The Frame

After the 2016 Presidential election, the singer/songwriter took a cross-country train trip and then wrote a song cycle of character sketches and personal reflections; Taylor Swift's recording contract is about to expire, giving her a world of options; Boots Riley's "Sorry to Bother You" is one of the year's biggest critical hits.

Director Chris Weitz's film 'Operation Finale' tells the amazing story of the capture of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann; fans begin to pay their respects to the Aretha Franklin at the Museum of African American History in Detroit; and Cuban jazz pianist Dayramir Gonzalez is a rising star.

Breaking down the scene between Michelle Yeoh and her would be daughter-in-law, Constance Wu; documentary filmmaker Steve James spent a year inside a Chicago high school for the series, “America to Me”; remembering playwright and screenwriter Neil Simon, who died at the age of 91.

The former "Gilmore Girls" co-star has an Emmy nomination for her role in the dystopian world of "The Handmaid's Tale"; Harvey Weinstein's legal woes seem to be mounting; Aneesh Chaganty, director and co-writer of the film, "Searching," has created a hyper-modern day thriller.

On Today's Show:

The co-star and Emmy nominee says she isn't daunted by challenges being faced by the cast; ever seen James Corden and friends performing a musical on the streets outside CBS on Fairfax? That's the work of Emmy-nominated choreographer Chloe Arnold.

The Emmy-nominated director of "Atlanta" talks about his collaborations with Donald Glover, his love of the Coen brothers and how the show set out to accurately portray life in urban Georgia; in the documentary, "What Haunts Us," Paige Goldberg Tolmach examines multiple suicides at her prep school alma mater; director Jesse Peretz and actor Chris O'Dowd talk about their movie, "Juliet, Naked."

Sarah Paulson has a lead actress Emmy nomination for "American Horror Story: Cult" — the seventh season of the anthology series; Bing Liu's videos of his skateboarding pals turned into the intimate documentary, "Minding the Gap."

Wayne Kramer, guitarist and leader of the Detroit rock band MC5, discusses his new memoir, "The Hard Stuff: Dope, Crime, the MC5, and My Life of Impossibilities"; Amazon is in the running to buy Landmark Theatres.

The iconic singer has died at the age of 76. We hear from her longtime bass player, Chuck Rainey; why has a documentary about her landmark 1972 performance at a Baptist church in Los Angeles never been released?; Daphne Brooks, a professor of African American Studies and Theater Studies at Yale University on the transcendent power of Aretha's voice.

Hello from Park City! Host John Horn, editor Darby Maloney and producer Michelle Lanz check in to talk about a few of the standout films they've seen so far, as well as which filmmakers you can look forward to hearing on The Frame in the coming weeks.

The Frame host John Horn reports from Sundance on the festival's opening night and he interviews director Sydney Freeland (“Deidra and Laney Rob a Train”) and the husband-and wife team of Janicza Bravo and Brett Gelman ("Lemon").

Sundance's new initiative, "The New Climate," features documentaries that are focused on the environment; Solange Knowles dissects “Cranes In the Sky” from her breakthrough album, “A Seat at the Table.”

Composer Nicholas Britell talks about combining classical music with hip-hop production techniques to create his compelling score; the 2017 Sundance festival is expecting nearly 50,000 movie lovers, Hollywood executives, filmmakers and entertainment journalists.

After John Lewis was criticized by President-elect Donald Trump, the Congressman's grahic novel trilogy about the Civil Rights Movement shot to the top of Amazon's best-seller list; Netflix has a new version of the Norman Lear sitcom that puts a 21st Century spin on matters.

Andrew Garfield, who can be seen in two current films,"Silence" and "Hacksaw Ridge," reflects on Meryl Streep's Golden Globes speech and opens up about how he finds meaning in his work as an artist; Oscar-winning editor William Goldenberg shares secrets from the editing room; and a new exhibit at the J. Paul Getty Museum has artists turning their attention to the news as a muse.

News that filmmaker George Lucas will build a museum for his personal art collection in Los Angeles has a lot of people talking about "Star Wars" but this passion project will house more than memorabilia, says L.A. Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne; and Jeffrey Kahane, the musician and conductor who led the LA Chamber Orchestra for two decades now leads the Lift Every Voice music festival which challenges racial and religious injustice.

A new study reports that there is more violence in PG-13 films than ever — even more than in R-rated movies; you may not recognize Finn Wittrock by name, but you surely know his face from FX's "American Horror Story" to big films such as "The Big Short;" Sarah Megan Thomas is adapting her female-centric film, "Equity," for the small screen.

The new comic book anthology, "Love Is Love," was curated by Marc Andreyko, who marshaled an army of artists in the wake of the 2016 massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando; meet a music supervisor who worked with Issa Rae and Solange Knowles on HBO's "Insecure;" the Producers Guild of America makes its picks for the best films of 2016.

Is Hollywood pushing a liberal agenda through the entertainment it makes? If you watched Meryl Streep’s speech at the Golden Globes last night you might think so. Mary McNamara of the LA Times and James Poniewozik of the New York Times join The Frame to discuss; Then theater director Pam MacKinnon shares how she turned the beloved film "Amélie" into a stage musical with "Hamilton" star Phillipa Soo in the lead.

Benj Pasek and Justin Paul are on a roll: they wrote song lyrics for "La La Land" and the music and lyrics for the Broadway hit, "Dear Evan Hansen"; more than 3,500 companies are debuting their futuristic products at the annual, massive technology trade show.

Actor and documentary filmmaker Fisher Stevens jumped at the chance to make a documentary about the iconic showbiz mother-and-daughter, Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher; Sorting through the Jan/Feb TV premieres and comebacks to watch for in 2017 with TV critic Whitney Friedlander.