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After proving immensely popular on page and screen, The Lord of the Rings is about to take another leap. When J.R.R. Tolkien's epic trilogy of fantasy novels makes its debut as a stage production in Toronto, audiences will hear Hobbits and elves sing. Just don't call it a musical, its producer says.

Tapes 'n Tapes' simple pop music treads the line between stupid and clever in a way that's oddly intelligent, not to mention enormously entertaining. The band often mines familiar territory — Talking Heads, Violent Femmes, Pixies — but it infuses those sounds with its own weird sense of mystery and mischief.

The New Standards are making waves by reinterpreting their favorite songs in a jazz mode. John Munson of Semisonic fame plays bass and sings, Chan Poling of the Suburbs plays piano, and Steve Roehm is on vibraphone as they remake songs by the Replacements and the Clash.

Sidney Bechet played soprano saxophone in the early decades of jazz, before John Coltrane popularized the instrument. A new anthology, Mosaic Select: Sidney Bechet, offers listeners a chance to hear Bechet's music, transferred and restored from rare recordings from 1923 to 1947.

The British film Wah-Wah is the latest, but hardly the first, movie title to double up on a word. Bob Mondello explores the history of movies with title titles. (No, that wasn't a typo.)

The music of Frank Loesser has been celebrated and extended by his wife, Jo Sullivan Loesser, since his death in 1969. But her musical relationship with him began earlier, as she starred in the original production of Loesser's The Most Happy Fella.

Actress Keke Palmer is a different kind of child prodigy than the spelling whiz she plays in the film Akeelah and the Bee. The 12-year-old Palmer speaks with Howard Berkes about her acting and singing achievements and her ambitions.

A portrait of a dashing young sea captain often called the "Black Admiral" was supposed to be a centerpiece for an exhibition of art from the Revolutionary War era about black patriots and loyalists -- but there's a white man underneath a layer of black paint.

Los Angeles Times and Morning Edition film critic Kenneth Turan reviews Thank You For Smoking. It is a satirical film about a super-lobbyist for the tobacco industry.

Just in time for the Persian New Year, there's a new English translation of the Shahnameh — the epic "Persian Book of Kings" written over the course of 35 years in the 11th century AD by the poet Abolqasem Ferdowsi.