When a Portland teenager accidentally kills a security guard at the local skate park, he pulls into himself rather than talking to the police. Gus Van Sant's film explores the teen's thoughts and actions in a free-form style that critic David Edelstein calls "a raging success."
Celebrated soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom — a pioneer, among other things, in the use of electronics in live jazz — has an inventively formatted new recording. Fresh Air's jazz critic has a listen.
David Simon, creator and executive producer of HBO's series The Wire, joins Fresh Air to talk about his career and the genesis of the show. Simon writes many of the episodes — and some story lines come from his former job as a police reporter for the Baltimore Sun.
Novelist and screenwriter Richard Price discusses his new novel, Lush Life, about the repercussions of a shooting on the Lower East side. Price has written extensively about the realities of inner city life; he is a writer for HBO's The Wire which ends a five-year run on Sunday.
The Library of America has published World War II Writings, a new collection of stories by A.J. Liebling. The volume, edited by Pete Hamill, includes three books, two dozen New Yorker pieces, maps and a chronology.
The actor won an Academy Award for his performance in Spike Jonze's Adaptation. His latest project is Married Life, about a 1940s philanderer who still loves his wife — enough, in fact, to kill her rather than divorce and disappoint her.
As the United Nations' former under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Jan Egeland has tracked down violent guerrilla leaders, confronted warlords and addressed humanitarian crises around the world. His new memoir is A Billion Lives: An Eyewitness Report from the Frontlines of Humanity.
Fresh Air's film critic reviews The Other Boleyn Girl, a costume drama from director Justin Chadwick. Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson play sisters battling for the affection of England's King Henry VIII.
Fresh Air's jazz critic reviews Mark Miller's High Hat, Trumpet, and Rhythm: The Life and Music of Valaida Snow. It's a biography of jazz singer and musician Valaida Snow, aka "Little Louis."
William F. Buckley, Jr., died Wednesday. He was 82. Fresh Air remembers the founder and longtime editor of the National Review with excerpts from a 1989 interview.
Musicians Stew and Heidi Rodewald speak with Fresh Air TV critic David Bianculli. They're the founders of a band they call The Negro Problem. Their new Broadway musical, Passing Strange, is an autobiographical look at Stew's journey through music.
Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews the self-titled debut album from the band Vampire Weekend. The quartet has drawn praise — and pointed criticism — for its hooky, globally influenced pop.
Director Brett Morgen joins Fresh Air's Terry Gross to discuss his new film, Chicago 10. The film mixes trial footage and animation to tell the story of the "Chicago 8" — protesters held accountable for violence that erupted with police outside the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968.
Drug addiction doesn't just affect the addict, it changes the whole family. Journalist David Sheff and his son Nic join Fresh Air to talk about Nic's addiction to methamphetamine and the separate memoirs they've written about the experience.
Critic John Powers reviews Where to and Back, a newly released DVD trilogy from the late Austrian director Axel Corti. Written by Georg Stefan Troller, the films are loosely based on Toller's life as a Viennese Jew who took refuge in the United States as a teenager and then returned to Europe as an American soldier during World War II.
The cease-fire that's kept Shiite militias in check for months is in danger of unraveling. And some U.S.-backed Sunni militias are growing restless. Patrick Cockburn, author and Iraq correspondent for The Independent in London, offers observations on war in Iraq.
Repression in Vladimir Putin's Russia, journalist Edward Lucas writes, is matched by a new aggression abroad. It amounts to what Lucas calls "a new Cold War" fought with cash, natural resources, diplomacy and propaganda.
That guilty feeling after a big meal? It might be about more than calories and cholesterol. New Yorker science writer Michael Specter explains how carbon emissions released during food production are having an impact on the environment.
Fresh Air's classical music critic reviews an 80-disc set of recordings by Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. The collection, issued 25 years after Gould's death replicates the look of the original LPs.
