Polish-born film director Roman Polanski during a burial ceremony for French film maker Claude Berri, in Montrouge, France, Jan. 15, 2009. (AP)

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In 1977, film director Roman Polanski — “Chinatown,” “Tess,” “The Pianist” – was indicted for drugging, raping and sodomizing a 13-year-old girl in LA.

He pled guilty to a single charge, spent 45 days in confinement, then fled the country for Europe.

Last Saturday he was arrested in Switzerland. The U.S. wants him back.

The details of the case are disturbing. The post-arrest reaction across the Atlantic, fascinating.

This hour we’ll hear it. Geraldine Ferraro says lock him up. French luminary Bernard Henri-Levy says let him go. They’re with us. Plus The New York Times’ David Carr.

This hour, On Point: Judging Roman Polanski.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Montclair, N.J., is David Carr, columnist and reporter for The New York Times covering media and culture. He also writes for the Times’ Media Decoder blog and writes the Oscar-season blog The Carpetbagger.

From New York City we’re joined by Bernard-Henri Levy. A writer, journalist, philosopher and public intellectual, he recently authored a petition, posted at The Huffington Post, calling for Polanski’s immediate release and signed by such luminaries as Milan Kundera, Salman Rushdie, Isabelle Adjani and Isabelle Huppert. His recent books include “Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism” and “American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville.”

Joining us from New York City is Geraldine Ferraro, attorney and former U.S. Congresswoman from New York. She was the first woman to be nominated for vice president by a major party, when she ran on the Democratic ticket with Walter Mondale in 1984. She is now a principal with Blank Rome LLP, a law practice and lobbying firm. She has argued strongly for prosecuting Roman Polanski. In the late 1970s, as assistant district attorney for Queens County, New York, Ferraro led the newly created Special Victims Bureau, prosecuting cases involving rape and child abuse.

Isabella Rossellini, photographed at the 34th Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto, on Thursday, Sept. 10, 2009. (AP)

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Actress, model, and filmmaker Isabella Rossellini has known years as one of the world’s most beautiful, most photographed women.

Five hundred magazine covers — Vogue, Elle, Vanity Fair. Famous screen roles — “Blue Velvet,” “Wild at Heart,” “30 Rock.” Famous parents — Ingrid Bergman, Roberto Rossellini. Famous lovers — David Lynch, Martin Scorsese.

Famous independence of mind.

Now Isabella Rossellini has taken her talents, humor, and iconoclasm to the sex lives of the animal kingdom.

This hour, On Point: Isabella Rossellini on starfish love, environmentalism, and her new series, “Green Porno.”

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Isabella Rossellini joins us from Southampton, NY. An actress, model, filmmaker, author, and screenwriter, she produces, directs, and stars in “Green Porno,” a series of film shorts on sex in nature, for the Sundance Channel.  Daughter of actress Ingrid Bergman and filmmaker Roberto Rossellini, she’s starred in numerous movies, including “Blue Velvet,” “Big Night,” “Fearless,” and many more.

More links:

A “Green Porno” book and DVD set are due out Sept. 22. You can watch a number of the short films on YouTube, like this one, “Preying Mantis”:

And here she is in an unforgettable scene from “Blue Velvet”:

Michael Cera and Charlyne Yi in the new film "Paper Heart."

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Comedian and actress Charlyne Yi — 23 years old — wanted to understand why love blooms for others, and not for her.

Or at least that’s the question she asks in her new faux documentary, “Paper Heart,” in which the real Charlyne Yi plays a fictionalized Charlyne Yi.

She travels across the country, talking to couples, professors, even a romance novelist, to see what she can learn about love. And the more she learns, the more she wonders if she has what it takes — even as she falls for actor Michael Cera, who plays himself.

This hour, On Point: Charlyne Yi and the quest to understand love.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Tom Ashbrook is on vacation.

Guests:

Charlyne Yi joins us from New York. A 23-year-old writer, stand-up comedian, actress, and musician, she’s co-executive producer, co-writer, and star of the new faux documentary “Paper Heart.” In the film she plays a fictionalized version of herself, alongside actor Michael Cera, who plays a fictionalized version of himself. “Paper Heart” won top honors for screenwriting at Sundance.

Also joining us from New York is Jake Johnson. In “Paper Heart” he plays director Nick Jasenovec, the real–life director of the film.

Here’s the film’s trailer:

A scene from Star Trek (2009), with Chris Pine, left, as James T. Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock.

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Suddenly, everything old is new again in the warp-speed world of Star Trek.

Forty-three years after Captain Kirk and Spock and Bones and Scotty and the starship Enterprise first hit television screens in a burst of 1960s deep space idealism, Star Trek is back, in movie theaters, in what critics are calling the “ultimate prequel.”

Kirk’s a baby and bad-boy up-and-comer. Spock’s old and very young. The Enterprise is on its maiden voyage. And it’s pretty great.

This hour, On Point: Leonard Nimoy — Mr. Spock himself — joins us for a sweet fresh blast of Star Trek.

Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from New York is Leonard Nimoy. He played Mr. Spock in the original Star Trek series in the 1960s and in six subsequent feature films.  He returns as Spock Prime in the new Star Trek film.

From New York we’re joined by Steve Daly. An entertainment writer and film critic, he contributes to Newsweek and Entertainment Weekly.  His article “We’re All Trekkies Now” was on the cover of Newsweek’s May 4 issue.

Joining us from Columbia, S.C., is Ina Rae Hark, professor of English and film at the University of South Carolina and author of “Star Trek” in the British Film Institute’s “Classic TV” series.

More links:

The official website for Star Trek (2009) is pretty slick. You can watch the trailer here (from YouTube):

You can watch full episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series, starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, on the CBS YouTube Channel.

Here’s an essay by former Star Trek writer Leonard Mlodinow on making The Next Generation.

Check out “Highly Illogical,” the video for a Leonard Nimoy song first released on his 1967 album “Mr. Spock’s Music from Outer Space.”  You can hear more of his music at his MySpace page.

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L. Frank Baum, the man who wrote “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” famously did it with one pencil, in one great blast.

But the Wizard of Oz didn’t come out of nowhere. Baum was 44. By 1899, he’d worked and failed as a chicken farmer, an actor, an oil-can merchant, a traveling salesman.

He’d ventured west to the Dakotas. Seen wonders. Feared Sitting Bull. Suffered a fierce mother-in-law. Searched for his own True Self.

And then, wrote the great American fairy tale. Of Kansas and Dorothy, Toto and a wizard. He was the JK Rowling of his day. This hour, On Point: Finding Oz.

You can join the conversation. What is it about this story — the book, the movie, Dorothy, Toto, “There’s no place like home” — that gets us going? Can you feel the currents that must have inspired L. Frank Baum? Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Evan Schwartz is a former editor at BusinessWeek and author of “Finding Oz: How L. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story.”  His previous book is “The Last Lone Inventor: A Tale of Genius, Deceit, and the Birth of Television.”

You can watch Evan Schwartz introduce “Finding Oz” and read an excerpt from the book at his website.

More links:

Find an illustrated reprint edition of Baum’s original “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” (1900) using Google Book Search.

The full text of the original edition is online at Project Gutenberg.

And here are some famous scenes from the 1939 movie (from YouTube):

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Long before “Dancing with the Stars” brought rappers and bullriders to the ballroom floor, there was Fred Astaire, bringing song and dance to the big screen.

In musicals from “Top Hat” to “Funny Face” and “Silk Stockings,” he wooed Hollywood’s leading ladies — and viewers around the world — with his elegance, grace, and impeccable dance.

Cultural critic Joseph Epstein brings a fresh take to the story of Fred Astaire, from vaudeville days to enduring icon of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

This hour, On Point: The art and life of the extraordinary Fred Astaire.

You can join the conversation. Did you grow up watching Fred Astaire’s footwork in movies like “Top Hat,” “Swing Time,” and “The Gay Divorcee”? Does “Puttin’ On the Ritz” make you get up and dance?

Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Guests:

Joining us from Evanston, Illinois, is Joseph Epstein, essayist and bestselling author of “Snobbery: The American Way” and “Friendship: An Expose.” His new book, “Fred Astaire,” appears in the “Icons of America” series from Yale University Press.  Read an excerpt (pdf).

From New York, we’re joined by Elizabeth Kendall, dance critic and author of “The Runaway Bride: Hollywood Romantic Comedy in the 1930’s” and, most recently, “Autobiography of a Wardrobe.” She’s a professor at Eugene Lang College, The New School of Liberal Arts.

Here’s Fred Astaire and “Puttin’ on the Ritz” …

Here’s Astaire and Ginger Rogers in “Swing Time” …

And here they are “Dancing Cheek to Cheek”…

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Everybody knows “Gone With the Wind.” Scarlett. Rhett. Mammy. Ashley. Hoop skirts and Tara and “I’ll never be hungry again!”

But film critic Molly Haskell says it’s too easy to brush off Hollywood’s portrayal of Margaret Mitchell’s sprawling classic as antebellum folderol and costume melodrama.

Yes, there’s rape fantasy and romanticized slavery here. But there’s also Scarlett O’Hara as proto-feminist. Hattie McDaniel as the first African-American to win an Oscar. And filmmaking ambition that still dazzles, 70 years on.

This hour, On Point: Molly Haskell and “Gone With the Wind.”

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Molly Haskell joins us from New York.  Born in North Carolina, raised in Richmond, Virginia, she’s a film critic and writer whose work has appeared in Esquire, The Nation, The New York Times, and The New York Review of Books. Her new book is “Frankly, My Dear: ‘Gone With the Wind’ Revisited.”

Read Haskell’s introduction to “Frankly, My Dear.”

And from Los Angeles, we’re joined by Karen Grigsby Bates, Los Angeles-based correspondent for NPR. In a 2008 piece for All Things Considered, she pondered her own interest as a young woman in the complicated character of Scarlett O’Hara.

Photo from Coraline (2009)

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Film director Henry Selick, who brought us “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “James and the Giant Peach,” relishes the darker side of children’s imaginations.

His new animated film, “Coraline,” takes us into a magical and sinister world. Coraline is a plucky young girl, starved for attention from her own parents. Then she discovers a secret passageway to an alternate family, filled with enchanting singing, delicious food, and attentive parents.

But that beautiful world quickly unravels. And that’s when Selick really starts to have fun.

This hour, On Point: Henry Selick on his new film, “Coraline.”

You can join the conversation. Have you seen the film? What did you make of it? Would you take your kids? Tell us what you think.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Tom Ashbrook is on vacation this week.

Guest:

Writer, director and producer Henry Selick joins us from Portland, Oregon. The Los Angeles Times calls “Coraline” “a remarkable feat of imagination, a magical tale with a genuinely sinister edge.”

The film’s rich website allows you to explore Coraline’s world. You can watch the trailer here:

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The rapper Biggie Smalls grew up Christopher Wallace in Brooklyn with a hard-working, middle-class mom and sterling elementary school report cards.

At 17, he dropped out of school. Dealt crack. Did jail time. Made a hip-hop music demo. Signed with Bad Boy Records. Became “Notorious B.I.G.,” famous hip-hop star, and died in a hail of bullets at 24.

A new film looks at the life and death of Biggie Smalls. This hour, On Point: We’ll talk with its director, George Tillman Jr., and with hip-hop scholar Tricia Rose, about looking at Biggie and hip hop in the age of Obama.

You can join the conversation. Were you big on Biggie? Are you still? Have you seen the film? And where does hip hop go when there’s an African American in the White House?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

From Los Angeles, we’re joined by George Tillman Jr., director of the new film “Notorious,” about the life and death of Biggie Smalls. Tillman was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and studied film at Columbia College in Chicago. His 1992 short film “Paula,” about a 17-year-old African-American single mother, won the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Student Academy Award and the Black Filmmakers’ Hall of Fame Award. He went on to direct the feature films “Scenes for the Soul” in 1995, “Soul Food” in 1997, and “Men of Honor” in 2000.

And from Providence, Rhode Island, is Tricia Rose, professor of Africana Studies at Brown University and author of the books “The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop — and Why It Matters” (2008) and “Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America” (1994).

More links:

See the official “Notorious” site. Also worth visiting is MTV’s main B.I.G. page.

 You can watch the film’s trailer here:

A man walks past a poster of "Slumdog Millionaire," posted on a wall in Mumbai, India, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2009. India's movie-mad millions have not yet seen "Slumdog Millionaire," but this Mumbai-based fairy tale, which opens here next week, is already the toast of Bollywood. (AP)

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It was “Slumdog Millionaire” mania at the Golden Globe awards this week. Best drama, best director, best screenplay, best score.

And all that for a film made on a shoestring, by a British director, with a slew of first-time actors, in the slums of Mumbai.

Director Danny Boyle made his name with the down and dirty “Trainspotting.” Screenwriter Simon Beaufoy we know from “The Full Monty.”

But “Slumdog Millionaire” is something new. Wild Dickens in boomtown India. A surprise smash in America.

This hour, On Point: An Indian take, and your reviews, on “Slumdog Millionaire.”

You can join the conversation. Have you seen it? The slums? The torture? The city on steroids? The love? What did you make of the story of a boy from the hard side of Mumbai? Is this the India you know?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

From New York, we’re joined by Aseem Chhabra, entertainment writer and columnist for the Mumbai Mirror. He’s interviewed director Danny Boyle, female lead Freida Pinto, and Slumdog’s Golden Globe-winning score composer A.R. Rahman. He gives the film a big thumbs-up.

And from Seattle, Bollywood maven Nupur Kohli. Her radio show “Jhankar” covers the Indian film industry every week in the USA.

More links:

Here’s the official site for “Slumdog Millionaire.”  And you can watch the trailer courtesy of YouTube here:

Clockwise from top left: Nicole Kidman in "Australia," Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in "Revolutionary Road," Tom Cruise in "Valkyrie," and Jeffrey Wright in "Cadillac Records."

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Clint Eastwood walks tall one last time. Meryl Streep is one tough nun. Beyonce and Mos Def jam it up in old Chicago blues.

Hollywood’s holiday movie rush is about to break on us. “Gran Torino.” “Doubt.” “Cadillac Records,” and a whole lot more.

A Hollywood Frost interviews a Hollywood Nixon. Tom Cruise rides as a Nazi rebel in “Valkyrie.” “Titanic” lovers Leo DeCaprio and Kate Winslet are off the boat in “Revolutionary Road.” We’ve got “Milk” and “Australia,” “Slumdog Millionaire” and Brad Pitt as Benjamin Button.

This hour, On Point: We’ll talk with top critics on the holiday haul at the movies.

You can join the conversation. What’s the year-end film you’ve already loved? What are you looking forward to? Are the movies still our escape in hard times — or are they too expensive? Tell us what you think.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

With us in our studio is Ty Burr, film critic for The Boston Globe. He blogs at Movie Nation.

And joining us from Pasadena, Calif., is Claudia Puig, film critic for USA Today.

Director Mike Leigh at the premiere of "Happy-Go-Lucky" outside the Glasgow Film Theatre in April 2008. (Photo: Stuart Crawford)

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British director and screenwriter Mike Leigh has made a career just as far from Hollywood as he could get. Forget the divas, the starlets, the million-dollar-a-day actors. Mike Leigh works differently.

His films are gritty and urban. Sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, always looking to portray everyday people at work and at home in the drama of something like real life. From a 1950s housewife who doubles as an abortionist in “Vera Drake,” to a young black woman who seeks out her white birth mother in “Secrets & Lies,” Mike Leigh’s films make you think.

This time out, he’s making us think about smiling, laughing compassion as a principled stand. This hour, we talk with director Mike Leigh about his far-from-Hollywood life in film, and his latest release, “Happy-Go-Lucky.”

You can join the conversation. What Mike Leigh movies have spoken to you? “Naked” … “Life Is Sweet” … “Vera Drake”? How about his upbeat new film “Happy-Go-Lucky?” Share your thoughts.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Mike Leigh, joins us from London. He’s been making movies for 35 years and has been nominated for five Oscars. He won the Best Director award at Cannes for his 1993 film, “Naked.” The Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday calls the heroine of his new film, “Happy-Go-Lucky,” “this year’s most unforgettable and even revolutionary screen protagonist…. at a time when — in Hollywood, at least — violence, bleakness and pessimism are continually confused with moral seriousness.”

The official “Happy-Go-Lucky” website is suitably upbeat and there’s even a “daily dose of happiness” widget which you can watch here:

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Filmmaker Wayne Wang looks on during an interview in Hong Kong in March 2008. (AP)

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Hong Kong-born director Wayne Wang was named after his father’s favorite actor, John Wayne.

He knows his way around Hollywood and mainstream Hollywood films. He directed Jennifer Lopez in “Maid in Manhattan” and Queen Latifah in “The Last Holiday.”

But Wayne Wang made his name spanning cultures in “Chan Is Missing” and “The Joy Luck Club.” Now he’s back, in indie-director mode, with new takes on the Chinese and Chinese-American experience.

This hour, On Point: Wayne Wang on his latest films, “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and “The Princess of Nebraska.”

You can join the conversation. Have you followed the work of Wayne Wang? Do you go for his big studio productions? Or his indie instincts? Share your thoughts.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Wayne Wang joins us from San Francisco. He’s directed eighteen films, from “Chan is Missing” and “The Joy Luck Club,” from Amy Tan’s novel, to “Smoke” by Paul Auster and the J-Lo hit “Maid in Manhattan.” His latest pair of films, “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers” and “The Princess of Nebraska,” are out this fall — “Prayers” to the art house circuit and “The Princess of Nebraska” to a YouTube debut.

And from Oakland, California, we’re joined by author Yiyun Li. “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers” and “The Princess of Nebraska” were adapted from her 2006 short story collection, “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,” which won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the PEN/Hemingway Award. She’s a professor of creative writing at Mills College.

You can watch “The Princess of Nebraska” here courtesy of the YouTube Screening Room:

And you can watch the trailer for “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers” here:

Paul Newman in the film"Cool Hand Luke."

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As a young man, actor and Hollywood star Paul Newman was so beautiful that his beauty itself — the blue eyes, the sculpted planes — became a danger to his ambition to be more than a pretty face.

By his life’s end, late last week, of cancer at 83, that was a battle Paul Newman had won, hands down.

He played the alcoholic, the convict, the cowboy, the lover, the lawyer — in “Cool Hand Luke,” “The Hustler,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Verdict,” “Nobody’s Fool,” and more. He helped define American manhood, and reached out of the move theater deep into the tough parts of life: in his ground-breaking work for charity and sick kids, Newman carved a unique path in art and activism.

We’re not finished thinking about him and his career. This hour, On Point: remembering icon, actor and activist Paul Newman.

You can join the conversation. Did his blue eyes make you weak in the knees way back when? In what film? Did his career help you understand what it means to mature — in art, in life?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Mark Harris, columnist at Entertainment Weekly and author of “Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood.”

See this special photo gallery at EW.com, annotated by Harris, showing Newman in 30 of his unforgettable roles.

Jeanine Basinger, chair of the film studies department at Wesleyan University and author of “The Star Machine.”

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly.

More links:

“Paul Newman, a Magnetic Titan of Hollywood, Is Dead at 83″ — The New York Times obituary of Paul Newman from Sept. 27.

Newman’s Own, the hugely successful premium food company started by Paul Newman in 1982 — which donates all profits and royalties after taxes for educational and charitable purposes — offers its tribute to Newman’s life and legacy. The company’s motto: “Shameless exploitation in pursuit of the Common Good.”

Watch the scene from “The Hustler” (1961) in which Newman’s character Fast Eddie plays the final game against Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason):

Tadanobu Asano as Genghis Khan in Picturehouse's movie "Mongol"

Genghis Khan rose from nomadic obscurity in outback Mongolia to build, with his descendants, the biggest contiguous empire the world has ever seen.

He did it on horseback, with swords and arrows. In conquered lands from Eastern Europe to the Middle East to Beijing, his name became synonymous with hordes and plunder.

A new film, “Mongol,” in Mongolian and out of Russia, paints the youth of Genghis Khan, his softer side and the trials that made the conqueror. It’s stunning.

This hour, On Point: Mongol Genghis Khan, the first great globalizer, and the story of his rise.

- Tom Ashbrook

* * *

Guests:

Morris Rossabi, professor of Mongolian and inner Asian history at Columbia University

John Man, historian and author of “Genghis Khan: Life, Death, and Resurrection”

Sergei Bodrov, award-winning director of “Mongol”

Learn more about the new movie “Mongol”

Director John Sayles on the set of his movie "Honeydripper." (Photo by Jim Sheldon)

John Sayles is that rare thing in Hollywood. The “Godfather” of independent cinema in America, he makes the movies he wants to make.

He’s written and directed sixteen so far, movies like “Matewan,” “Lone Star” and “Sunshine State.” They’re small stories with big themes, movies with a social and political conscience.

His newest film, “Honeydripper,” looks at civil rights and rock ‘n roll before anyone ever called them that.

This hour, On Point: John Sayles on his life in film, and what it takes to make independent movies today.

- Guest host Jane Clayson

* * *

Guests:

John Sayles, independent filmmaker and writer. He’s written and directed 16 feature films, including “The Secret of Roan Inish,” “Lone Star,” and “Sunshine State.” His latest film, out on DVD this month, is “Honeydripper.”

Mary Steenburgen, actress

Watch the trailer for the movie “Honeydripper”:

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 Kim Novak.

Hitchcock was a Hollywood hero, but “Vertigo” was a box office dud. Now it’s on many “ten best films of all time” lists. Obsessive. Perverse. Haunting. Bizarre. And, fans say, a masterpiece.

This hour, On Point: Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” at 50.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Dan Auiler, film critic, historian, and co-author with Martin Scorsese of “Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic” and author of “Hitchcock’s Notebooks: An Authorized and Illustrated Look Inside the Creative Mind of Alfred Hitchcock”

Jack Sullivan, director of American Studies at Rider University and author of “Hitchcock’s Music”

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly

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 with “Bonnie & Clyde”, “In the Heat of the Night” and “The Graduate.” Films that captured the American moment, and ushered in a new Hollywood era.

This hour, On Point: The Oscar films of 1967, and the birth of a new Hollywood.

-Jane Clayson

Guests:

Mark Harris, author of “Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood.”

Jack Beatty, “On Point” news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly.

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 of the Caribbean.”

But there were smaller films, too, that stood out from the crowd and impressed the critics. “Waitress,” “Atonement,” “The Namesake.”

Up next, On Point: The movies that stole our hearts — and might just steal the Oscars.

-James Hattori

Guests:

Carrie Rickey, film critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Ty Burr, film critic for The Boston Globe.

David Carr, media critic for The New York Times and author of the “Carpetbagger” blog on the Oscars for the Times website.

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 evildoers. Or does it?

Some have called for a boycott of the film. But Pullman fans say the movie lacks the deeper spiritual meaning of the books.

This hour, On Point: the storm surrounding “The Golden Compass.”

-Jane Clayson

Guests:

Stephen Prothero, chair of the religion department at Boston University and author of “Religious Literacy: What Americans Need to Know.”

Hanna Rosin, contributing editor to The Atlantic Monthly and author of “God’s Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save the Nation.”

Father James Martin, Catholic priest, associate editor of America: The National Catholic Weekly, and author of “My Life With the Saints.”