Filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow knows how to get under your skin and control your responses — as she does in her latest feature, the Baghdad-set war movie The Hurt Locker. David Edelstein has a review.
Director Darren Aronofsky talks about making a realistic film about a notoriously fake sport. His Oscar-nominated film, starring Mickey Rourke as a professional wrestler well past his prime, will be released on DVD next week. (Segment)
The band Fiction Family may be new, but its members are old hands at the music business. Jon Foreman of Switchfoot and Sean Watkins of Nickel Creek collaborated on the new album. Ken Tucker has a review.
Journalist Bradley Graham discusses the successes and failures of former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld. Graham is the author of By His Own Rules, a lengthy new biography of Rumsfeld.
With the release of her sixth album Seya, Oumou Sangare has gone from an outsider who sang about taboo subjects like polygamy and forced marriage to a major national celebrity.
According to the National Cancer Institute, the number of people who have developed melanoma has more than doubled over the past 30 years. Dermatologist Darrell Rigel explains the sun's effects on the skin, what "SPF" means and why skin cancer rates are going up.
Screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow discuss their collaboration on The Hurt Locker, a combat movie about an Army bomb squad that roams Iraq in search of explosives to defuse.
In 2001, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology began conducting autopsies on all slain service men and women. Captain Craig T. Mallak describes how the physical (and sometimes virtual) autopsies of soldiers have assisted in the design of body armor, helmets and vehicle shields.
Bloody protests in the streets of Iran following that nation's June 12 presidential election have captivated the world's attention, but what does it all mean? Political analyst Karim Sadjadpour weighs in on the unprecedented events — and who holds the power.
James Gray's new film stars Joaquin Phoenix as a Brighton Beach man with a chance at happiness with one woman, and a passion for another who'll almost certainly bring him heartache.
Chip Berlet has studied extremism, conspiracy theories and hate groups for more than 25 years. He says that the recent murders of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller and Holocaust Museum guard Stephen T. Johns exemplify the potential for violence that often lurks within extremist groups.
Filmmaker Robert Kenner explores the underbelly of America's food industry — and the health consequences of its food-supply stranglehold — in his documentary Food, Inc.
In "The Cost Conundrum," his latest article for The New Yorker, staff writer Dr. Atul Gawande reports from McAllen, Texas, a border-town with the dubious distinction of spending more per person on health care than almost any other market in America.
Singer, songwriter and performer Janelle Monae earned a Grammy nomination for her 2007 album Metropolis, and caught the eye of Sean "Diddy" Combs, who signed her to his Bad Boy roster.
Intended as a productive if imperfect compromise, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has resulted in thousands of discharges — many of them involving service members with critical skills. Historian Nathaniel Frank says it's time the ban was ended.
Seven years after being discharged from the U.S. Army under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," openly gay veteran Alex Nicholson is the executive director of Servicemembers United, an advocacy organization he founded.
What can old issues of Publishers Weekly tell us about reading habits in dire economic times? Maureen Corrigan cracks open some of the magazine's 1933 issues and learns that readers today aren't so different from our Depression-era brethren.
