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Paddy Keenan is an Irish musician descended from a long line of traveling pipers. In the 1970s, Keenan cofounded the influential group the Bothy Band. The group added driving rhythms to traditional Irish music. On the CD The Long Grazing Acre, Keenan plays the Irish bagpipes. Keenan discusses his music with NPR's Melissa Block.

The latest action movie, Tears of the Sun, finds actor Bruce Willis portraying a veteran officer of a Navy SEAL unit in Africa who finds himself conflicted between following military orders and his own conscience. Los Angeles Times and Morning Edition film critic Kenneth Turan says the film is actually a humanitarian action flick.

At eight-foot-two, he's easily the biggest star in children's television. But it's a small world inside the costume of Sesame Street's Big Bird. Caroll Spinney, who also performs Oscar the Grouch, discusses the evolution of Big Bird with NPR's Bob Edwards. See a video clip of Spinney's characters.

Austin, Texas, bills itself as the music capital of the world, and this is the week it earns that title. Austin hosts the 17th annual South by Southwest music festival. Every stage in the city is throbbing with live music, and artists are even playing on the street. Hear NPR's Rick Karr.

Director Gurinder Chadha's hit British film Bend It Like Beckham is now attracting attention in the United States. It tells the story of Jess, a young Indian-British girl who wants to play soccer like her idol, sports celebrity David Beckham. NPR's Jacki Lyden reports.

Poor CD sales and Internet theft of song files spell tough times for the mainstream music business, but it's a different story for musicians who reject the conventional "record label" business model. For these artists, the same trends that hurt the conventional recorded-music industry prove to be a boon for independent musicians and producers. Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers reports.

Organizers of the Academy Awards say that the March 23 presentation show will go on, despite the possibility of war with Iraq. And the NCAA says its men's and women's basketball tournaments, which start this week, will go on as scheduled. NPR's Renee Montagne reports.

The children's book Holes arrives in movie theaters. The Newbery Medal-winning author, Louis Sachar, also wrote the screenplay. Andrew Davis, who also directed The Fugitive, works with a young cast plus grown-up stars Sigourney Weaver and Jon Voight. NPR's Lynn Neary reports.

Literature aimed at adolescents is difficult to translate to film. Yet, a buzz builds around the film version of a Newbery Award-winning novel. Like the book, the movie is called Holes. NPR's Bob Mondello says it has a shot at being as big a hit on screen as it is at bookstores.

The Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film is Germany's Nowhere in Africa, a fact-based story of refugees in a time of war. Now showing on U.S. screens, the movie follows a German-Jewish family that fled to Kenya in 1938 to escape the Nazis. Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan offers a review.