A year after his father's death in the World Trade Center, 11-year-old Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn) sets out on a city-wide scavenger hunt to find a missing lock that he hopes will reveal a message from his dad.
Credit Francois Duhamel / Warner Bros. Pictures
Oskar lies to his mother, played by Sandra Bullock, about a series of phone messages left by his father on the morning of September 11, 2011.
Some critics are indignant over Stephen Daldry's film of Jonathan Safran Foer's book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. They say the appropriation of 9/11 for such a sentimental work is exploitation.
Barbara Lea was a singer known for her straightforward interpretations, precise diction, and respect for the intentions of each song's composer and lyrist. She died December 26th at the age of 82, from complications from Alzheimer's disease.
Lea got her start singing in clubs in the 1950s. Her first album, A Woman in Love, released in 1955, was named one of the finest recordings of the year. Though she dropped out of singing for a while, she made a comeback in New York's cabaret world in the 1970s.
Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen film their sketch-comedy show Portlandia in the summer, when Armisen is on hiatus from Saturday Night Live. During the rest of the year, they communicate through constant text messages, says Armisen.
Credit IFC
In one episode of Portlandia, Brownstein and Armisen started a grassroots campaign to prevent the Olympics from ever coming to Portland.
Soon after Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen became friends, they started making sketch-comedy videos.
"We would email a link ... to our friends, but they were mostly for us," says Brownstein. "It was very understated and silly, and we were just sort of reveling in the absurd."
On Back to Love, Anthony Hamilton makes music from declarations. He tells a woman "I'm missing you crazy" in "Who's Loving You," and it's typical of his strategy. He states his thesis, his opinion, his desire in a voice that speaks as much as it sings for the sake of emphasis. After he's sure he's gotten his lover's attention, he begins doing his rhythm-and-blues work, mixing soul and blues and hip-hop phrasing to heighten the emotion in a song.
Adlon voiced Bobby on King of the Hill, among other animated characters.
Credit Jordin Althaus / Showtime
Pamela Adlon plays Marcy Runkle on Showtime's Californication. This season, her character is going through what she describes as a "sexual renaissance."
When Pamela Adlon meets her daughters' middle-school aged friends, she asks them nicely not to watch Californication, the show she's starred in for the past five seasons.
"I say, 'I'd appreciate if you don't watch my show and you don't Google me,'" she tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.
But Adlon, who plays the brash, unapologetic, sexually charged Marcie Runkle on the Showtime series, says she knows that's not going to stop anyone.
"I am not embarrassed," she says. "I know they Google me."
