Pat Dowell

Ancient Rome and Greece seem to be the hot topics for major motion pictures once again. Troy, with Brad Pitt as Achilles, opens in theaters next weekend. Alexander, directed by Oliver Stone, opens this summer. Pat Dowell reports on why filmmakers find the ancient venues so appealing.

The Trilogy, the latest project from French actor-director Lucas Belvaux, consists of three films with distinct plots populated by the same cast of characters. The project has already won France's top critics prize. Each film -- a crime drama, a romantic farce and a forlorn love story -- will open sequentially in U.S. theaters over the course of three weeks. Pat Dowell reports.

In 1831, Nat Turner led a slave rebellion in Southampton County, Va., that killed more than 50 white people. An independent film debuting on PBS examines The Confessions of Nat Turner, William Styron's controversial 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Turner's alleged jailhouse statements and other versions of Turner's story. Pat Dowell reports.

The Return of the King, the last film in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, leads the Academy Awards race with 11 nominations, including best picture and best director. Master and Commander gets 10 Oscar nods. With her film Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola becomes the first American woman to be nominated for best director. Hear NPR's Bob Edwards and reporter Pat Dowell.

Paycheck, in theaters Dec. 25, is the seventh sci-fi movie based on the bizarre, reality-twisting books and stories by Philip K. Dick. The troubled author died in 1982, before seeing Hollywood turn his work into films such as Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report. Pat Dowell reports.

Bob Hope, master of the one-liner and world-famous comedian, dies of pneumonia at 100. A star in vaudeville, radio, television and film, Hope helped define the monologue. He was best known for entertaining U.S. troops at bases around the world. Pat Dowell has a remembrance.

Screen legend Katharine Hepburn, who starred in more than 50 films and projected the ideals of independence and intelligence to generations of women, dies at 96. Hepburn won a record four best actress Oscars in her 60-year career, for her roles in Morning Glory, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Lion in Winter and On Golden Pond. Hear Pat Dowell.

NPR's Pat Dowell reports on Whale Rider, the latest movie from the Maori people of New Zealand.

Gregory Peck, one of the enduring stars of Hollywood's golden age, dies at his home in Los Angeles. He was 87. More often than not, Peck played the hero. He won an Oscar for his 1963 role as the quietly courageous defense lawyer Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird. Pat Dowell offers a remembrance. (Please note this correction: "Listeners to the first feed of our program last Thursday may have heard an error in our obituary for Gregory Peck. Pat Dowell placed the story of To Kill a Mockingbird in Mississippi. That led Chuck Bearman, chief of staff in the office of Mississippi's secretary of state, to write. As he pointed out -- It was not set in Mississippi, but in Alabama.")

Pat Dowell profiles Canadian Director Guy Maddin, whose new movie, Pages from a Virgin's Diary, is a screen adaptation of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's production of Dracula. Maddin describes his movie making technique as "primitive," because he strives to give his story telling a dream-like effect. He was motivated to make this movie by curiosity about elements of female sexuality and male jealousy in the Dracula story.