Film

Richard Linklater's new film, A Scanner Darkly, is based on the book by Philip K. Dick -- a haunting tale of drug addiction, paranoia and surveillance set in the America of the near future. Live-action footage is overlaid with an animation technique first used in Linklater's 2001 film Waking Life.

John Lasseter, chief creative executive of Pixar, Inc, talks about the animation company's new feature film, Cars. Lasseter is a founding member of Pixar and served as director and animator of the feature films Toy Story, its sequel and A Bug's Life.

Critic at large John Powers has just returned from the Cannes film festival. The top prize winner at Cannes was director Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a film about the Irish rebellion against British rule and the country's subsequent civil war.

For 17 years, former Vice President Al Gore has been on the forefront of warning against global warming. But in his new documentary, The Inconvenient Truth, he says that he "failed to get the message out." He's now getting the message out with his documentary and new book of the same name. The Washington Post calls the book "downright chilling." The documentary has been critically acclaimed.

The new documentary Baghdad ER goes inside the 86th Combat Support Hospital in Iraq, the Army's premier medical facility in Iraq. Shot over two months in 2005, the film tells the stories of the hospital's doctors and wounded soldiers. The film debuted on HBO last week. Filmmakers Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill discuss their project with Terry Gross.

Director Paul Weitz's new film, American Dreamz, satirizes American Idol and stars Dennis Quaid as a dimwitted U.S. president who goes on the show in an effort to save his falling approval ratings. Weitz's other films include American Pie and About a Boy.

Filmmaker Liz Mermin's new documentary, The Beauty Academy of Kabul, is about a group of American hairdressers who open a beauty school in Afghanistan to teach local women how to cut hair and apply make-up, thus making them financially independent.

Catherine Keener recently won a second Oscar nomination for her performance in Capote and appeared in the popular comedy The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Now, she stars in Friends with Money, her third collaboration with writer-director Nicole Holofcener.

British actress Helen Mirren, perhaps best known for her long-running role as Det. Supt. Jane Tennison on TV's Prime Suspect, has had two quite closely related roles recently. She plays Elizabeth I in a new HBO four-part miniseries premiering April 22; then she appears as Elizabeth II in The Queen, a film from Stephen Frears.

Bettie Page was considered the "pin-up queen" from 1950 to 1957, based on photographs of her in the men's magazines Wink, Beauty Parade and Titter. Director Mary Harron discusses her new film about Page, The Notorious Bettie Page.