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

Civil War photographs capture the horror of fighting for liberty

A city lies in charred ruins, empty windows bleak oblongs of light in fragile orphaned walls. It might easily be mistaken for a German city in 1945 but this is Richmond, Virginia, in April 1865. Its tall slivers of brick rising from an ashen wasteland are the remains of factories set alight by the Confederacy as it vacated its capital. During the American civil war the southern "rebel" states fought to save slavery, and Richmond was their seat of government. Its evacuation

Lost Queen Elizabeth I portrait found in attic

A lost portrait of a young Elizabeth I that was discovered in the attic of a country house has intrigued historians after X-rays revealed that it was painted over an earlier picture of the monarch. The painting, which had lain unnoticed in the dirty loft for more than a century, depicts the Queen as a pale, pious and austere young woman, and is one of the few pictures to show the 16th century royal in the early years of her reign. Elizabeth, who is dressed in simple bla

Gay history museum shows current debate is nothing new: Marriage issue made headlines even 50 years ago

WEST HOLLYWOOD, CALIF. — They read like dispatches from the controversy over Proposition 8, the current ballot initiative that would ban same-sex marriage in California. "Homosexual Marriage?" asks one magazine headline in large white type. Another takes a more aggressive approach: "Let's Push Homophile Marriage," accompanied by an illustration of muscled men in amorous poses. But a closer look at these magazine covers reveals something rather unexpe

Is the controversial book, The Jewel of Medina, any good?

A romantic telling of the life of one of the wives of Islam's prophet has caused controversy among some Muslims - and its publication has been indefinitely postponed in the UK amid fears of a violent reaction. But is The Jewel of Medina actually any good? Blogger Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is one of the few people in Britain to have read it. The Jewel of Medina is a chest-heaving, brassiere-busting book of outrageously tacky historical romantic fiction. Some parts of the

UK museum to offer 'perfect tonic' to recession with celebration of Baroque style

Riches – such as a bust of Charles II by Honoré Pelle, paintings by Old Masters including Sir Peter Paul Rubens and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, and one of only two surviving pieces of furniture from the Palace of Versailles from Louis XIV's reign – will be shown at the V&A when the exhibition opens next April. Baroque has come to be regarded as kitsch in recent years, its seemingly frivolous style bastardised in endless home makeover programmes. But behind such ext

Tom Cruise plays Claus von Stauffenberg (Movie Trailer)

National galleries to hand back Nazi art

Artworks looted by the Nazis during the Second World War and now held in Britain's national museums and galleries are to be handed back to their owners. The Tate, the British Museum, and the British Library are all known to hold looted items but are currently prevented by law from giving them back to the families that once owned them. Now the Government has decided to bring in new legislation to allow the artworks to be moved. Experts have estimated that there co

Byzantium 330 - 1453 at the Royal Academy: throwing new light on the Dark Ages

The Roman Emperor Constantine the Great made two extraordinary decisions which changed the world. Think again: enamel icon with the archangel Michael The first, in 313, was to end the persecution of Christians and to declare Christianity a legal religion in the Roman empire. The second, in 324, was to found a new city on the site of Byzantium, which he dedicated in 330 and called Constantinople. Today it is the vast city of Istanbul. Constantinople flourished and

Lost picture of young Queen Bess found after 450 years

A portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, completed just months after she came to the throne, has been found in a dusty and dirty condition in a country house in East Sussex. Elizabeth became queen 450 years ago next month. The picture shows her as a simply dressed woman in her mid-twenties with a pale face. It is a far cry from later portraits where she is depicted in full regalia after defeating the Spanish Armada. Its discovery is being hailed by historians because only two

Can TV do history justice?

In one of the 'Newsreel' sections that punctuate their 1934 collaboration Scottish Scene, Lewis Grassic Gibbon and Hugh MacDiarmid quote an unidentified writer in the Scots magazine as saying: 'We have had to bear with some tragic attempts at the filming of Scottish history. There was one that dealt with Mary Queen of Scots, where that lady paraded in a Glengarry and a very abbreviated kilt.' Personally, I have no problem with this, particularly when the modern alternative is Samant

Beatles songs as likely to explain Christianity as the Bible, says bishop

The Rt Rev Nick Baines, Bishop of Croydon, has urged churches to use hits by bands such as U2 and the Beatles in their services. In a book backed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, he argues that pop music writers can convey deep theological concepts in a way that is more accessible to the younger generation. Hundreds of evangelical churches have already turned to guitar-based songs instead of traditional hymns, but the bishop suggests that clergy still

Oliver Stone’s Vision Thing: Bush, the Family

The megamillion-dollar question that hovers over Oliver Stone’s queasily enjoyable “W.,” his Oedipal story about the rise and fall, fall, fall of George W. Bush is: why? Neither a pure (nor impure) sendup of the president nor a wholesale takedown, the film looks like a traditional biopic with all the usual trappings, including name actors in political drag — Josh Brolin plays the frat boy who would be king, while Richard Dreyfuss creeps around in a Dick Cheney sneer — alternately choking on pret

NYT Review: Grant & Lee (Exhibit/N-Y Historical Society)

“Grant and Lee in War and Peace,” which opens on Friday at the New-York Historical Society, is a rejiggering of an exhibition mounted last year by the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, where it was called “Lee and Grant.” The flip-flop in billing is partly a nod to local bias and to the fact that Grant is, after all, buried right here in New York, where he was a bit of a substance abuser and lost a fortune on Wall Street — he was one of us, in other words — while in Richmond they prefer t

Publishers fight over little-known Bolaño novel

One of the world's most aggressive literary agencies, overseen by super-agent Andrew Wylie, scored a double coup by taking over representation of deceased Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño just as an unpublished novel by him was discovered. Wylie's agency has been offering the manuscript of The Third Reich at the Frankfurt Book Fair this week. Publishers were said to be fighting over the novel from an author whose stock hit new highs in the English-speaking world after the success of

Greeks honour fallen hero Byron with a day of his own

The poet whose verse was more feared by the Ottoman Empire than insurgents' bullets has won the belated honour of a "day of celebration" in the country he romanticised, Greece. Nearly 200 years after George Gordon, Lord Byron, invoked the battles of Marathon and Thermopylae to "dream that Greece might still be free", the government in Athens has announced a Byron day on the anniversary of the writer's death. Readings, drama and school outings will ce

Byzantium 330 - 1453 at the Royal Academy: throwing new light on the Dark Ages

The Roman Emperor Constantine the Great made two extraordinary decisions which changed the world. The first, in 313, was to end the persecution of Christians and to declare Christianity a legal religion in the Roman empire. The second, in 324, was to found a new city on the site of Byzantium, which he dedicated in 330 and called Constantinople. Today it is the vast city of Istanbul. Constantinople flourished and by the reign of Emperor Justinian the Great (527-65) it

New documentary: "Torturing Democracy"

Washington, DC, October 17, 2008 - The new documentary film on the Bush administration's interrogation and detention policies, "Torturing Democracy," will air on Washington D.C.'s WETA-TV tonight at 10 p.m. Produced and written by eight-time Emmy winner and National Security Archive fellow Sherry Jones, the documentary has drawn major online buzz as well as New York Times coverage of PBS's failure to find a national scheduling spot for the film before President Bush leaves

Disney unveils a 1920s theme for California Adventure

Disney's California Adventure is poised for a $1-billion makeover that's designed to give the troubled theme park the main thing it lacks -- an emotional connection to keep people coming back. The sweeping overhaul will transport visitors to the California of the 1920s, when Walt Disney first arrived in Hollywood. In the same way that Disneyland's Main Street evokes Disney's hometown of Marceline, Mo., a refocused California Adventure will follow the young animator's journey to Los

On Eve of Final Debate, Lincoln Makes Appearance at Host Campus

He won’t be taking part in tonight’s presidential debate, but Abraham Lincoln was on the campus of Hofstra University on Tuesday for a series of historical re-enactments focused on race relations and women’s rights. An actor portraying the nation’s 16th president spoke about the Civil War and slavery. Other actors and Hofstra students also portrayed the abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe; the suffragettes Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone; and the civil-rights

"Virtual JFK" imagines hypothetical history

A compelling history lesson that offers an insightful primer on the Kennedy presidency even while proving sadly germane to our current times, "Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived" spells out its provocative premise in its title. Using the examples of six highly charged situations in which John F. Kennedy declined to use military force even while many of his closest advisers urged him to, Koji Masutani's documentary makes a highly convincing case that modern history m