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42:48

In 'Perry Mason,' Matthew Rhys Lives Out His Boyhood Noir Fantasies

Welsh actor Matthew Rhys plays the title role in the new HBO series, Perry Mason. His version of the iconic criminal defense attorney is younger and more hardboiled than the one Raymond Burr played in the popular TV show from the '50s and '60s. The new series focuses on Mason as a divorced private investigator in the early 1930s in Los Angeles — before he became a lawyer.

Interview
50:30

How A Heart Attack Brought Antonio Banderas Closer To 'Pain And Glory'

Banderas' experience following the heart attack informs his performance in the new film, Pain and Glory, directed by Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar. In the film, he plays a screenwriter and director who lives to make movies but has stopped working because he's suffering with physical pain — and pain of the soul.

Actor Antonio Banderas
08:38

Ironic, Informal And Expressive, 'New Rules Of Language' Evolve Online

With all our texting, tweeting and social media posting, billions of people are using typed words for the kind everyday communication that used to happen more often in conversation. A new book argues that we’ve created a unique new language to reproduce the shades of meaning that we used to convey verbally. Our linguist Geoff Nunberg reflects on the new rules of language that he calls chat-speak.

06:32

Opinion: 'Nationalist' Arises, With Myriad Connotations, As The Word Of 2018

President Trump has a penchant for breathing new life into expressions with troubled pasts, like "America first" and "enemy of the people." It's not likely his uses of those phrases will survive his presidency. But he may have altered the political lexicon more enduringly at a Houston rally two weeks before the elections, when he proclaimed himself a "nationalist" and urged his supporters to use the word.

Commentary
06:00

Opinion: U.S. And U.K. Remain United, Not Divided, By Their Common Language

"Great Britain and the United States are two nations separated by a common language." That's the stock witticism, but if you ask me, it gets things backwards. Great Britain and the U.S. are more like two nations united by a divided language — or more precisely, by their mutual obsession with their linguistic differences. For 200 years now, writers from each nation have been tirelessly picking over the language of the other, with a mix of amusement, condescension, derision and horror.

Commentary

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