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HBO celebrates Black History Month with the world premiere of Lackawanna Blues this Saturday. It's the story of an extraordinary woman whose strength and dignity made her the backbone of the community and a source of inspiration for those who knew her. Tony Award-winning director George C. Wolfe joins NPR's Ed Gordon to talk about the film. The movie features Mos Def, Louis Gossett Jr., Macy Gray, Terrence Dashon Howard, Rosie Perez, Jimmy Smits and Jeffrey Wright.

From his breakout role as Hawkeye Pierce on M*A*S*H* to his Oscar-nominated turn in The Aviator, Alan Alda continues to be a presence in American film and on television. Alda speaks with NPR's Joe Palca and listeners about his many roles and his approach to the craft of acting.

As half of the comedy duo Cheech and Chong, Tommy Chong made a career out of making jokes about being stoned. Along with Cheech Marin, Chong recorded six gold comedy albums and starred in seven films. He currently has a recurring role on FOX TV's That '70s Show. He recently spent nine months in prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to sell drug paraphernalia.

HBO has signed a lucrative deal with fellow cable channel A&E for sanitized versions of Sopranos reruns. The mob drama has drawn a record $2.5 million per episode in syndication.

Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan says Lost Embrace, an Argentinean film that is just now debuting in the States, is a charming and original story about ordinary life set in a Jewish neighborhood in Buenos Aires.

The Duluth, Minn., trio called Low are known for slow, quiet songs. But on their new album, The Great Destroyer, the band sets a different course.

An enormous work of art opens Saturday in New York's Central Park. The Gates Project is the brainchild of artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The husband-and-wife team's work consists of 7,500 squared arches topped with orange flags.

NPR's Tony Cox sits down with rap mogul and producer Russell Simmons about his ambitious drive to bring his Tony Award-winning Def Poetry Jam program into high schools. Shihan, one of Simmons' spoken word protoges, and producer/director Stan Lathan sit down with NPR's Tony Cox to talk about the program.

Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns returns to PBS with Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, a profile of the world's first African-American heavyweight boxing champ.

Dionne Warwick started singing at six. She reached stardom in the 1960s, wrapping her sophisticated voice around memorable pop tunes. Now she's out with her first-ever collection of holiday music, My Favorite Time of the Year. She tells NPR's Tavis Smiley about it.

TV critic David Bianculli reviews two new recent DVD releases of children's TV shows from the 1980s: Pee-Wee's Playhouse and Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre.

Hollywood is rife with film biographies this year: Ray Charles, Bobby Darin, Alexander the Great, Alfred Kinsey, and Che Guevara have all gotten the movie treatment. NPR's Bob Mondello says the one that opens Friday, the Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator, qualifies as the crowd-pleaser of the bunch.

Oscar-winning actor Jeremy Irons talks about his latest role as the title character in a film adaptation of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice -- a play some consider to be anti-Semitic for its portrayal of the vengeful Jewish moneylender Shylock.

Productions Peter Pan have reflected changing social attitudes toward children over the years. The result is that until recently, Peter, the boy who wouldn't grow up, was played by a woman. NPR's Pat Dowell explores the history of the character.

Playwright Eve Ensler became an international phenomenon with her one-woman show, The Vagina Monologues. Now she's back with a new play about the rest of the female anatomy. It's called The Good Body, and it follows Ensler's own attempts to make peace with her aging figure.

Writer Augusten Burroughs has two best-selling, often funny memoirs to his credit. His first, Running With Scissors, portrayed his early years with his mentally ill mother and her equally mentally ill shrink. His second, Dry, was about getting sober. Now Burroughs has a book of stories, Magical Thinking.

John Waters' films have been described as raunchy, perverse and hilarious. So it comes as no surprise that he would pick a scene from a 1959 William Castle horror movie as one of his own favorites. Waters talks with NPR's Susan Stamberg.

NPR's Bob Mondello reviews the performances of two actors who are expected to garner Oscar nominations for their performances: Kevin Bacon and Sean Penn. Both actors give harrowing psychological portraits of outsiders — Bacon plays a former child molester in The Woodsman and Penn plays a down-and-out salesman in The Assassination of Richard Nixon.

Marika Partridge reviews the mandolin dance sounds of Sam Bartlett. His self-produced, instrumental CD Evil Diane features some of America's best unknown acoustic players, fiddlers and pipers. Indiana native Bartlett is a prolific writer, often composing his reels and jigs from the road on his mandolin.

A new exhibit at the Folger Shakespeare Library offers a glimpse at correspondences four centuries old. "Letter Writing in Renaissance England" includes letters penned in invisible ink, sealed in wax and silk, and sent to and from some of the most famous figures in history.

The latest film from director Jean-Pierre Jeunet takes place in France at the end of World War I. A Very Long Engagement is the story of a young woman's search for a fiancee she doesn't believe is dead. Audrey Tatou, who played the lead in Jeunet's 2001 comedy hit Amelie, stars again. NPR's Bob Mondello has a review.

NPR's Alex Chadwick interviews Sean Fine, the producer and cinematographer of True Dads, a documentary that looks at six different fathers and how they've overcome adversity to raise their families. Fine also talks about how the process of making the film affected relationships in his own family.

NPR's Melissa Block talks with Pedro Almodovar about his film Bad Education. He says it was one of his hardest films to make, because the story is so close to his own experiences.

The much-debated video game "JFK Reloaded" allows players to reenact President John F. Kennedy's assassination. Critics are outraged. The game's developers say it's educational and meant in part to debunk conspiracy theories. Clive Thompson of Slate offers a review.

Managers of San Francisco's famed Castro Theatre have fired long-time film programmer Anita Monga. Fans of Monga and the Castro plan street protests. Fawnee Evnochides reports.