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Friday, January 25, 2013

Television

Tina Fey: Sarah Palin And 'Saturday Night' Satire

Tina Fey won an Emmy Award for outstanding lead actress in a comedy series for her role as Liz Lemon on 30 Rock.

January 25, 2013 Fey's impersonation of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin helped draw record audiences to Saturday Night Live in the fall of 2008. The former head writer for SNL opens up about politics, satire and her Emmy Award-winning sitcom, 30 Rock, which will have its series finale on January 31.

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Monkey See

Pop Culture Happy Hour: Nerd Culture And The Return Of Regrettable TV

A drawing of two clinking martini glasses.

January 25, 2013 On this week's show, we borrow from a great essay about nerd culture and autism and bring back one of our favorite semi-regular segments.

Summary

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Movies

For Would-Be Sundancers, Kickstarter Can Fuel Films

A scene from 99% — The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film, a Sundance documentary that raised more than $23,000 on Kickstarter.

January 25, 2013 Financing a movie can be tough — but more and more filmmakers are crowdsourcing their creative cash. Nearly 10 percent of the films at this year's Sundance Film Festival found backers through the online fundraiser Kickstarter.

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Television

Lives Of Praise, Lives In Progress On 'The Sisterhood'

The new TLC show The Sisterhood follows the lives of five preachers' wives in Atlanta.

January 25, 2013 The Sisterhood is a new reality show about the lives and struggles of five Atlanta-area preachers' wives. The show has been likened to the Real Housewives franchise and has drawn criticism for its warts-and-all portrayal of the women. But they say they felt called by God to participate.

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Thursday, January 24, 2013

Movie Reviews

'Yossi': Out In Israel, And That's Just Fine

After his lover dies in a military exercise, a devastated Yosssi (Ohad Knoller) must move from grief and shame into acceptance of his homosexuality.

January 24, 2013 From Israel's most beloved pop filmmaker comes a tender, joyous pleasure of a movie about love blooming in the wake of loss.

Summary

Movie Reviews

A Political 'Knife Fight' With All The Edge Of A Spork

Political consultant Paul Turner (Rob Lowe) may be "the master of disaster," but the campaign satire Knife Fight doesn't give him much of an edge.

January 24, 2013 There are brief moments of political zen in the campaign-consultant satire Knife Fight, but the film mostly falls victim to its own brand of shallow, delusional spin.

Summary

Movie Reviews

The Hard-Earned Liberty Of 'Happy People'

The simple, rough-edged lives of the Russian villagers in Werner Herzog's documentary Happy People: A Year in the Taiga make for a rhythmic study of ancient natural harmonies.

January 24, 2013 Werner Herzog might root for the wild side in any given man-vs.-nature narrative, but his latest film allows for a gentle kind of harmony. Graceful and pure, Happy People: A Year In The Taiga shows what happens when man works with, not against, nature. (Recommended)

Summary

Movie Reviews

'Resolution': Another Cabin, A Very Different Show

Chris (Vinny Curran) resists his friend Mike's (Peter Cilella) attempts to save him from drug addiction in the indie horror film Resolution. As unsettling intrusions into their rundown rural abode mount, however, they both might need a different kind of rescue.

January 24, 2013 A one-on-one drug intervention becomes a chilling horror story as ominous artifacts and disturbing characters crowd two old friends in Resolution, an artful deconstruction of the modern scary movie. (Recommended)

Summary

Movie Reviews

Spoiler Alert: 'John Dies,' But The Rest? Who Can Tell?

Journalist Arnie Blondestone (Paul Giamatti) interprets the bizarro story at the heart of the too-twisty horror fantasy John Dies at the End.

January 24, 2013 Based on a web serial, Don Coscarelli's loopy, disorienting horror fantasy film seems like an overeager bid for cult-hit status, piling flashbacks on top of flashbacks on top of parallel universes, portals, space bugs, ESP, and a talking dog.

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The Salt

Maxing Out The Mini Season For Maine Shrimp

Trawlers in the Gulf of Maine are allowed to catch Maine shrimp during a limited season that started this week.

January 24, 2013 Mainers say the shrimp have a sweet and delicate flavor. But there won't be many of them to go around this year. The fishing season is short, the allowable catch is small and the number of shrimp in the Gulf of Maine has been dwindling for a while now.

Summary

Monkey See

Home Video Review: 'Buster Keaton: The Ultimate Collection'

Buster Keaton, aka "The Great Stone Face," brought side-splitting comedy to the silent-screen era. Here, he's pictured in 1924's The Navigator.

January 24, 2013 Buster Keaton, the great genius of silent comedy, gets celebrated in a 14-disc box set that contains all of his classic silent comedies as well as a raft of shorts and extras.

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On All Things ConsideredPlaylist

Oscars 2013: The 85th Annual Academy Awards

Filmmaker Holds Up A Mirror In Interviews With Israel's 'Gatekeepers'

The interviews that form the core of The Gatekeepers began with a connection to Ami Ayalon, who was the head of Shin Bet from 1996 to 2000.

January 24, 2013 Dror Moreh's Oscar-nominated documentary, The Gatekeepers, is built around the confessions and ruminations of the six surviving heads of the Shin Bet — Israel's domestic security service.

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Author Interviews

'Going Clear': A New Book Delves Into Scientology

The Church of Scientology building in Los Angeles on Sunset Boulevard on Aug. 28, 2011.

January 24, 2013 Lawrence Wright's Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief looks at the world of the controversial church and the life of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, who died in 1986.

Transcript

On Fresh Air from WHYYPlaylist

Book Reviews

An 'Artful' Approach To Literary Criticism

Cover image from Artful.

January 24, 2013 Ali Smith's new book, Artful, began as a series of lectures on comparative literature, given at Oxford last year. The lectures have been given a fictional shell, the story of an unnamed narrator finding a cache of essays in the study of her dead lover. Reviewer John Wilwol calls Artful "superb."

Summary

Research News

Shall I Encode Thee In DNA? Sonnets Stored On Double Helix

William Shakespeare, depicted in this 17th century painting, penned his sonnets on parchment. Now his words have found a new home ... in twisting strands of DNA.

January 24, 2013 The world is full of data — and that's a problem. We have to find a place to store all those digital photos, tax records and unfinished novels. British scientists have demonstrated a possible solution: They've stored all of Shakespeare's sonnets on several small stretches of DNA.

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