Critic Kevin Whitehead reviews a new, seven-disc Charles Mingus box set chronicling the jazz legend's mid-'60s live performances. The records, Whitehead says, "can be a little raw, as if the explosive music caught the engineers by surprise."
In Who Could That Be at This Hour?, a prequel to A Series of Unfortunate Events, Daniel Handler satirizes pulp mysteries and uncovers the parallels between detective fiction and childhood. In both, he says, an outsider is trying to make his way in a mysteriously corrupt world.
Two new biographical studies that read like novels explore the familial relationships that shaped two of the 19th century's most beloved authors. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls Great Expectations: The Sons And Daughters Of Charles Dickens "a Gothic nightmare" and Marmee & Louisa "a romance."
Judd Apatow draws on his own experiences as a husband and father in a new comedy that explores the ups and downs of family life. The film stays close to home, literally and figuratively. It stars his wife, Leslie Mann, as well as their two daughters, and was filmed a few doors down from his house.
In her new series for The New York Times, reporter Louise Story traces the complicated relationship between localities and the corporations they want to lure to their states, counties and cities to help promote economic growth.
When it was released 32 years ago, Michael Cimino's revisionist Western was considered one of the most colossal flops in Hollywood history. Critic John Powers takes a second look at the film and concludes that it's clearly the work of one man --- he wanted you to remember it forever."
In his new book, author and oenophile Paul Lucks traces the 8,000*year history of our original alcoholic b average -- from ancient times, when wine was believed to be of divine origin, to the sauvignon blanc you find in your supermarket today.
It's holiday box-set season, and Fresh Air critic David Bianculli shares some favorites for the TV-lover on your list. "Giving someone a gift of a TV show," he says, "is somehow very personal. You're giving something that your love, and that, in many cases, will occupy many hours ... of their time."
In his new novel, The Testament of Mary, Irish author Colm Toibin imagines Mary's life 20 years after the crucifixion, as she wonders what she might have done differently to ease her son's suffering. "I felt that I was Mary," he says. "I was her consciousness, watching the thing happening."
Thorn has recorded a holiday album, Tinsel and Lights, that critic Ken Tucker says might just work for warmer weather, as well. Tucker praises Thorn's voice as "bolstered by a firm intelligence," and says she avoids the fatty treacle that often weighs down Christmas albums.
The Robert Zemeckis film, out now on DVD, stars Denzel Washington as a pilot with a secret substance-abuse problem who successfully crash-lands an airplane while high on drugs and alcohol. He must then ask himself tough questions about whether his heroism is undermined by his addiction.
A new 12-disc compilation traces the history of electric blues from its inauspicious start through its heyday in the 1950s and '60s. Critic Ed Ward says Plug It In! Turn It Up! does "a great job of illuminating one particular aspect of the blues."
Robert Malley, a program director for the International Crisis Group, analyzes the complexity of the situation in the Middle East, a region where conflicts interconnect and expand upon one another. "These alliances," says Malley, "are not clear cut ... they are alliances of convenience."
Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale just released a new album of duets. Critic Ken Tucker says Buddy and Jim recalls an earlier era of country music. The pair's voices, Tucker says, connect through "shared emotion in a song."
Critic Lloyd Schwartz welcomes the opera star's new album, Mission, which breathes new life into the work of Italian composer Agostino Steffani. Bartoli, he says, has an astonishing capacity for vocal fireworks and warm, delicate lyricism.
In his new book, journalist Gregory Johnsen charts the rise of Yemen as a haven for al-Qaida and explores the recent history of radical Islam in the Arabian Peninsula. The death of Osama bin Laden, he says, had more of an effect on the U.S. psyche than it did on people in Yemen.
Hilary Mantel is the first woman to win the Man Booker Prize twice, first for her 2009 novel, Wolf Hall, and now for that book's 2012 sequel, Bring Up the Bodies. The novels are part of a historical fiction trilogy about Tudor England and the events surrounding the reign of King Henry VIII.
Ang Lee's meticulously controlled style makes a perfect fit for Life of Pi, a passionately overcontrolled adaptation of a wondrous adventure story with a surprisingly harsh sting in its tail.
On its 50th anniversary, Robert Aldrich's classic horror film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? has just been released on Blu-ray. Though it's far from a musical, classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz says its musical elements are crucial to the film.
