WGBH News: Arts & Living

The Headline From NY Fashion Week: Print(s) Is Not Dead

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 04:00:00 GMT

Today's the last day of New York Fashion Week, that twice-yearly ritual at which retailers and editors give us a look at what we're going to be craving in spring. Big this year: prints. Whimsical prints.

To get a bead on what looks like a swing back away from minimalism, Morning Edition guest host David Greene talks to Sally Singer, editor-in-chief of T: The New York Times Style Magazine.

"A woman only needs so many pairs of chic black pants," Singer says. "Or so many cream jackets. What does she need now? She needs a dress covered in birds — or that's what the [retailers] hope."

There's more on that — and on how the urge to stay fashion-forward might conflict with fears that the economy might soon be moving in reverse — in the audio above.

And in that photo gallery, courtesy of my colleague Nina Gregory out at NPR West, there's just shy of a dozen examples of work from designers Singer says are addressing a whole new generation of fashionistas — and who have "the capacity and the drive" to be the next gang of Tommys and Calvins and Ralphs.

Go on, look at 'em full-screen. You know you wanna. [Copyright 2011 National Public Radio]

It's Time For 'Survivor' Again, And Ozzy Is Totally, Like, Back, Man

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 20:37:00 GMT

Tonight is the premiere of Survivor: South Pacific, also known to those who have followed the show for many seasons as Survivor: We're Now Terrified To Do Without The Crutch Of Old Contestants We Hope You Care About. Last season, they brought back Boston Rob and Russell, who were at least interesting — if overexposed.

This season, they're bringing back Coach, who was missed by absolutely no one and wasn't particularly good at the game, and Ozzy, who still talks like he's in that episode of The Brady Bunch where Greg redecorates his father's den and won't stop saying "groovy."

In this clip, Ozzy does everything for this distraught teammate except offer her healing touch therapy. So you can apparently count on a lot of this pseudo-sensitive bloviating from a guy who you know, if you've seen him before, thinks he is basically the coolest thing since the chain wallet. (Irony intentional: Don't e-mail me and embarrass us both.)

P.S. CUT YOUR HAIR, HIPPIE. [Copyright 2011 National Public Radio]

Watch Erik Estrada Get Down On Univision's 'Mira Quien Baila'

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 19:32:00 GMT

Do you love Erik Estrada? Of course you do. He was on CHiPs! He was that motorcycle cop! With the teeth.

Well, now he's 62 years old, and like everyone who once had very prominent beautiful teeth and was a matinee idol of sorts and is now 62 years old, he's dancing on television. Specifically, he's one of the celebrities on Mira Quien Baila, Univision's show (the title translates to Look Who's Dancing) that's very similar in type, let us say, to Dancing With The Stars.

Here, he shakes his booty to the Black Eyed Peas' eternal (meaning never-ending, more than timeless) "I Got A Feeling." My Spanish isn't what it was in high school, but I do know that they tell him — as they would on Dancing — how inspiring it is that a 62-year-old can even move anymore. Some things are the same wherever you go.

Before you chuckle at this, by the way, Mira Quien Baila drew 8.1 million viewers in its premiere episode on Sunday night. Univision is not kidding around, viewership-wise. [Copyright 2011 National Public Radio]

Michael Moore On His Penchant For 'Trouble'

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 17:00:00 GMT

Michael Moore didn't plan on becoming a filmmaker. As a teenager growing up in the Midwest, he considered documentaries to be a bit like broccoli: good for you, but boring.

Instead, he spent his adolescent and young adult years rabble-rousing. He was elected to the school board when he was a senior in high school, became a young supporter of Richard Nixon and even flirted with the idea of becoming a Catholic priest.

But once Moore got around to finally making his first film, he stumbled upon a new kind of documentary: confrontational, comedic and provocatively political. Roger & Me, about the decline of Moore's hometown, Flint, Mich., was the public's first glimpse of the documentarian's often brash interview style.

Moore talks with NPR's Neal Conan about his new memoir, Here Comes Trouble: Stories From My Life, why he bristles at being called controversial and how he feels about the current partisan mood in the United States.

Interview Highlights

On when he committed himself to standing up against injustice

"When you think back to those pivotal moments ... you're trying to figure out, 'How did I get here?' and sometimes they aren't big things that happen in your life. Sometimes they're very small events.

"And I had just been elected to the school board, but I still had a week left of school. So I was both a student and the boss — or one of the bosses — of the vice principal. We're standing there in line, getting ready to go up to the graduation ceremony, and he's coming down the line making sure each of the boys have a tie on underneath their gown.

"The boy in front of me, [the vice principal] pulls his gown down and he sees a tie, but its one of those bolo ties ... And he yanks him out of the line and he says, 'You don't have a proper tie on, and you're not graduating.'

"'But sir, this is a tie, this is what we wear.'

"And he yanks him out and he literally takes him out the door. And ... his parents are sitting up there in the stands — go through the whole graduation — their son never comes out. Later they find him curled up in the back seat of their car crying, because he didn't get to graduate.

"But what bothered me really, wasn't so much what the vice principal did. It's that I was standing right behind this kid and I said nothing. I didn't want to cause any trouble. It was my graduation night; I didn't want to get thrown out. And so I stood there in silence. And his mother called me the next day and said, 'What can you do?' And I said, 'Well we can't re-run the graduation.'

"'Well, did you see it happen?'

"'Yes.'

"'Well, what did you do?'

"'Um, nothing.'

"And this just — this just did a number on my own conscience. And I just thought, I will never be silent again. And I stood there and said nothing. And I just resolved at that moment, at 18 years old, that I will not stand silently by when I see some injustice taking place, even if it is the smallest thing ... And so I was kind of a different person from that moment on."

On why he dislikes being called controversial

"I started my own newspaper when I was 22, 23 years old. And it was an alternative newspaper, and I edited and wrote for that paper for almost a decade. And that was kind of my early background before Roger & Me, in terms of investigate reporting and writing about what was going on, especially with General Motors.

"I was writing back in the '70s that something's wrong with this company. This can't sustain itself if they keep behaving this way. If you keep laying people off who buy the cars, who's gonna buy the cars? And when you lay them off, they don't just stop buying cars. They stop buying washing machines and clock radios and things like that ... I wasn't an economist, but it just made sense to me that moving these jobs to Mexico and other places was going to totally decimate our economy here.

"I wrote about this back in the '70s. And of course, back then GM was the No. 1 company in the world. A lot of people in Flint thought I was nuts — 'GM is never going to leave Flint, this is the best we could ever hope for and its wonderful and nothing's going to change.' And I just kept warning about this ...

"I get called controversial all the time ... What's so controversial about just trying to warn people that this company — the way they're being run — it's not good? And it's going to hurt everybody and everything eventually. That seems like a community service to me. I don't know, maybe I don't have a good view of myself ... I never think I'm controversial. If I stand on the Oscar stage and I say, 'Hey folks, they're not gong to find any weapons of mass destruction; we're not being told the truth' and etcetera, etcetera; what's so controversial about that? It's just the truth."

On partisanship in America

"I firmly believe that ... where we need to come together as a country is to realize that we all have more in common than not. If we got out a piece of paper ... draw a line down the center — agree, disagree — the list of what we agree on, I am certain, is much longer than the things we don't agree on.

"I'm going to guess Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, all want clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. I'm sure most people think women should be paid the same as men if they're doing the same job. I think we all want good schools for our kids. If we made that list, we actually are in agreement on more things.

"The things we don't agree on — if I don't want to own a gun, I won't own one; if you want to buy a gun, buy a gun. If you don't want to marry a man, and you're a man, for God's sake, don't marry a man! You'll hate it! But if other people want to do that, what's it to you?

"And I think we've got to come to just a place of agreeing to disagree on some things. Let's have the big debate on them, some will win, some will lose. But listen: we are all Americans, we are all in the same boat and we are going to sink or swim together. And my friends, we are sinking right now. And if we don't put aside some of this, and figure out a way to get together to fix some of these problems, we are in deep, deep trouble." [Copyright 2011 National Public Radio]

Your Mind Cannot Handle the Arrant Awesomeness Of This Comic Book Cover

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:30:00 GMT

... so we're showing you just this tiny detail from it first.

Look at it for a while.

Take it in.

We'll reveal the cover in its full splendor after the jump, once your body's had some time to adjust. We don't want you to get the cool-bends, after all, wherein tiny bubbles of coolness work their way into your joints to cause tremendous pain. We're miles away from a hyperbaric chamber.

Thus: Caution shall be our watchword.

While we're waiting, here's some details about the comic book in question.

Rest assured you've got plenty of time to mentally and physically prepare yourself — the book won't be published until right around New Year's.

It's the first issue of a 4-book miniseries.

It's one of two covers. The above detail is from from the one by artist Dan Parent, who also did the book's interior art. That's the main cover — the one that will end up delivering its bolus of awesomeness to grocery stores, newsstands and the few remaining big-box bookstores that are still around. The variant cover, by Francesco Francavilla, will be harder to find — you'll have to hit comic book shops. We'll show you that one, too.

Okay. How you feeling? Good? Hale? Hearty?

Then take a deep breath.

BOOM.

Feast your eyes! Look upon't!

So many questions!

First of all: This is the classic KISS line-up, then? No Eric "The Fox" Carr or Vinnie "The Wiz" Vincent? ... Very well. I'll allow it.

Jughead as Ace "The Spaceman" Frehley? Sure. Yes. I can see that.

But really, Veronica as Paul "The Starchild" Stanley? Because ruthless Veronica Lodge, who could buy Pop's Choklit Shoppe with her pin money to turn it cold storage for her furs, is such a starry-eyed romantic? I think NOT.

Betty ... BETTY! ... as Peter "The Catman" Criss? Because she, like Criss, came to think of herself as having nine lives, having grown up on the mean streets of ... Riverdale Rock City? The very idea!

Finally we come to Archie. Archie Andrews. America's favorite tic-tac-toe-headed ginger. Swapping his Riverdale High letterman's jacket for greaves, dragon boots and a codpiece (not, mercifully, pictured) to lead Miss Grundy's class into the very mouth of Hell as Gene "The Demon" Simmons?

Yes, I know: Archie's the frontman. I get that. But the characterization's all wrong.

Because if Archie is Gene Simmons .... what of Reggie?

HUNH? WHAT OF REGGIE? ANSWER ME THAT.

(There he is, in the upper left, near the logo. The resolution's not quite good enough to see whose makeup he's wearing, but my money's on Reggie vying w/Archie for the Gene Simmons role and, with it, the right to: spit yogurt-and-food-coloring "blood"; star in a soul-eating reality show; and get hilariously schooled by public radio talk show hosts.)

Speaking of Blood....

KISS has spent much of its rock lifespan comics-adjacent. They've made cameo appearances in several Marvel titles ever the years, including Howard the Duck, and had their own Image, Dark Horse and "KISS Comics Group" series. Back in 1977, in fact, Marvel produced a KISS Super Special comic drawn by the great Steve Gerber that was notable for ...

Well, why not let the notary public who was on hand explain?

This is to certify that KISS members Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley, Paul Stanley and Peter Criss, have each donated blood which is being collectively mixed with red ink to be used for the first cover of the Marvel/KISS comics. The blood was extracted at February 21st, 1977 at Nassau Coliseum and has been under guarded refrigeration until this day until it was delivered to the Borden Ink plant in Depew, New York.

There you go. Imagine the sign topping comics spinner-racks in 7-11s across the country 34 years ago: "HEY KIDS! IT'S LIKE HOMEOPATHY! BUT CREEPY!"

Questions for discussion: A band that terrified suburban parents more than 30 years ago is now appearing in the country's most popular all-ages comic. What does this say:

1) About said band?

2) About said comic?

3) About who, exactly, said comic's target audience might be?

As you break into response groups, here's the variant cover, as promised:

Things to love: The blood-drippy Archie logo, the look of Lovecraftian disquiet on Archie's face.

Things to not-love: Nothing on the variant equals the original cover's deft placement of the iconic Archie pound-sign amid the red rockin' riot of Andrews/Simmons' Demon-wig. [Copyright 2011 National Public Radio]

Arnett's Newborn Sitcom Keeps Him 'Up All Night'

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:11:00 GMT

On the new NBC sitcom Up All Night, actor Will Arnett plays a new dad who decides to put his law career on hold and stay at home with his newborn daughter while his wife, played by Christina Applegate, goes back to work.

Adjusting to being a dad on screen wasn't hard for Arnett, he says, mainly because he has two young kids at home. What was harder, he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross, was explaining to his 2.5-year-old son what it meant to have a "TV wife" and "TV baby."

"My wife [Amy Poehler] and I were watching the first cut earlier this summer at home in New York and our son came in the room and he looked at the TV with a puzzled look on his face because on the screen, I'm holding one of the babies," he says. "And I paused the show ... and he said 'That's Dada's baby?' and I said, 'No, that's Dada's baby but it's not real.' And he said, 'No, that baby's real.' ... And I was thinking 'How do I explain this to a 2.5 year old? It's just very difficult."

The character Arnett plays in Up All Night is funny, but not nearly as over-the-top as some of his earlier roles on TV shows like 30 Rock, where he played Jack's rival Devon Banks, and Arrested Development, when he played Gob Bluth, a magician and the oldest son in the dysfunctional Bluth family.

"I love characters who are really confident and dumb," he says. "I just love that combination. But even I tire of it. When I read for [Up All Night,] it was the first time that I really identified with a character. ... It's nice to play these real moments in the show and not have to pay it off with some grandiose statement or say something dastardly."

And Gob Bluth, his character on Arrested Development, was particularly dastardly, says Arnett. He remembers doing scenes where his character would say something like 'You're my brother. And I love you. And I will always love you.'

"And then the person walks out of the room, [and Gob would say] 'Because I know you're going to die soon,'" he says. "And [series creator] Mitch Hurwitz went to town with the soap opera music playing underneath to crescendo. Mitch never lets a moment [stay] — he always undercuts real moments. And he feels like that's his job as a comedy writer."

Hurwitz, who also worked with Arnett on the FOX sitcom Running Wilde, brought actual magicians to the Arrested Development set to help Arnett learn his tricks for the show.

"Because Gob was a terrible magician, he was always, in great comedic moments, messing up his magic act," he says. "We used to have magicians come in to work on these tricks to actually get them wrong. But they still had to work. We had to bring magicians on to make magic not work."

Interview Highlights

On doing voice over work

"The first paying voice over gig I ever got was for a company called Harvard Community Health Plan, which is a Boston-based New England healthcare provider. I inherited a deep, gravelly voice from my dad who has always claimed that if I ever get injured, he'll just take over for me. Even when I was 23, I had a pretty gravelly voice and I looked pretty young. I think that particular job, because it was quite a big job — and I had to fly to Boston — and I think they were pretty shocked to see how young I looked. I probably looked like I was 18 at most when I was 23. And the copy was all reassuring healthcare-stuff. Like 'Don't worry, we'll take care of anything you need.' And here comes this young punk."

On the pace of 30 Rock and Arrested Development

"Those scripts are always hilarious. I get to show up and play this really fun, insane character and be unapologetically awful. It's really fun to do that. ... Each scene doesn't necessarily have a beginning, middle and end. ... Sometimes you can't let them breathe and it's all about pace. It's about understanding where that scene fits within the context of the show. On Arrested Development, the scenes would be even quicker and even shorter. The scenes were really paced up. I forget the most number of scenes we had in one day but it was north of 100."

On his wife Amy Poehler being very pregnant on the set of Saturday Night Live

"The last show she did before our son Archie was born was the show that Sarah Palin came on and Amy rapped. ... I remember her dancing up and down and I thought, 'Oh no. This could really happen.' And I guess, on one hand you could say it was terrible and on the other hand, you could say it would have been crazy-interesting TV. I certainly didn't want my child born on TV, but who knows?" [Copyright 2011 National Public Radio]

NBC's 'Up All Night': A Solid Start For A Talented Comedy Cast

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:02:00 GMT

Will Arnett and Christina Applegate are both veterans of projects that were either good but largely unappreciated (her Samantha Who?) or weak in spite of looking great on paper (his Running Wilde). In Up All Night, NBC's solid new comedy premiering tonight, they play a married couple with a new baby alongside Maya Rudolph, who's hot off this summer's Bridesmaids.

Because Applegate's character, Reagan, is working during the days while Arnett's character, Chris, is home with the baby, the safe bet would seem to be that he'll be the hapless dad stumbling through domesticity, dropping the baby and making terrified faces at diapers while she scolds and corrects him and shows off her bloodless, sexless efficiency. That would certainly be consistent with all the depressing views of masculinity and male ineptitude on display in this fall's pilots, where men are mostly resentful, embittered doofuses who make up for their stupidity with aggression.

Instead, here, Reagan and Chris are both a bit hapless, and it's really the two of them united against the difficulties of parenting (not against the baby, because that would be gross, but against the challenges the baby presents). She spends less time being confused at the grocery store only because she's not there as much and is trying to support him over the phone — there is no implication that she's naturally any more gifted with babies or groceries than he is.

This doesn't mean they don't have conflicts — she feels like it's harder than he thinks it is to balance a day job and the baby, and he feels like it's harder than she thinks it is to be home with the baby all day. And the show leaves open the possibility that they are both right.

Rudolph's character, Reagan's boss and pal, was rejiggered between the original pilot and the final one: She began as a publicist, but now she's an Oprah-like talk-show host, which gives Rudolph (who did play Oprah on Saturday Night Live, after all) more room to play. A little of this character may wind up going a long way — in the first episode, she's almost on equal footing with Arnett and Applegate — but Rudolph is good at this kind of grande dame comedy, and if anyone can make the character work over the long term, she's the one to do it.

Like a lot of comedies, Up All Night will need some time to settle, tonally speaking. There's an assistant at the office who's being played too broadly to match up with Applegate's acting, and some of Rudolph's shtick (and I say that with affection) feels somewhat misaligned with the warmth of what Applegate and Arnett are doing.

But the couple at the center of the show is completely believable. I believed them together instantly, believed they would fall in love and stay together, and believed they loved their baby but also missed their earlier life. There are some nice moments of recognition that they have some ambivalence about parenthood (the fact that the baby is brand new and they're celebrating their seventh anniversary tells you they've waited longer than many couples do), and it's one of the only sitcoms I can remember where the parents are incredibly frustrated about parenting but transparently adore their baby. The writing is sharp, the core performances are on target, and a lot of traps are avoided.

Comedy is a very personal thing — for many critics, Fox's New Girl, starring Zooey Deschanel, is the standout of the fall season. That one largely leaves me cold. This, on the other hand, while it's far from perfect, seems like a show with the capacity to be absolutely terrific. It often takes a couple of episodes for an ensemble to entirely come together, but I'm very optimistic.

NBC's Up All Night premieres tonight, Wednesday, at 10:00 p.m., after the finale of America's Got Talent. Its normal time slot will be Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m. [Copyright 2011 National Public Radio]

How To Help Your Child's Brain Grow Up Strong

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:02:00 GMT

Babies may look helpless but as soon as they come into the world, they're able to do a number of important things. They can recognize faces and moving objects. They're attracted to language. And from very early on, they can differentiate their mother from other humans.

"They really come equipped to learn about the world in a way that wasn't appreciated until recently," says neuroscientist Dr. Sandra Aamodt. "It look scientists a long time to realize that their brains are doing some very complicated things."

Aamodt and fellow neuroscientist Sam Wang explain how the human brain develops from infancy to adolescence in their new book Welcome to Your Child's Brain. The two researchers also offer tips for parents to help their children eat their spinach, learn their ABCs and navigate elementary school.

Before all of those things, however, children have to learn how to talk. Babies can differentiate syllables and new sounds from very early on, but there are ways for parents to help their children develop their language skills faster and more efficiently.

"The most simple way is to talk to your baby and around your baby a lot," says Aamodt. "And the other thing that parents can do is to respond when the baby speaks, even if the baby isn't forming the words correctly or you don't understand it. Just act like some communication has occurred — smile and give the baby a little pat — and that encourages the baby to continue to try to communicate."

But because language is so social, says Wang, passive exposure to words really doesn't help babies learn in any way.

"For instance, videos that are often shown to babies containing language are not nearly so effective," he says. "In some cases, people try to teach babies language by showing them videos in a foreign language. It doesn't work very well at all because these are not social ways of exposing a child to language."

Parents should also realize that their children may reach certain intellectual milestones at different times — and that's okay.

"Language is acquired quite well before the age of 6 but trying to force your children to read before the age of 4 is an effort that doesn't work very well because the brain is not very well-equipped to tell the letter 'b' from the letter 'd' and so on," says Wang. "[But] it's something that older children can do without any effort at all."

And children who grow up in bilingual households have a distinct advantage over their peers.

"Kids who learn two languages young are better able to learn abstract rules and to reverse rules that they've already learned," says Aamodt. "They're less likely to have difficulty choosing between conflicting possibilities when there are two possible responses that both present themselves. They're also better at figuring out what other people are thinking, which is probably because they have to figure out which language to use every time they talk to somebody in order to communicate."

Teaching Self-Control

Aamodt and Wang also emphasize the importance of teaching your children self-control from an early age.

"This is really critical because there are so many things parents want to do when they read parenting books," he says. "They take steps to teach their children math or reading ... but a big thing we can do for our children is to do the best to foster the development of self-control and willpower. Self-control and the ability to restrain impulses is associated with success at every age, whether it means being able to read at age 4 or being able to restrain impulses at a later age or even what your peers think of you in high school. At all of these ages, willpower and self-control is a strong predictor of academic success than IQ."

When children are young, they can learn self-control by focusing on any fun activity — whether that means studying martial arts or playing with dolls and planning a make-believe tea party.

"It gives the child practice at planning and organizing a series of topics to achieve a desired goal," says Aamodt. "When you're planning a tea party, you can't be acting like a fighter pilot. You have to be acting like a lady having a tea party. So pretending is one of the earliest types of exposure most kids get to planning and organizing their actions. And the more you practice that, the better you're going to be at it."

Making sure your child has fun while learning self-control is vitally important. Aamodt and Wang recommend, for instance, telling your child to pretend he or she is protecting a castle instead of just saying 'Stand still.'

"Taking advantage of a child's natural sense of fun is a terrific way to instill these things," says Wang. "This is not the kind of thing that works well if it's forced. It can be something as easy as pretending to guard the castle or playing a take-turns game where you say 'I'm going to draw an ear on this piece of paper and when you see an ear, then it's your time to listen and if you see a mouth on this other piece of paper, then it's your time to talk.' So all of these things can be done in very simple ways — in ways that are often fun — and the more fun it is, the more likely the child is to pay attention for a longer period of time. These things are fun, they don't cost money and anybody can do it."

Dr. Sam Wang is an associate professor of neuroscience at Princeton University. Dr. Sandra Aamodt is a former editor in chief of Nature Neuroscience. They are also the co-authors of Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life.

Interview Highlights

On rewards vs. punishment

Dr. Aamodt: "With a child, you're not only concerned with getting a child to behave. You're also concerned with building a good relationship with your child. You want your child to think of you as a wonderful person to be around. You also don't want to teach our kids that the way we solve our interpersonal problems is with violence."

Dr. Wang: "Negative reinforcement is often not very effective with deterring behavior. ... negative reinforcement punishment tends to not be very general. So the child will avoid doing the specific thing that led to the punishment and not learn some broader rule. From a practical standpoint, negative reinforcement is not terribly effective."

On time out

Dr. Wang: "One thing that's similar between how children and non-human animals learn best is the phenomenon of time out which has entered the lexicon as a means of getting a child to avoid doing something later. It comes from technical literature from which the long phrase is 'time out and reinforcement' which is if the kid does something undesirable, you simply take the child go to the corner and just sit there. And you don't say anything at all. You don't have to be negative. You don't have to mete out a punishment. You just have to say 'Sit there for 3 minutes and when I come back, we're done.' And then you forget about it and move on. This works at all ages."

On stress and pregnancy

Dr. Aamodt: "Stress is not good for babies. No ethics review board in the world would approve [an experiment] in which we deliberately damaged [pregnant women's] babies. But there are these so-called experiments of nature. One experiment that was done looked at women who had been evacuated from a hurricane in Louisiana when they were pregnant. What that study found was a substantially increased rate of autism in babies who had been in their fifth or sixth month of gestation at the time they fled the hurricane. The effect was stronger in cases where the hurricane was more dangerous."

On 'tiger parenting'

Dr. Wang: "I'm not very much of a tiger mother. I'm more of a pussy cat dad." [Copyright 2011 National Public Radio]

Beauty Shop: Miss Universe, Latino Heritage, S.C. Gov.

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:00:00 GMT

Toronto Roundup: To The 'Rampart'!

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 15:15:00 GMT

> "People say the films I make now aren't as good as the films I made 30 years ago," said Francis Ford Coppola at the Toronto press conference for his fantasy horror film Twixt, "But who's to say? We'll have to wait another 30 years to judge a film because the truth is you never know." So I guess that means you should ignore all those bad reviews.

> Lucia Siposova, on being cast in City of God director Fernando Meirelles' 360: "I was mostly disappointed at first that I had to be a whore". Critics found their own reasons for disappointment in the Anthony Hopkins-Jude Law starrer.

> On the positive side of things, everyone is talking about Woody Harrelson's searing performance as a police officer caught in scandal in Oren Moverman's Rampart.

> Acclaimed auteur Terence Davies also is generating buzz with his post-WWII period romance The Deep Blue Sea, which is not to be confused with that Samuel Jackson shark movie. It's Davies' first fiction film in 11 years, making him the year's second long-lost, artsy Terrence to climb back in a director's chair.

And you'll be hearing much more about another festival highlight — Mexican drug-war thriller Miss Bala — in an upcoming post. [Copyright 2011 National Public Radio]