Dacus mixes plainspoken language with rock-music instrumentation on her debut album. Critic Ken Tucker says the singer-songwriter's vulnerability goes against the grain of much current pop music.
In her new book, Being a Dog, Alexandra Horowitz discusses the mechanics of canine smell and explains how dogs can use their noses to understand what time of day it is or whether a storm is coming and more.
Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews a new documentary, Ballets Russes, just out on DVD. It tells the story of ballet after the death of Sergei Diaghilev, who founded and ran the company until 1929.
Producer, composer and arranger Thom Bell was one of the prime originators of the Sound of Philadelphia, creating hits with the Delfonics such as "La La La Means I Love You" and "Didn't I Blow Your Mind." Bell was born in Jamaica and moved to Philadelphia at age 5. He planned to become a classical conductor, but in his early 20s, he was signed by Cameo Records to create a Philadelphia version of Motown.
Andrea Arnold's new movie about a teenage girl who takes up with an unusual group of salespeople won a the Jury Prize at Cannes this year. Critic David Edelstein calls it a "wonderful" film.
Arnold's latest film, which won the Jury Prize at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, tells the story of a group of abandoned teenagers who travel together selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door.
Series executive producer Stephen Falk and and co-star Aya Cash discuss their TV show "You're the Worst." FAlk says that the characters, Jimmy and Gretchen, are "stand-ins for the dark parts of all of us that are still deserving of love at the end of the day."
He's been awarded the 2005 Pianist of the Year award by the Jazz Journalist's Association, and he also received the first ever 2005 Playboy Magazine Jazz Artist of the Year. His new album is called Same Mother, which reflects the 30-year-old musician's current interest in the blues.
Though Olsen sets pain and frustration to music in her latest album, critic Ken Tucker says it's clear that the singer is "very much in control of her emotions and her life."
Peter Falk and Paul Reiser star as father and son in the new film The Thing About My Folks. Reiser, who wrote the screenplay, based it partly on conversations with his own father. The well-traveled Falk remains best known for his role as Columbo; Reiser wrote and starred in the sitcom Mad about You.
Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews the new three-and-a-half-hour documentary about Bob Dylan called No Direction Home by director Martin Scorsese. It's available on a two-disc DVD and will be shown on PBS as part of the American Masters series.
Peter Berg discusses his new film, which recreates the final hours of the oil rig that exploded and sank, causing the BP oil spill. Eleven rig workers died trying to prevent the disaster.
Critic David Edelstein says that despite its irresistible plot, Antoine Fuqua's remake of the 1960 classic Western is ultimately "just another formula revenge picture."
Eric Newman, the executive producer of Narcos, the netflix series about drug kingpin Pablo Escobar and the Columbian drug wars tells us about the series which is told in part from the point of view of an American DEA agent.
