Copyright 2017 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . DAVE DAVIES, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. The American writer Dorothy B. Hughes, who was born in 1904 and died in 1993, was one of the most successful crime novelists in mid-century America with several of her books turned into Hollywood movies. Her best known is "In A Lonely Place." A new edition of the novel has just come out, and our critic at large, John Powers, says Hughes' version of noir is excitingly radical. JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: It's something of an axiom that good novels make bad movies, but one of my favorite exceptions is "In A Lonely Place," the 1950 noir classic directed by Nicholas Ray that you owe it to yourself to see. Starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame giving their best ever performances, it's one of those brooding '50s pictures that's far deeper, darker and more psychologically potent than anything Hollywood is making today. While the movie's justly famous, the same can't be said of the original 1947 novel
If You Want Groundbreaking Noir, Try Looking 'In A Lonely Place'
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'Top Of The Lake: China Girl' Takes You Places Cop Shows Usually Ignore
Copyright 2017 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . DAVE DAVIES, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. The acclaimed filmmaker Jane Campion took the plunge into television with the 2013 series "Top Of The Lake," starring Elisabeth Moss as an Australian police woman in New Zealand. Moss is back and is joined by Nicole Kidman for the show's second season, titled "Top Of The Lake: China Girl," which airs over three nights beginning Sunday on SundanceTV. Our critic at large John Powers says the series takes you places cop shows usually don't go. JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: Back in the 1970s, it was considered groundbreaking when Angie Dickinson starred as sexy but tough Sergeant Pepper Anderson and in "Police Woman," the first television series about a female cop. Since that time, TV has given us lots of women officers, from Helen Mirren's flinty inspector Jane Tennison, battling squad room sexism in "Prime Suspect," to Mariska Hargitay's empathetic New York detective Olivia Benson, who's been solving
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'Battle Of The Sexes' Revisits Billie Jean King's Historic Win Against Bobby Riggs
Copyright 2017 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . DAVE DAVIES, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. Few exhibition games of any sport are remembered 44 years later. But the 1973 tennis match between self-proclaimed male chauvinist Bobby Riggs and women's tennis trailblazer Billie Jean King captivated the nation. It's the subject of the new film "Battle Of The Sexes," starring Emma Stone as King and Steve Carell as Bobby Riggs. In a few minutes, we'll hear an interview I recorded with Billie Jean King in 2013 commemorating the 40th anniversary of that match. But first, a review of the movie "Battle Of The Sexes" from our critic-at-large John Powers. He says it's an entertaining film that also says a lot about how Americans think about social issues. JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: Early in Andre Agassi's autobiography, he writes that every tennis match is a life in miniature. But, sometimes, it's even grander than that. You could glimpse a whole culture in miniature
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'Her Body and Other Parties' Charts Dark Territory With Enormous Style
Copyright 2017 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. Our critic-at-large John Powers has a review of a new book he says wowed him right from the start. It's called "Her Body And Other Parties." It's the first collection of short stories by Carmen Maria Machado. The book was recently named one of the five finalists for the National Book Award in fiction. JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: Whenever I open a new work of fiction, I'm not looking for the stuff that we critics talk about - you know, a dazzling prose style or a big, important theme. What I want most is to be grabbed by a fresh and compelling way of seeing the world, to encounter a voice that makes me think, I can't wait to spend my day with this person. That happened to me with "Her Body And Other Parties," a first collection of stories by Carmen Maria Machado, an extraordinary young writer about whom I know very little. I know she's 31. I know she lives with her wife in Philadelphia, and I know
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'Dawn Watch' Explores The Life And Legacy Of Joseph Conrad
Copyright 2017 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. Our critic-at-large John Powers has a review of a new book about the life and work of the great Polish-born writer Joseph Conrad. John says you don't need to be a Conrad buff to find it engrossing. The author, Maya Jasanoff, is the Coolidge professor of history at Harvard. She won a National Book Critics Circle Award for her 2011 book "Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists In The Revolutionary World." Her new book is titled "The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad In A Global World." JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: We're in the middle of a boom in serious popularizing books that try to bring us closer to the classics by anchoring them in the lives of their creators, books like Stephen Greenblatt's "Will In The World," which explores how young Shakespeare made himself into Will Shakespeare, and Sarah Bakewell's "At The Existentialist Cafe," which grounds the work of Sartre, Camus, de Beauvoir and others in their
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Zippy And Delightful, 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel' Spotlights An Unlikely Comic
There's an unforgettable scene in the Netflix documentary Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold . Filmmaker Griffin Dunne asks Didion about the legendary moment when, while reporting a piece on the counter-culture in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, she came across a 5-year-old girl tripping on LSD. "What was that like?" Dunne wonders. Didion pauses, and replies, "It was gold." Which is to say that the little girl was great material. What counts as material, and how you use it, lies at the heart of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel , the delightfully zippy new Amazon series created by Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband, Daniel Palladino — a team best known for Gilmore Girls and Bunheads . Set in a brightly colored version of late 1950s New York — the soundtrack is bursting with show tunes and Sinatra — it's a backhanded riposte to the old canard that women can't be funny. When we first meet Miriam Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) she's in her bridal gown and addressing her wedding
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Critic's 'Ghost List' Has Books, Music And A TV Show That Deserve A Second Look
I don't believe in ghosts, but sometimes when I walk through my house I think I hear the forlorn cries of all the books, movies and TV shows that I've loved over the past few months but never got around to talking about. And so, every December, I try to silence those cries with my annual "Ghost List" of favorites I've ignored — a group that in 2017 ranges in spirit from cosmic surrealism to ripped-from-the-headlines immediacy. National Treasure, Hulu This riveting British TV series could hardly be more of our moment. It stars the monumental Scottish actor Robbie Coltrane (of Cracker and Harry Potter fame) as Paul Finchley, a beloved comedian who's accused of sexually assaulting young women. But is Paul really guilty, or simply the target of a zeitgeisty witch hunt? The show is great at capturing the situation's emotional cost — especially to Paul's protective wife, superbly played by Julie Walters, and his adoring, self-destructive adult daughter, a tremendous Andrea Riseborough. As
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'Assassination Of Gianni Versace' Offers A Juicy Take On Serious Issues
Copyright 2018 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . DAVE DAVIES, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. The latest installment of the FX limited series "American Crime Story" begins tomorrow. It's called "The Assassination of Gianni Versace," and it tells the story of the 1997 murder of the famous fashion designer. The series is created by Ryan Murphy and is based on the book "Vulgar Favors" by Maureen Orth. Our critic-at-large John Powers has a review. JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: It's easy to make a TV show about murder, which is why they do so many of them. What's hard is making a murder story about something bigger than killing. Ryan Murphy pulled off that feat in the first installment of the FX anthology series "American Crime Story: The People V. O.J. Simpson." Of course, once that show nabbed big ratings and Emmys the question became what could Murphy possibly do for an encore. We get the answer in "American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace," which tackles another splashy murder
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'This Is What Happened' And 'Babylon Berlin' Deliver Thrills And Intrigue Aplenty
If you're a fan of thrillers, you know that they're defined by two extremes. At one end are the plot-driven worlds that work like clockwork machines (for instance, Murder on the Orient Express ); at the other are the stories that sprawl outward to offer a portrait of the larger society (like James Ellroy's Los Angeles or Stieg Larsson's Sweden). As it turns out, I've recently come across an enjoyable example of each extreme. This Is What Happened is the latest book by British writer Mick Herron, whose ongoing Slough House series — about a branch of British intelligence stocked with disgraced and incompetent agents — is the sharpest spy fiction since John Le Carré. Herron's new novel stands apart from that series, but like all his work, it sucks you in from the opening page. There we meet Maggie Barnes, a 26-year-old country lass who's moved to London only to find herself stuck in a drab office job and enduring a crushing loneliness. Maggie is burning for something to give her life some
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Comedy Is Drenched With Foreboding On Season 2 Of 'Atlanta'
Copyright 2018 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. The second season of the FX series "Atlanta" begins tomorrow night. The series follows the stories of four African-American characters in "Atlanta." The first season in 2016 won rave reviews, big ratings and Emmys for its creator and star, Donald Glover. Our critic at large John Powers says "Atlanta" is one of the high spots in today's pop culture. JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: Although we tend to label eras with the name of presidents, politics and culture rarely go hand in hand. Even as Donald Trump dominates the political landscape, it's African-American culture that's been seizing center stage, be it Beyonce performing "Formation" at the Super Bowl, Colson Whitehead and Jesmyn Ward winning literary prizes or "Get Out" becoming the most galvanizing movie of 2017. As I speak, "Black Panther" isn't merely ruling the box office but demonstrating how a superhero movie can actually be about things that
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'The Sparsholt Affair' Confirms Alan Hollinghurst's Status As A Literary Master
Copyright 2018 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. Our critic at large John Powers has a review of a new book by one of his favorite authors - the Booker Prize-winning English writer Alan Hollinghurst. It's called "The Sparsholt Affair." And it centers on how the laws of social propriety shape the destinies of a father and son, spanning the decades from the 1940s until now. JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: When it comes to writers, I'm a bit of a cad. After a few books, I tend to move on even when I've enjoyed them. Still, I do remain loyal to a handful of writers whose work always excites me. One of them is Alan Hollinghurst. Ever since his 1988 debut, "The Swimming Pool Library," this gifted English novelist has been an unsurpassed chronicler of worldly gay lives. Yet to label him a great gay writer is diminishing, like calling Philip Roth a great Jewish writer or Toni Morrison a great African-American woman writer. As with them, his talent is so big
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50 Years Later, '2001: A Space Odyssey' Is Still A Cinematic Landmark
Near the beginning of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey , a big black monolith appears in an African desert, leaving a group of prehistoric ape-men standing there baffled. And that was pretty much the reaction that greeted the film itself when it premiered 50 years ago this week. Nobody was quite sure what to make of it. The critics were harsh, with Variety dismissively saying flatly, " 2001 is not a cinematic landmark." It's hard to imagine being more wrong. You see, even if you don't like the movie — and I don't, particularly — the one thing that's undeniable is that it's a cinematic landmark. Not only was it the No. 1 box office movie of 1968 — young people flocked to it to have their minds blown — but in international polls , 2001 routinely ranks as one of the top 10 films of all time. An avant-garde art film dressed in Hollywood money, it unknowingly foreshadowed the future of movies as effects-driven blockbusters. I saw it again a few days ago, inspired by Michael Benson's
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Sharply Written 'Mars Room' Ventures Behind The Bars Of Women's Prison
Copyright 2018 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. "The Mars Room" is the third novel by Rachel Kushner, whose first two, "Telex From Cuba" and "The Flamethrowers," were both finalists for the National Book Award. The new one tells the story of a young woman incarcerated for murder in a women's prison in California. Our critic-at-large, John Powers, says that in this book, orange is definitely not the new black. JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: Early in Rachel Kushner's novel "The Flamethrowers," its heroine Reno is racing through Utah on her motorcycle when she sees the dancing lights of a casino on the Nevada border. Only a killjoy, she tells us, would claim that neon wasn't beautiful. I feel much the same about the work of Kushner, whose 2005 debut, "Telex From Cuba," about an American family in pre-Castro Cuba heralded a major talent and whose follow-up, "The Flamethrowers," confirmed it. Ranging from the Bonneville Salt Flats to the '70s New York
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'The Split' Explores The Price And Permutations Of Breaking Up
Zsa Zsa Gabor, who was married nine times, once joked that diamonds aren't a girl's best friend — divorce lawyers are. The price and permutations of breaking up are the theme of The Split , a sleek new British series showing on Sundance TV. Created by Abi Morgan, who wrote The Iron Lady and The Hour , this six-part show centers around members of the Defoe family, high-end lawyers specializing in marital issues whose own private lives are — don't be shocked now! — as furtive and messy as the cases they're handling. It stars Nicola Walker, best known in the U.S. for Last Tango in Halifax . She plays Hannah, a principled but still high-billing divorce lawyer who's the eye of the show's many storms. Married with kids to a likable husband (Stephen Mangan), Hannah is the eldest of the three Defoes. Next in line is Nina (Annabel Scholey), who's also a lawyer, but a somewhat more free-spirited one. Both look after the youngest sister, Rose (Fiona Button) who's engaged to an incredibly nice
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Though Gripping, CIA Thriller 'Condor' Falls Short Of Defining Its Era
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2 First-Rate Novels Celebrate The Humor And Heroism Of Unconventional Women
Copyright 2018 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . DAVE DAVIES, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. Our critic at large John Powers always keeps an eye out for new translations of foreign fiction. He's recently come across two internationally acclaimed novels - "Mirror, Shoulder, Signal" by the Danish novelist Dorthe Nors and "Convenience Store Woman" by the Japanese writer Sayaka Murata. He says they aren't only a pleasure to read, but both offer a perceptive look at the lives of women who break the cultural mold. JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: Modern fiction is teeming with characters who don't fit comfortably into the world they inhabit. I grew up enthralled by self-absorbed male outsiders like Holden Caulfield in the beats. But over the years, I've come to find greater depth and variation in stories about women the world routinely ignores, be it the wry spinsters and Barbara Pym's fiction or the poor, defiantly unconventional Sula who gives her name to Toni Morrison's great early novel. You can
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Betrayal, Ruination And Dark Comedy Converge In 'A Very English Scandal'
Copyright 2018 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. On Friday, Amazon begins streaming a new British miniseries called "A Very English Scandal." It stars Hugh Grant as Jeremy Thorpe, a leading Liberal Party politician whose career is threatened by his affair with a young man played by Ben Whishaw. It's a true story. And our critic at large, John Powers, says that it's irresistibly smart and entertaining. JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: We hear a lot of talk about the special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom, mainly in foreign affairs, yet nowhere is the relationship more special than in television. I sometimes think PBS would have to shut down if it couldn't import shows like "Downton Abbey" and "Sherlock." Americans are especially fond of shows that reflect Britain's obsession with its national history where our shows about the past too often sink into toothless earnestness. Something like "The Crown" crackles with a sense
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'Won't You Be My Neighbor?' And 'Nanette' Brim With Heart And Humanity
Copyright 2018 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . DAVE DAVIES, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. Summer's considered a time for light entertainment. But, sometimes, something more serious slips through the cracks and gets everybody talking. This year, that's happened with Morgan Neville's documentary "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" and Hannah Gadsby's "Nanette," a standup show on Netflix. Our critic at large John Powers says these shows have something in common that helps explain why they've become touchstones. JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: I don't know about you, but I find American life these days positively exhausting. Everything is always trying to wind you up, from political tweets and cable news to sports debate shows, thrill-ride movies and Internet headlines that will say anything to make you click on a link. Small wonder that many people are looking for things that don't do that, but that offer what we might call counterprogramming to our whole troll-infested culture. Audiences have found
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Witty, Imaginative, Risky And Relentless — 'Flights' Soars
Copyright 2018 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. Earlier this year the Man Booker International Prize, given for the best book of the year translated into English, was given to "Flights," a work of fiction by the Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk. "Flights" is now being published in America by Riverhead Books, and our critic-at-large John Powers says it's a revelation. JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: During the Cold War, Eastern European writers were a very big deal in the West. Not only were they good, their careers came with a compelling backstory. They were political dissidents whose work mattered. But with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the bottom seemed to fall out of the market for writers from the other Europe as a series edited by Philip Roth once dubbed them. Stripped of the peculiar glamour of oppression, they were no longer sexy. But they were still good. And over the decades, Eastern Europe has continued to turn out writers whose work possesses
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'Jane Fonda In Five Acts' Reveals The Shifting Identities Of An Icon
Copyright 2018 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . DAVE DAVIES, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. For half a century, Jane Fonda's been a cultural lightning rod - an actress as well known for her personal and political life as she is for her acting. Her career is the subject of a new documentary "Jane Fonda In Five Acts," which debuts Monday on HBO. Our critic-at-large John Powers says it's a fascinating portrait of a woman unafraid of extremes. JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: We live in an age when it's possible to become famous without having achieved anything. Although she was the daughter of a movie star, Jane Fonda earned her fame the old-fashioned way. For more than half a century, she's been exceedingly good at two things - acting, for which she won two Oscars, and being a target. Her juicy controversial life is the subject of an engrossing new HBO documentary "Jane Fonda In Five Acts" by Susan Lacy, creator of the PBS series "American Masters." Although this doc is as conventional as Fonda
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