How can anyone keep up with all the movies opening this time of year? I can't — and it's my day job. Between the popcorn flicks and the kiddie stuff and the art films that need to open before December 31 to qualify for the Oscars, it's madness, I tell you, madness. I've already praised The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, The Savages and No Country for Old Men; let's take the rest, from my least to most favorite.
Owing to his superb taste and refined touch, Roy Haynes has spent six decades as a drummer of choice for jazz stars like Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and Pat Metheny. All of them appear on A Life in Time: The Roy Haynes Story, a new anthology spread over three CDs and a DVD. It's less a showcase for aggressive drumming than a reminder of how much good and great music Haynes has contributed to as a team player between 1949 and 2006.
Record producer Joel Dorn worked with Roberta Flack, Bette Midler, Max Roach, Herbie Mann, the Allman Brothers and many more. He worked as an in-house producer at Atlantic Records before going out on his own, and in the late 1980s he repackaged back catalogs for the major record labels. He founded or co-founded several independent labels. He died Monday at age 65, of a heart attack. Fresh Air remembers him with this archival interview from April of 1991.
A Baptist deacon, R&B drummer and former gospel-music editor for Billboard magazine, Robert Darden is also a journalism professor at Baylor University, where he runs the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project . He'll play some rare recordings for us.
Twenty-five years after its debut, the dystopian-future classic Blade Runner has been released on DVD in a re-edited version called Blade Runner: The Final Cut. Director Ridley Scott talks about that release, as well as about his most recent film, American Gangster.
Based on an Upton Sinclair novel, Paul Thomas Anderson's new film There Will Be Blood stars Daniel Day-Lewis as an oil prospector in the earliest days of the industry. Anderson's other films are the Oscar-nominated Boogie Nights and Magnolia, and Punch Drunk Love, starring Adam Sandler.
Frank Morgan, a bebop-jazz sax player who modeled his playing style after Charlie Parker's, died Dec. 14 at age 73. After some early successes, Morgan succumbed to heroin addiction, which led to 30 years of crime and imprisonment — and an absence from the stage. But while he was in jail, Morgan did play with other inmates; most famously, he and Art Pepper formed a small ensemble at San Quentin. The Washington Post reports: "Once asked why so many jazz musicians became addicts, [Morgan] replied: 'It's about being hip.
Fresh Air's arbiter of things filmic offers his annual year-end movies wrap-up.
This time, his Top 10 list has 11 entries, as the number-nine slot features a tie. Edelstein tells Terry Gross why he needed an extra spot — and why some films that drew praise from other quarters didn't make his cut. Here's the list, with links to previously published reviews and features by Edelstein as well as by All Things Considered's Bob Mondello, Morning Edition contributor Kenneth Turan, and other NPR voices:
Historian Allan Berube died this past Tuesday, at age 61. He wrote what's considered the definitive history of gay men and lesbians in the military. Coming Out Under Fire was published in 1990, and a documentary based on the book was released in 1994. The idea for the book sprang from a box of letters recovered from a Dumpster. The correspondence among gay soldiers led to dozens of interviews about homosexual life in the military. Berube himself came out in 1969 and went on to found the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project.
Bettye LaVette recorded her first hit, "My Man — He's a Lovin' Man," at the age of 16. She toured with Ben E. King, Barbara Lynn and Otis Redding. And now she's being crowned the Comeback Queen for her recent albums, I've Got My Own Hell to Raise, which came out in 2005, and her recent The Scene of the Crime. LaVette recorded The Scene of the Crime at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala., with the Southern rock band Drive-By Truckers and the legendary session musician and songwriter Spooner Oldham.
Ike Turner, the soul-music star and rock 'n' roll pioneer, died this week. He was 76, and had reportedly suffered from emphysema. Turner shaped the sound of early rock 'n' roll, co-writing and playing piano on the 1951 song "Rocket 88." (He was the "Jackie Brenston" of Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats.) Then, in 1958, he discovered a singer named Anna Mae Bullock; before long, she and his band both had new names, and the Ike and Tina Turner Revue became one of the hottest acts of the '60s and early '70s.
Marshall Herskovitz and his working partner Edward Zwick created and produced the critically acclaimed shows thirtysomething, My So-Called Life, and Once and Again. Their new collaboration is Quarterlife, a show aired in 8-minute segments on the Web site of the same name. It's about a group of 20-somethings coming of age in the digital world, but it's not just a show: Like most every Web-entertainment venture launched these days, if offers user forums and functions as a social-networking platform.
Richard Zanuck grew up on movies — literally. The son of legendary producer Darryl F. Zanuck, who founded and ran Twentieth Century Fox studios in Hollywood's golden era, he became an Oscar-winning producer himself. His latest project: Sweeney Todd, the big-screen version of the legendary Stephen Sondheim musical. Zanuck's credits include Driving Miss Daisy, Jaws, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Verdict Rules of Engagement, and many more. Besides which, "I can mention a lot of pictures I'm unhappy about," he tells Terry Gross.
Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, a regular Fresh Air guest, joins us again to assess recent developments in his home country and to preview the upcoming election there. Born in Lahore and based in Pakistan, Rashid has written for The Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, London's Daily Telegraph and other publications. He's also the author of several best-selling books.
With 13 days still to go, some listeners might be crying "Enough!" (already) when the carols play. For them, Fresh Air's resident rock critic offers up two Christmas albums that might help make the holiday chestnuts seem fresh again: It's Christmas, Of Course, from Darlene Love, and Raul Malo's Marshmallow World and Other Holiday Favorites.
Fresh Air's resident book critic surveys the shelves and offers a few recommendations for what the bibliomanes in your life might like to find inside the gift wrap. On her list are two examinations of the creative life, plus four titles from the 2X2 Series, a Feminist Press project pairing literature by men and women:
Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters, by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley
The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World (25th anniversary edition), by Lewis Hyde
There's nothing like binge-watching a season or three of first-rate television. Herewith, holiday gift suggestions for the serious TV-watchers on your list.
Canadian author Jane Rule, best known for her novel Desert of the Heart, died Nov. 27 at the age of 76. She'd been battling liver cancer. Rule, whose other work included Memory Board, was one of the best-known and most widely read lesbian writers. Desert of the Heart was published in 1964 — five years before the lesbian and gay civil-rights movement burst into the public consciousness after New York's Stonewall riots. Set in 1950s Nevada, it was adapted for the big screen in 1985 as Desert Hearts.
