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Factotum is a delicate melding of a trio of different sensibilities you wouldn't think would naturally cohere. It gracefully combines the bleak world of the despairing poet and novelist Charles Bukowski with the droll point of view of Norwegian director Bent Hamer.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews Half Nelson, starring Ryan Gosling. Gosling stars as a young inner-city junior high school teacher who develops a drug habit, and the friendship he strikes up with one of his students.

Matt Dillon, who recently starred in the comedy You, Me and Dupree, next plays the lead role in Factotum, based on a novel by Charles Bukowski. Dillon was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in the film Crash.

Hollywoodland is an ambitious film that succeeds up to a point, but no further. It's a reasonable facsimile of film noir, but it's also an overly derivative piece of work that thinks it is doing and saying more than it is. And this despite a subtle and effective performance by, of all people, Ben Affleck.

Ever since Chuck Berry, St. Louis has been producing rock music that defies the prevailing norm. But is it possible that in 1969 it also produced America's Beatles, a band no one ever heard? Rock historian Ed Ward investigates the curious case of the Aerovons.

The newest art museum in Paris is dedicated to non-European pieces, mostly from Africa and Asia. But what might have been a monument to multiculturalism faces criticism for segregating such works into a museum of "the other."

Thursday begins the five-day Indian festival Durga Puja, the largest annual celebration for Bengali Hindus. Commentator Sandip Roy contrasts celebrating the holiday as a child in Calcutta and as an adult in California.

The new film The Queen looks at England's royal family following the death of Princess Diana. It's directed by Stephen Frears and features Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II. The movie opened the New York Film Festival on Friday. NPR critic Bob Mondello has a review.

Wild things usually lurk in Maurice Sendak's books, and his newest, Mummy?, is no exception. In Sendak's first pop-up book, a little boy encounters Frankenstein, the Mummy and other monsters as he searches for his mother. The acclaimed author and artist talks about why he creates worlds of danger for his young characters.

There's rock music -- you know, the kind inaugurated by Chuck Berry in the 1950s -- and then there's the real rock music, which started out on actual rocks in England in the 1800s. Paul Collins has written about the phenomenon of early rock bands in The Believer magazine, and talks about his findings.