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Private investigator Anthony Pellicano is on trial in Federal District Court in Los Angeles. He's defending himself against charges of intimidating reporters on behalf of his high-powered Hollywood clients. With wiretapping, celebrities, and lots of money and intrigue, David Carr of The New York Times says the story would make a great movie.
If you watch movies on DVD, you’re using an outdated technology. But no single high-definition disc has emerged as the replacement to the inferior DVD, mainly because of a battle between two competing formats: Sony’s Blu-ray and Toshiba’s HD-DVD. Shane Buettner of Home Theater Magazine explains that Blu-ray may have won the war.
Do you LARP? Live Action Role-Playing is the subject of “Darkon,” a documentary about people who don costumes and characters and make believe. But co-director Andrew Neel says that LARPing, while partly escapism, is in fact a ticket to reality.
Hollywood films helped Americans cope with the long and harsh realities of World War Two. That tradition continues today. Hollywood is still telling stories about the Second World War, even as it produces several films about the current war. WNYC’s Sara Fishko reports.
For as long as Hollywood has been making movies it has turned its eye to the Russians. Harlow Robinson, author of Hollywood's Russians, Russians in Hollywood, discusses Russian portrayals in American film and what those portrayals reveal about ourselves.
Russia’s film industry has returned the favor with its own portrayals of … us. From “The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks” (1924) to “Brother 2” (2000), we’re sometimes naïve, sometimes criminal. But Russian film historian Kirill Razlogov says that we’re also sympathetic.
25 years ago this week, Blade Runner debuted in American theaters. It was set in a Los Angeles of the future, but its portrayals of race and racism had plenty of resonance in 1982. Reporter Phillip Martin looks back on a classic of cyborgian social criticism.
For some Indians, Richard Gere’s awkward embrace with Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty was not just offensive, it was criminal. NYU professor Tejaswini Ganti says the incident plays into the mixed messages about Indian women perpetuated by Bollywood.
