Dan Lybarger

Thanks to David Simon, ordinary citizens -- or at least the ones with premium cable -- are now more likely to know what a second line is. Simon's HBO show Treme shines a light on the lives of working musicians in New Orleans and gives a new kind of exposure...

Since her 2004 debut album Get Away From Me, musician Nellie McKay has proved herself to be astonishingly versatile. The London-born, New York-raised songstress can change genres during the running time of a single tune.

"Sari" features her rapping to a Bach-like accompaniment, and "I Want to...

In June of 1970, Scanlan's Monthly ran an overview of that year's Kentucky Derby that contained only one paragraph about the actual race. The author neglected to mention which of horses either placed or showed. It's probably no wonder that the magazine folded shortly afterward. It would probably be safe...

Like the teenagers they chronicle in their Oscar-winning documentary Undefeated, directors Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin weren't expected to emerge as winners. The two were up against some formidable competition on Oscar night, from their fellow nominees Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory and Wim Wenders' Pina....

In the 1930s and '40s, Busby Berkeley (1895-1976) staged a series of movie dance numbers that could rival the paintings of Salvador Dali in their outlandishness. His movies were loaded with jaw-dropping optical illusions and wound up influencing everyone from the Coen Brothers to Mel Brooks.

Despite the fact that...

Lou Dobbs' recent warning about the dangers of the new movie Dr. Seuss' The Lorax was too comical to leave unchallenged. Therefore, Bill Pryor, KCActive.com and I all teamed up to make this video on the subject.

Enjoy.

In 1985, German director Wim Wenders was prodded by his girlfriend to watch a performance of choreographer Pina Bausch's eerie Café Müller. As he recalls it now, he dreaded the evening that awaited, not knowing that what he was about to witness would change his movies and his life.

Twenty-seven...

Like a lot of people, I've adored watching reruns of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone and waited eagerly to hear the writer-producer-host's voice informing us that something eerily unexpected was about to happen. With his well-fitting suits and unsettlingly calm delivery, it seemed as if Serling was almost marveling at...

Polish-born director Agnieszka Holland's movies and television shows have often changed the way we look at familiar events. Before 1990, most movies that dealt with World War II often presented the Nazis as monolithic monsters. While it was a lot of fun to see Indiana Jones beat up or outwit...

Having made three acclaimed features since her 1999 debut Ratcatcher, Scottish director Lynne Ramsay has told dark but almost whimsical stories that don't have easy conclusions.

While she's proud of her working class roots, Ramsay speaks over the phone in an almost musical Glasgow drawl that even laryngitis can't...

A little over 20 years ago, if you had your lunch or dinner interrupted by a caller wanting you to fork over on your student loans, I may have been the fellow who wrecked your day. I apologize. You shouldn't have had to hear from me, and it's a safe...

I came neither to
bury Emmerich,
nor do I praise him
for his assault on
establishment thinking.

With Anonymous,
German director
Roland Emmerich
is moving away
from his specialty
of ravaging the world
with scientifically
dubious plagues and
...

Thirty years ago, actress Cassandra Peterson literally landed the role of her life. While she's had turns in Federico Fellini's Roma, Tim Burton's Pee-wee's Big Adventure and even a brief guest spot in last week's episode of Last Man Standing, Peterson will probably always been known as horror movie hostess,...

Oscar-winner Ernest Borgnine makes no secret about his age, but a quick look at his recent schedule makes it easy to wonder if no one has bothered to tell the Connecticut native that he was born Ermes Effron Borgnino in 1917. As he reminded me during the conversation we had...

By the time he died in 2008, Bobby Fischer had proven that chess was more than a simple board game. His takedown of world champion Boris Spassky from the Soviet Union in 1972 grabbed more headlines and more airtime than a little break-in at the Watergate Hotel. The Soviets dominated...

Sean Kirkpatrick's debut film Cost of a Soul is a heavy, dark drama about how crime and drugs make life difficult for two veterans (Chris Kerson, Will Blagrove) returning to north Philadelphia from Iraq. For the 28-year-old rookie director, however, fortune appears to smiling.

The micro-budgeted film opens May 20...

Independent filmmakers often have to double up on jobs. This might explain why writer-director Chris Ordal couldn't meet me one-on-one for an interview at the Planet Sub on 75th. Although he's a University of Kansas alumnus, he's currently living in Los Angeles and needed to a ride from Lawrence, Kan.....

It's rare to find anyone who cheerfully admits to liking attorneys.

On May 6, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, the mind behind Super Size Me and Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, told a crowd of roughly 210 lawyers and journalists in a ballroom of the basement of the InterContinental...

It would be reasonable to expect Scottish actor Dougray Scott to be a gloomy fellow. The 45 year old played a downright dour prince in Ever After and his almost homicidal sultan in the miniseries Arabian Knights was anything but a merry monarch. He played an emotionally fragile code breaker...

When I told Michael Beihn, an actor who has starred in everything from The Terminator to Tombstone, that his writing and directing debut, The Victim, was unrepentantly sleazy, he took it as a compliment.

At a screening for KC FilmFest on April 9, Biehn jokingly...