Roundup: Pop Culture & the Arts ... Movies, Documentaries and Museum Exhibits

Village shopkeeper bombarded with hate mail over golliwog sales

A woman who runs a village shop dedicated to Enid Blyton has received hate mail after she started selling golliwogs. Viv Endecott has called in the police after receiving a string of complaints from locals. But she has hit back by sticking up an anonymous letter put under her door in the shop window to gauge customers' reaction. Miss Endecott, 47, has sold more than 500 golliwogs in the last six months and claims there is a demand for them.

Mystery of Alexander Selkirk, the real Robinson Crusoe, solved

It may have taken nearly 300 years but archaeologists have finally confirmed the campsite of castaway Alexander Selkirk, thought to be the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe. Cast away on a desert island, surviving on what nature alone can provide, praying for rescue but at the same time fearing the sight of a boat on the horizon. These are the imaginative creations of Daniel Defoe in his famous novel Robinson Crusoe. But the story is believed to be based on t

Raphael's Madonna of the Goldfinch restored

A five-century-old Renaissance painting that was smashed to pieces just 41 years after its creation is to appear on display after a decade of intensive restoration. Raphael's Madonna of the Goldfinch - or Madonna del cardellino as it is known in Italian - was shattered into 17 pieces when the house of its owner collapsed in 1547. The work was just 41 years old. It was nailed together again before being painted over time and again to hide the cracks. A gr

Conservatives set out to win the culture through cinema. Instead, they made campaign ads.

The American Film Renaissance, held in Washington D.C. the first week of October, billed itself as "the only film festival in the world devoted to celebrating America's timeless traditional values like freedom, rugged individualism, and the triumph of the human spirit." In shorthand, AFR is a conservative film festival. During its first wine-and-cheese afterparty, one Washington lawyer aptly reinterpreted AFR's mission statement, saying he hoped the festival "will get Hollywood to

Found: Tomb of the general who inspired 'Gladiator'

Natural disaster makes for great archaelogy. Pompeii and Herculaneum we owe to the fury of Vesuvius – and today Italy's Culture Ministry announced the dramatic discovery of the ruins of the tomb of the general who was the inspiration for the patrician-turned-vengeful gladiator played by Russell Crowe in the film Gladiator, fabulously well preserved thanks to a catastrophic flood. The general in Gladiator, named Maximus Decimus Meridius by the film makers, was a favourite of the phil

Hitler parodies popular on the Internet

This is the premise of more than 100 videos on the Web — the work of satirists who for years have been snatching video and audio from “Downfall,” the 2004 German movie of Hitler’s demise, and doctoring it to tell a range of stories about personal travails and world politics. By adding new English-language subtitles, they transform the movie’s climactic scene, in which Hitler (played by Bruno Ganz) rails against his enemies and reluctantly faces his defeat, into the generic story of a rabid blowh

Wreck of Titanic sister ship finds new destiny as tourist attraction

Nearly 92 years have elapsed since Captain Charles Bartlett, standing in his pyjamas on the bridge of the biggest vessel in the world, the HMHS Britannic, gave the call to abandon ship. It was 8.35am on November 21 1916. The four-funnel ocean liner, built to be even larger and safer than the "unsinkable" Titanic, her ill-fated sister, was listing fast. Bartlett knew the ship was doomed, but on this eerily calm morning as it sailed to collect troops wounded in the first wo

The Baader Meinhof Complex at the London Film Festival

Uli Edel's film covers a scant 10 years of German history. It begins with the 1967 Berlin protests against the Shah of Persia, which left an innocent student, Benno Ohnesorg, shot dead by police. And it ends with the 1977 Mogadishu hijack and the murder of the industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer. What a decade. A brisk - and controversial - tour through these events, it gets off to a barnstorming start. Some terrifically well-staged sequences, mixed with newsreel footage, delineate

Examining the Echoes of Doctor Neutron (Theater)

Either Mike Daisey has impeccable timing — make that positively uncanny timing — or the gods of theater view this writer and performer with unusual benevolence. In his absorbing if uneven new monologue, “If You See Something Say Something,” which opened on Monday night at Joe’s Pub, Mr. Daisey recounts the creation of the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos, N.M., in 1945. At the performance I caught, a low rumbling shook the floor just as Mr. Daisey described the white-knuckle moment o

Movie Planned About Muhammad

The life of the Prophet Muhammad will be the subject of a new biographical film, Reuters reported. The film, titled “The Messenger of Peace,” will be a remake of the 1977 movie “The Message,” which starred Anthony Quinn as Muhammad’s uncle and was directed by Moustapha Akkad. In “The Message,” Muhammad is never depicted on screen, but is heard in off-camera dialogue. “We have only the utmost respect for Akkad’s work, but technology in cinema has advanced since the 1970s and this latest project w

A history lesson in video games

The UK's first official national video game archive has been launched in a bid to preserve the history of gaming. The archive has been set up in partnership between Nottingham Trent University and the National Media Museum in Bradford in the north of England. The gaming industry is now worth an estimated £22bn globally and steps are needed in order to record its development. The archive will be housed at the National Media Museum in Bradford and will include cons

A new TV show tells the colonial history of Australia from an indigenous point of view

As an Australian who experienced living in London, I understand there are those Britons who assume that Australia is a racist nation. As such, I feel compelled to report back to the motherland, who colonised this continent of indigenous nations more than 200 years ago, about a recent development with the potential to shift the Australian consciousness. First Australians is a new television series commissioned by SBS, Australia's multicultural broadcaster. It tells the colonial histo

German Libraries Hold Thousands of Looted Volumes

Hundreds of thousands of book stolen by the Nazis are still in German libraries. A few librarians are acting like detectives, searching for the books and hoping to return them to the former owners or their families. However, many libraries have shown little interest in the troubling legacy tucked away on their shelves. Book, books, nothing but books. Detlef Bockenkamm is walking along a long shelf in the storage room at Berlin's Central and Regional Library. Suddenly he stops and sa

Babylon exhibition at the British Museum

No city has been demonised quite like Babylon, nor any king so denounced as the incarnation of evil as Nebuchadnezzar. Neither the scriptures nor the myths have spared them: for more than 2,000 years Babylon has been a byword for vice, excess and well-deserved ruin while legend has created a ruler consumed by pride, folly and cruelty. Yet Babylon was once the cultured capital of a flourishing empire, majestic in its architecture, rich in works of art and peopled by thinkers who pio

Waltz with Bashir: an animated film about the 1982 Lebanon war

He had served in the army, either as a full-time soldier or as a reservist, for 22 years when he finally decided he wanted out. In 2003, Ari Folman, who had just turned 40, asked his commanders in the Israel Defence Forces to release him from the obligation to do a month's military service every year. They agreed - "so long as you go to the army therapist and talk about everything you went through". Folman, already an acclaimed film-maker and screenwriter whose service con

Moby-Dick - a modern tragedy

Are we witnessing the American Götterdammerung? The United States is the ultimate land of optimistic promise, but it also gave birth to quintessentially pessimistic tragedy: Moby-Dick. Nearly all monster stories depend for their success on Jack killing the Giant, Beowulf or St George slaying the Dragon, Harry Potter triumphing over the basilisk. That is their inner grammar, and the whole shape of the story leads towards it. Moby-Dick satisfyingly reverses the formula.

A masterpiece's renaissance: Raphael's 'Madonna of the Goldfinch' returns after painstaking 10-year restoration

After 10 years of painstaking study and restoration that tested both cutting edge technology and human patience, one of the greatest masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance is returning to the public. Raphael's 'Madonna of the Goldfinch' is a survivor. The 107 cm by 77 cm oil on wood, showing the Madonna with two children caressing a goldfinch bird, has outlived everything from the collapse of a house in 1547 that shattered it to the ravages of time and the mistakes of

'Work of the Gods' on display in the UK

A collection of gold artefacts excavated from a Bronze Age grave near Stonehenge is to go on show in the Wiltshire Heritage Museum for the first time in over 25 years. One of the pieces, a decoration for the handle of a dagger, was put aside in the desk drawer of an archaeological professor in the 1960s, only to be 'unearthed' again recently. As well as this collection of gold pins, there are decorative items such as a gold lozenge and a gold belt-hook, as well as a bronze axe head

Jefferson's hidden slave legacy told on radio

[Allan Little's programme on Thomas Jefferson, America's First Principles,will be broadcast on BBC World Service radio from Sunday 26 October.] Thomas Jefferson's home at Monticello is a place of pilgrimage for Americans of every political stripe. Thousands come every day. They stand on the terrace and look down on the forested green plains of Virginia. They gaze in awe at Jefferson's little chess set, where he sat, 200 years ago, with his

Zeppelins return to the skies in San Francisco

Zeppelins, the giant floating airships used to carry passengers and drop bombs until the 1930s, haven't been seen in American skies for more than 70 years. Now, a California company is bringing the iconic aircraft back to the United States, with plans to offer aerial tours of the San Francisco Bay area in a newly built zeppelin. It's one of just three in the world; the others are in Germany and Japan. Airship Ventures Inc.'s zeppelin arrived in the Bay Area on Saturday