Special guests scheduled for the roster of interviews and masterclasses include Dustin Hoffman, Kenneth Anger, Paul Verhoeven and Tim Burton, who will be discussing the 3D version of his 1994 hit The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Now on BBC2 and scheduled to be broadcast in America as a two-hour special on March 1st, the episodes combine archive footage with a superb roster of interviews, including Sergei Ivanov, Mr Putin's former defence secretary; Condoleezza Rice (who evidently got along with Mr Ivanov); Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's president, heard speaking four languages; and many others.
The roster of celebrities interviewed is a veritable theater hall of fame; Judi Dench, Arthur Miller, Vanessa Redgrave, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Peter Brook, George C. Wolfe, Peter Hall and Julie Taymor all agreed to talk.
This year's CHF, Chicago's own take on the New Yorker Festival, boasted an incredible roster of events including interviews, concerts, readings and practically every conceivable combination of the three imaginable.
From a roster of 300 people interviewed on three continents Ms. Smith depicts 19 characters, including a rodeo bull rider, a New Orleans doctor during Hurricane Katrina, former Gov. Ann Richards of Texas and the cyclist Lance Armstrong.
And Mr. Bergman interviews an impressive roster of Plame-case players to comment on how events played out: Joseph Wilson, the former Time Inc. chief Norman Pearlstine and key executives and journalists at The Washington Post and The New York Times.
Physicians were told that participation involved generating a roster of their patients with asthma, completing 3 self-administered interviews over 2 years, and willingness to be randomly assigned to one of three study conditions.
One such robot, Matlda, has been programmed to conduct 25-minute interviews in which she works through a roster of up to 76 questions.
"We have a lot of need," Robert Greenblatt, NBC's top entertainment executive, said in an interview by phone, but he called the roster of new shows "an embarrassment of riches".
And comparing the "key members" identified by the Bloomberg administration with people in similar posts in the past yields striking results: 79 percent white under Mr. Bloomberg, about 75 percent white under Mr. Giuliani, and 55 percent under Mr. Dinkins, according to a review of earlier city rosters and interviews with former officials.
ESPN and ESPN2's roster of 14 bowl games have averaged 3 38 each, including pregame and postgame studio shows and interviews.
