Director Alexander Payne finds comedy in the crises of his flawed protagonists: a struggling writer in Sideways, a retired widower in About Schmidt and now a family man who must reassess his life in The Descendants.
The year is 1622, and a tormented English Puritan strikes out for the Plymouth Plantation in Hugh Nissenson's moody, intelligent novel. Critic Maureen Corrigan say The Pilgrim is a work of straightforward historical fiction -- of the sort ta you don't see so much anymore.
Rolling Stone political correspondent Tim Dickinson says the tax policies pursued by the Republican Party have benefited the top 1 percent of income earners. "The people at the very top of the income [bracket] are taking off like a rocket," he says.
Boogie-woogie was a piano style that began in the early 20th century and later became a huge fad. Rock historian Ed Ward explains how the genre re-emerged as an important precursor to rock 'n' roll.
On Friday, Regis Philbin will step down from his hosting duties on the talk show Live with Regis and Kelly. But that doesn't mean he's retiring. In his new memoir, How I Got This Way, Philbin chronicles the twists and turns of his career and explains where he plans to go next.
George and Ira Gershwin wrote some of their best songs for movies -- one of which, 1937's A Damsel in Distress, has just been issued by Warner Archives. Critic Lloyd Schwartz says it may be the oddest of the Gershwin brothers' films.
Astrophysicist Saul Perlmutter is part of the team that was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery that the expansion of the universe is not slowing down but is accelerating. The results of that research suggest the universe is filled with dark energy.
Lars von Trier's Melancholia stars Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg as sisters who undergo a psychological transformation as disaster approaches. Critic David Edelstein says the film is a sublime fusion of form and content with a truly Wagnerian climax. (Recommended)
Joe Henry has produced albums by Solomon Burke, Allan Toussaint, Hugh Laurie and others. The versatile singer, songwriter and producer has just released Reverie, his 12th album. It features acoustic performances from a three-day jam session in his basement.
The actress stars in Lars von Trier's new psychological drama Melancholia, about depression and the end of the world. She talks about making the film and about working with Von Trier, whose controversial remarks about Hitler got him kicked out of this year's Cannes Film Festival.
Historian Jill Lepore writes about the early history of the birth control and abortion movements in this week's New Yorker. "I think it's easy to lose perspective [that] actually the arguments made by one side or another have switched sides over time more than once," she says.
Lerner captures the sense of everyday life with an unusual focus on thoughts rather than incident, betting on the premise that these thoughts are the events, rather than the stuff in between them.
Four the Record is Miranda Lambert's first new collection of songs after her 2009 album Revolution. Since then, Lambert has quickly become one of Nashville's most prominent stars. But rock critic Ken Tucker says Lambert is still not a typical country act.
The Vanity Fair critic was an aspiring writer when he arrived in a turbulen Manhattan in 1972. In his memoir, Lucking Out, he writes about the crime and culture (and pornography) he discovered there.
Naturalist Mark Derr says our friendship with dogs and wolves goes back thousands of years more than previously believed. His new book explores how the relationship between humans and wolves developed.
How do skyscrapers withstand 100-mph winds? How does air circulate inside tall buildings? And what happens when you flush a toilet on the 100th floor? Those questions and more are answered by Kate Ascher in her new book exploring the inner workings of skyscrapers.
In 14 years on Saturday Night Live, Darrell Hammond did many impressions, including Bill Clinton and Al Gore. But few of his cast members knew that Hammond struggled with drugs, alcohol and self-cutting as a result of systematic childhood abuse.
