Search results for

In American fiction, TV and film, suburbia has long stood as shorthand for repression. It's a place of "wide lawns and narrow minds," as Earnest Hemingway put it. But representations of the suburbs have taken on a different shape of late.

Fresh Air's book critic looks back at a busy year and selects the books that linger in memory as the calendar page turns. Her favorite fiction included Richard Russo's Bridge of Sighs, Min Jin Lee's Free Food for Millionaires, and Last Night at the Lobster, by Stewart O'Nan.

Our weeklong retrospective of the year's most entertaining interviews continues with Nancy Cartwright. You've probably heard her work, but you may not have known it was her. She's the voice of Bart Simpson.

Francis Ford Coppola's first film in a decade is an idea-driven film based on a Romanian philosopher's delicate novella. It's about an aged academic who becomes young again when he's struck by lightning.

Politicians aren't the only ones doing a song and dance this election season. Iowa-born playwright Robert John Ford has written a musical comedy that pokes fun at the Iowa Caucuses and there's an adaptation in the works for the New Hampshire Primary.

Filmmaker Brian De Palma has been making movies and stirring controversy for more than 40 years. His films include Scarface and Casualties of War; his new Redacted retells a true story about a rape and murder committed in Iraq by U.S. soldiers.

Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, creators of Thirtysomething and executive producers of My So-Called Life, are making news again with a new series. It's called Quarterlife, and it's airing not on TV, but in short, six-to-an-hour episodes on the Web. Some pundits are touting it as an alternative for audiences during the ongoing Hollywood writers' strike. Critic David Bianculli, who's working on the Web himself now at TVWorthWatching.com, has a review.

Jerry Seinfeld's animated comedy centers on an amusing honeybee who talks a lot about nothing, then quits work — whereupon the world gets dreary until he starts up again. It's a fairly personal vision — and a bit of a drone.

Miss Navajo is a documentary about a pageant that honors not only beauty, but also knowledge of the language and culture of the Navajo Nation. The film is set to air within the PBS series Independent Lens. Billy Luther, who directed the film, and his mother Sarah Luther, who formerly held the Miss Navajo title, discuss what the pageant means within American Indian cultures.

Fresh Air's critic at large tells us why he loves the high-fashion challenge, a reality-TV staple now in its fourth season on cable's Bravo channel.