The week-in-the-news roundtable always involves tough choices on sound clips – what to include, what to leave out. Amid all the pressing hard news, we often give a nod to a notable person who’s passed away. But this week brought, well, a ridiculous range of choices.

Fred Astaire danced his way into American legend—the original dancing superstar. We look at the man behind the top hat and tails.

Oscar-winning filmmaker James Moll on his powerful new documentary about the meeting of two women: a Holocaust survivor and the daughter of the Nazi commandant who terrorized her.

From “The Andromeda Strain” to”Jurassic Park,” “ER,” and “State of Fear,” we look at the blockbuster master’s long reach.

Acclaimed filmmaker Mike Leigh goes way upbeat in his latest film, “Happy-Go-Lucky.” We’ll ask him why.

Filmmaker Wayne Wang, director of “The Joy Luck Club,” on Chinese- American life now and his new film, “The Princess of Nebraska.”

Philippe Petit walked a high wire between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Now they’re gone. He looks back, in an acclaimed new documentary, “Man on Wire.”

Alfred Hitchcock was for years the master of movie suspense. But fifty years ago — May, 1958 — he brought out a film so weird that filmgoers didn’t know what to make of it.
It was called “Vertigo.” It had Jimmy Stewart as a San Francisco detective afraid of heights, on the trail of icy blond [...]

The Paskowitz family was maybe literally like no other.
Nine kids plus mom and dad living in a 24-foot camper. Never going to school. Raised on the beaches of California, Mexico, and Hawaii with surfing as their be all and end all, and the sea as their teacher.
If you’ve ever dreamed of taking your family, your [...]

It’s just a matter of days now, and Indiana Jones is back in a theater near you.
Harrison Ford, the leather jacket, the bullwhip, the fedora — 27 years after “Raiders of the Lost Ark” they’re practically archeological artifacts themselves. But who cares? Everybody wants to get back to snakes and jungle and desert and adventure.
At [...]

In 1967, revolution was in the air. And not just on college campuses. Hollywood, too, was at the threshold of a generational rebellion.
The year’s Oscar nominees told the story: So long to the super-sanitized, big-studio moviemaking machines. Hello to the new rough-and-tumble — sex, violence, and rock-n-roll. Out with the “Sound of Music” clones. In [...]

In their new movie, “The Bucket List,” when Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman’s characters get the news that they’re going to die, and soon, they set out to do it all — skydive, climb Everest, see the Pyramids, travel the world.
When high school chemistry teacher Bryan Cranston is given six months to live in AMC’s [...]

In May 1941, when his towering masterpiece “Citizen Kane” hit the theaters, actor, director, writer, producer Orson Welles was just 25 years old. “Citizen Kane” would be called the best American film ever made. Generations of Americans would intone “Rosebud” as a totem of life’s deep mysteries.
Orson Welles — dazzling young American genius — appeared [...]

It’s the season of big releases and Oscar angling, at the end of a wild, up and down year for movies — from sweeping epics of war won and lost, to comic close-ups on pregnancy, young love, and growing up.
There were the perennial Hollywood blockbusters — from “Ratatouille” to “Spiderman III” to yet another “Pirates [...]

It sounds like a culture-war set piece: Hollywood rolls out a religious-themed Christmas blockbuster and conservative believers go ballistic. That was the story this weekend with the release of “The Golden Compass.”
Based on the wildly popular fantasy novels by British author Philip Pullman, a famously outspoken atheist, the film casts God and the Church as [...]