Oscar Award-winning actor Paul Newman died on Sept. 26 of complications from lung cancer. In this 2003 interview, the star of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Cool Hand Luke discusses his early work — both as an actor and as a salesman.
Once known as the awkward kid on the cult TV hit Arrested Development, he's become a bona fide movie star with roles in the hit comedies Juno and Superbad. Next up for him: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, another music-fueled teen love story.
Many people generate an immense amounts of digital data during a single day — often without a second thought. But Stephen Baker, a senior writer at BusinessWeek, warns that the information generated is being monitored by a group of entrepreneurial mathematicians.
Miracle At St. Anna, based on James McBride's novel, follows four soldiers of the all-black 92nd Infantry Division after they're cut off by Axis forces in the Tuscan countryside during World War II.
When President Ahmadinejad of Iran spoke at the UN this week, his translator was Hooman Majd. But Majd isn't a professional translator. He's a writer, and his new book is called The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran.
In the 1947 film, It Happened In Brooklyn, Frank Sinatra plays a soldier who returns after four years at war and decides to pursue a singing career. Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews the recently-released DVD version of the film.
TV's most charming serial killer is back for a third season on Showtime. With new murders, new dangers and new characters, TV critic David Bianculli says the new season is a real thrill.
Bassist Charlie Haden is known as a great jazz musician, but his lineage is all country: Growing up, he performed alongside his brothers and sister in the Haden Family Band, a country group led by parents, Carl and Virginia.
With the markets in flux and a massive government rescue package in the works, New York Times columnist Gretchen Morgenson looks into potential conflicts of interest in the nearly $700 billion deal.
Crime novelist James Crumley's detective tales were filled with sex, drugs, violence and profanity, and inspired comparisons to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, among others. Crumley died Sept. 17 in Missoula, Mont. He was 68.
On Sept. 21, the AMC series Mad Men became the first basic cable program to win an Emmy Award for outstanding drama. Executive producer Matthew Weiner and actors Jon Hamm and John Slattery discuss the madness of Madison Avenue circa 1960.
NBC's 30 Rock cleaned up the major comedy prizes, but the big drama awards went to basic-cable breakouts like AMC's Mad Men and FX's Damages. TV critic David Bianculli recaps the evening.
In the ABC series, Pushing Daises, co-executive producers Barry Sonnenfeld and Bryan Fuller combine romance, fantasy and mystery to tell the story of a man who can bring the dead back to life. The first season of the show is now out on DVD.
Film critic David Edelstein reviews two new coming-of-age movies: Towelhead, which features a young Arab-American girl who is sent to live with her father in Texas, and Hound Dog, about a troubled girl who takes comfort in the music of Elvis Presley.
Maher Arar, a telecommunications engineer with dual Canadian and Syrian citizenship, was detained during a stop-over in JFK Airport in 2002 and deported to a Syrian prison, where he was locked up and beaten for almost a year.
The War on Terror was meant to prevent another terrorist attack on the United States, but author Jane Mayer says that policies like extraordinary rendition have compromised American values.
Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews Hold Up The Sky, Andy Zwerling's first album in 37 years. Zwerling's previous album, a retrospective called Somewhere Near Pop Heaven, became a surprise hit in Croatia in 2003.
The bankruptcy of financial services giant Lehman Brothers and the 500-point drop in the stock market on Sept. 15 have sent shock waves through the financial community. Law professor Michael Greenberger discusses the potential ramifications of the recent turmoil.
When Barack Obama trotted out a well-worn, folksy phrase about cosmetics and swine, the political world developed a sudden rash. Linguist Geoff Nunberg asks what all the shouting was about.
