singers, including Norah Jones, Rosanne Cash and Emmylou Harris.
Doc Watson, who was called "a living national treasure" for his virtuoso flat-picking and his repertoire of traditional folk and bluegrass tunes, has died. He was 89. Fresh Air remembers the blind guitar and banjo player with excerpts from a 1988 interview.
The movie is loud and obvious, but it's not a desecration of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 masterpiece. Baz Luhrmann's interpretation of The Great Gatsby is more like a cartoony Broadway musical version of Gatsby in which no one, alas, sings.
Newspaper publisher Cynthia Brown of American Police Beat. The newspaper's motto is to be "The Voice of the Nation's Police Officers." The tabloid-style paper is written for and by cops and caters to their concerns. (The paper's address is P.O. BOX 382702, Cambridge, MA 02238-2702; Tel: 617-491-8878; FAX: 617-354-6515)
Doctor Marcus Conant. He talks to Terry about new drug therapies for AIDS patients. In the early 1980's DR. Conant was among the first doctors in San Francisco to treat AIDS cases. Now Dr. Conant heads the largest private AIDS medical practice in San Francisco. After his 1985 study on how condoms block transmission of the AIDS virus, condoms became a household word.
Anita Hill has written a book entitled "Speaking Truth to Power," (Doubleday) a reflection on the events surrounding the Hill-Thomas hearings of the fall of 1991. Hill addresses her difficult overnight transformation into a public figure, as well as the way her case has affected women and the work world as a whole. Hill is currently working on another book about sexual harassment, and lectures on civil rights and sexual harassment in the workplace.