Bob Mondello
Bob Mondello, who jokes that he was a jinx at the beginning of his critical career — hired to write for every small paper that ever folded in Washington, just as it was about to collapse — saw that jinx broken in 1984 when he came to NPR.
For more than three decades, Mondello has reviewed movies and covered the arts for NPR, seeing at least 300 films annually, then sharing critiques and commentaries about the most intriguing on NPR's award-winning newsmagazine All Things Considered. In 2005, he conceived and co-produced NPR's eight-part series "American Stages," exploring the history, reach, and accomplishments of the regional theater movement.
Mondello has also written about the arts for USA Today, The Washington Post, Preservation Magazine, and other publications, and has appeared as an arts commentator on commercial and public television stations. He spent 25 years reviewing live theater for Washington City Paper, DC's leading alternative weekly, and to this day, he remains enamored of the stage.
Before becoming a professional critic, Mondello learned the ins and outs of the film industry by heading the public relations department for a chain of movie theaters, and he reveled in film history as advertising director for an independent repertory theater.
Asked what NPR pieces he's proudest of, he points to an April Fool's prank in which he invented a remake of Citizen Kane, commentaries on silent films — a bit of a trick on radio — and cultural features he's produced from Argentina, where he and his husband have a second home.
An avid traveler, Mondello even spends his vacations watching movies and plays in other countries. "I see as many movies in a year," he says, "as most people see in a lifetime."
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There's no host, they've abandoned plans for a Best Popular Film category, and they're no longer handing out four awards during commercial breaks. Is anything going right at the Oscars this year?
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Hiccup and Toothless will return to theaters this weekend when the conclusion of the animated How To Train Your Dragon trilogy takes viewers to a hidden world.
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In the interest of cutting the Academy Awards telecast down to three hours, awards in four categories will be presented during commercial breaks, and edited for inclusion later in the broadcast.
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Two movies about communities-in-conflict open in theaters this weekend, and though they come to basically the same conclusion, they could hardly be more different.
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An appreciation of five-time Oscar nominee Albert Finney who played everything from an amorous rogue in Tom Jones to Pope John Paul II. He died Thursday at 82.
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A wedding is disrupted by a kidnapping in Everybody Knows, a film starring Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem, and directed by award-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi of A Separation.
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A look at the most popular group of Oscar contenders in a decade, as well as some surprising omissions.
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M. Night Shyamalan's new movie Glass is the third part of a trilogy that nobody knew was a trilogy until a few months ago.
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Carol Channing, who created iconic parts in the Broadway musicals Hello, Dolly! and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, died Tueday. She was 97.
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National Geographichas named El Ateneo Grand Splendid the top shop in the world. But that's only where the history of the 100-year-old Buenos Aires building, once a palatial theater, begins.
