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New movies being released are increasingly violent, offering graphic views of death and gore. NPR's Bob Mondello surveys the current blood offerings in theaters, and analyzes why anti-violence advocates don't seem to be seeing red.

Hollywood studios back away from a ban on sending promotional videos to Oscar voters. The ban was meant to stop piracy, but it angered many who said it would have given studio films an advantage over smaller, independent features. NPR's Rick Karr reports.

Entertainer Lily Tomlin will be the recipient of this year's Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. In an interview with NPR's Scott Simon, she covers a career full of wry observations on the human comedy. Watch video of many of her classic performances.

Ridley Scott's chilling 1979 space horror film Alien is being re-released to theaters on Halloween in a new director's cut. Weekend Edition film commentator Kevin Murphy offers a review.

In the new Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Daffy Duck sets a plot in motion that involves secret agents, out-of-work stuntmen, half of Las Vegas -- and Steve Martin as the head of the Acme Corporation. NPR's Bob Mondello says the cartoon comes with post-modern antics and nearly non-stop jokes.

Artist and humorist Bruce McCall has a new collection of drawings, All Meat Looks Like South America. McCall uses his skills as a draftsman to create unlikely cultural designs, such as "Golf Carts of the Third Reich." He says he grew up seeing schematic drawings of the future in magazines such as Popular Mechanics, and uses that aesthetic in his art. Hear NPR's Robert Siegel.

NPR's Robert Siegel talks with Maggie Balistreri, author of the The Evasion English Dictionary. The book describes the use of language to evade speaking directly. Balistreri defines the many subtly different ways Americans pepper our speech with euphemisms and oblique references.

Technically speaking, the Greek film Hard Goodbyes: My Father is a contender for the Oscars and the Golden Globes. But with runs in only two U.S. theaters, the odds are against it. The film is a coming-of-age story about a 10-year-old boy living in Athens, and Liz Yuan liked it enough to try her hand at distributing it. Hear NPR's Michele Norris.

A new version of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf is now available in the United States. The music comes in a boxed set with a storybook illustrated by Bono. The rendition does away with the orchestra and instead brings the story to life with a mandolin, banjo, accordion, and percussion of all kinds. NPR's Melissa Block talks with musician Gavin Friday. (Publisher: Bloomsbury USA)

Years ago, the tombstones of Richard Hickock and Perry Smith -- the two killers portrayed in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood -- mysteriously disappeared. Now they have resurfaced at a museum that won't put them on display. Harriet Baskas reports on a Kansas museum's dilemma as part of the "Hidden Treasures" series.