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Actor and director Albert Brooks trolls for laughs in Asia and the Middle East in Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. Playing a version of himself, Brooks is recruited by the U.S. government to help foster a deeper understanding of the region. A comedy tour ensues.

Ed Gordon talks to two filmmakers about their film, Favela Rising -- an unflinching look at the hard lives of those who live in one Brazilian ghetto.

Comedian Albert Brooks plays himself in the film Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, which he also wrote and directed. Brooks tells Steve Inskeep about his "government-sponsored" mission to find out what makes Muslims laugh.

Record executive Simon Cowell is a judge on the talent show American Idol, which begins a new season this month. The hour-long show is a spin-off of one Cowell helped create in Britain, Pop Idol.

A new film production of the Charles Dickens novel Bleak House will make its debut on PBS Sunday night. Gillian Anderson, of X-Files fame, plays Lady Honoria Dedlock. She tells Scott Simon about her role.

The idea that priests, like all men, are not perfect might seem like a tame one. But NBC's effort to translate the premise into a TV series has brought protests that the show is anti-Christian. Jack Kenny is the creator and executive producer of The Book of Daniel.

Teller, the usually silent half of the magician duo Penn and Teller, reviews the book, The Glorious Deception, by Jim Steinmeyer. It's a biography of the magician known to audiences as Chung Ling Soo, who Teller says was a genuine enigma.

Film critic Kenneth Turan reviews what Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman's calls his final movie, Saraband. The film features a divorced couple from one of his earlier works.

Nelson George, a prolific writer and critic of black America, has made a documentary based on his best-selling book Post-Soul Nation. The new film, Smart Black People, profiles African-American personalities who left their stamp on America in the 1980s.

His film, Kinsey, is currently out on DVD. It's about the scientist Alfred Kinsey, whose pioneering research in the 1940s and 1950s examined human sexuality. Condon interviewed many of Dr. Kinsey's colleagues before writing the script.