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Comedian Albert Brooks plays himself in the film Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, which he also wrote and directed. Brooks tells Steve Inskeep about his "government-sponsored" mission to find out what makes Muslims laugh.

Film critic Bob Mondello reviews the DVD release of three classic black films: Hallelujah, Green Pastures and Cabin in the Sky. He says they are interesting, both as history and as works of art.

Ed Gordon talks to two filmmakers about their film, Favela Rising -- an unflinching look at the hard lives of those who live in one Brazilian ghetto.

The idea that priests, like all men, are not perfect might seem like a tame one. But NBC's effort to translate the premise into a TV series has brought protests that the show is anti-Christian. Jack Kenny is the creator and executive producer of The Book of Daniel.

Record executive Simon Cowell is a judge on the talent show American Idol, which begins a new season this month. The hour-long show is a spin-off of one Cowell helped create in Britain, Pop Idol.

A new film production of the Charles Dickens novel Bleak House will make its debut on PBS Sunday night. Gillian Anderson, of X-Files fame, plays Lady Honoria Dedlock. She tells Scott Simon about her role.

A Good Woman is based on Oscar Wilde's play Lady Windermere's Fan. But unlike Wilde's play, which is based in Victorian England, the film is set in Italy decades later. Critic Kenneth Turan is worried the story can't survive such a drastic change of scene.

Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner co-wrote the screenplay for the new Stephen Spielberg film Munich. Kushner won a Pulitzer for his 1993-1994 play Angels in America, which was performed in two parts and set in New York in the mid-1980s in the midst of the AIDS epidemic.

Actor Kevin Bacon was first recognized in the 1982 film Diner. Since then, he's starred in more than 50 films. His most recent is The Woodsman, which is now out on DVD. He's also inspired the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, in which players try to link another actor with Bacon in as few steps as possible. We rebroadcast an interview from Jan. 18, 2005.

Nelson George, a prolific writer and critic of black America, has made a documentary based on his best-selling book Post-Soul Nation. The new film, Smart Black People, profiles African-American personalities who left their stamp on America in the 1980s.