The city of Oakland, Calif., is experiencing something of a renaissance moment in the movies. You could trace it back to 2013, when the Oakland-born director Ryan Coogler made Fruitvale Station, his ripped-from-the-headlines drama about the fatal police shooting of Oscar Grant III. The Oakland renaissance continues this summer with Blindspotting and Sorry to Bother You, two inventive, genre-busting independent features, each one about a young black man on a strange and harrowing quest for survival.
The Guardian's Carole Cadwalladr's investigation into Cambridge Analytica's role in Brexit has led her to Russian connections and the Trump campaign. She says British investigators are now "working very closely with the FBI."
It's a rusty old bucket of a plot contrivance: throw a bunch of strangers together on a boat and roil the waters with a big storm or a white whale. But, in her latest novel, The Last Cruise, Kate Christensen demonstrates there's life yet to be found in what may appear to be the creakiest of fictional premises.
The former YouTube star says he wanted his film, Eighth Grade, to take an "emotional inventory" of what today's adolescents are experiencing. Originally broadcast July 18, 2018.
Co-created by visual artist Jamie Hewlett and musician Damon Albarn, Gorillaz is fronted by four animated characters — but critic Ken Tucker says there's "nothing cartoonish" about the new album.
Dan Kaufman, author of The Fall of Wisconsin, says the state's experienced a conservative transformation in recent years — despite a tradition of progressive politics dating back to the 19th century.
"Great Britain and the United States are two nations separated by a common language." That's the stock witticism, but if you ask me, it gets things backwards. Great Britain and the U.S. are more like two nations united by a divided language — or more precisely, by their mutual obsession with their linguistic differences. For 200 years now, writers from each nation have been tirelessly picking over the language of the other, with a mix of amusement, condescension, derision and horror.
Growing up in North London in the 1960s and '70s, Viv Albertine never dreamed that one day she'd be a rock star. For one thing, she says, "There [were] just no role models ... I never heard of anyone, any female playing guitar."
A new HBO documentary explores great work — and complicated private life — of the late actor and comedian. Critic David Bianculli says Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind is best when it gets serious.
Journalist Gabriel Sherman writes about the FOX news/Trump White House connections, the latest being the appointment of Bill Shine, a former network co-president, to serve as the White House's deputy chief of staff for communications.
Reverend Rob Schenck, a former influential leader of the religious right, who participated in militant anti-abortion protests describes why he parted ways with the religious right. He writes about it in his new memoir 'Costly Grace.'
Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the new novel 'My Year of Rest and Relaxation,' about a grieving woman trying to sleep long enough to relieve existential pain.
How America's jails and prisons have become America's defacto mental health providers. Journalist Alisa Roth is the author of the new book 'Insane: America's Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness.'
Tim Wardle's new knockout documentary starts out as a Parent Trap-like lark about three young men who, by chance, realize that they are triplets, but ultimately takes a more devastating turn.
Author Paul Greenberg says the harvesting of tiny fish for omega-3 supplements is having a ripple effect, leading to less healthy and bountiful oceans. His new book is The Omega Principle.
Drake explores the quality and variety of his own moodiness on a new double album. Critic Ken Tucker says that Scorpion has staying power — despite the fact that it sometimes feels "too long."
A new miniseries adapted from Gillian Flynn's novel stars Adams as a newspaper reporter who returns to her small hometown to investigate the disappearance of one girl and the murder of another.
New York Times journalist Adam Liptak says the court's conservative justices have increasingly based their decisions on the foundation of free speech — including a case that dealt a blow to unions.
Rock critic Ken Tucker listens to new songs by My Morning Jacket's Jim James, the Danish band Iceage and George Clinton and Parliament. As each song shows, "there's an art to summoning up chaos."
Watson, who died in 2012, was a pioneering bluegrass, country and folk guitarist and singer who changed the way people thought about mountain music. Originally broadcast in 1988 and 1989.
