NPR News

Fred Schepisi knows how to make the kinds of movies almost no one makes anymore. The tragedy is that they don't make audiences like they used to — and Schepisi's latest, The Eye of the Storm, will feel to many viewers like a movie lost in time and space.

That's no reflection on its craftsmanship, which is superb, or on its performances, which are sterling. But this multigenerational character study, based on a novel by Patrick White, requires a little patience: Its rhythms are slack in places, and its pace is definitely leisurely.

From January 1992 to September 2001, Branford Marsalis set the JazzSet pace, hosting 39 new shows a year (now we do 26) from the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band; festivals in Iowa City, Telluride, Pasadena, Mount Hood, Montreal and Brevard, N.C.; the new music festival in Groningen, the Netherlands, and the Havana Jazz Festival in Cuba; clubs from Yoshi's in California to Sculler's and the Regattabar in Boston. WGBH producer Steve Schwartz sent us lots of Boston sets during that first decade, all of them much appreciated.

For an egregious example of a silly product placement, look no further than the CW show The Vampire Diaries, where a character actually says "I Bing'd it" of a search online. But believe it or not, product placement can actually be serious and socially conscious.

Take the Fox comedy Raising Hope. Earlier this year, the show's main character, who'd been a teen mom, caught a high school girl in bed with her boyfriend. "I'm gonna show you where this can lead to!" she screeched. "I'm your ghost of teen pregnancy future!"