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Holiday pleasures We Bought a Zoo and The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn are pure entertainments — not high art, but solid family films that just want to show an audience a good time.

David Fincher's English-language The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is less a reinterpretation than a reiteration — a classier, more expensive version of the lurid Swedish film that came before it.

Author Luis Alberto Urrea reminds listeners that the deadline for Round 8 of Three-Minute Fiction is tonight, Sunday, March 25, at 11:59 p.m. ET. All submissions must be received by then to be considered a valid entry in the contest. The story must begin with the sentence: "She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally decided to walk through the door". As always, the story must be 600 words or less. To submit a story, go to npr.org/threeminutefiction.

One Maryland prison is seeing a waiting list for inmates to get into a weekly knitting class. Participants of 'Knitting Behind Bars' learn how to make hats, dolls and other small items. The program's co-founder, Lynn Zwerling, talks with host Michel Martin about how knitting has benefited prisoners.

From a white-knuckle Wall Street chronicle to a modernized Shakespearean war story, the films on David Edelstein's best-of-the-year list tell solid stories new and old.

A Charlie Brown Christmas is all about the true meaning of Christmas, which is not the acquisition of things. It is also now a new thing.

Two Manhattan couples discover the limits of civility after their sons come to blows in a city park. Roman Polanski's black comedy, based on Yasmina Reza's play, serves up a series of curve balls as the four discover their inner animals.

The Pulitzer Prize winner is best known for sharing intimate chapters of her personal life, while shedding light on the black experience in America. She's the first African-American to serve as U.S. Poet Laureate. She speaks with host Michel Martin about her latest work and life, and offers wisdom to young poets.

The director's second holiday-season movie is the World War I-era story of a horse that travels from Britain to the battlefield in France, affecting the lives of British cavalrymen, German soldiers and a French farmer.

Nearly 6,000 original stories were submitted to this round of Three-Minute Fiction. We're on the quest to select just one winner. Until then, we'll be reading a few of the stories that catch our eyes. To see these stories and others go to npr.org/threeminutefiction.