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

Should We Take Tarzan Seriously?

Cultural historians adore Tarzan. He emerged in 1912 as if called to battle against the New Woman, the New Negro, the new fascination with homosexuality, and all those new immigrants, and to provide a breath of fresh jungle air for a society industrializing and urbanizing at an astonishing rate. In his virile primitivism he became our answer to Prufrock, T.S. Eliot's vision of the paralyzed, self-conscious psyche of the modern civilized man. But not so fast. As Tarzan grows and lear

UConn Gets 1st Greek Amphitheater In U.S.

The first authentic Greek amphitheater in the U.S. it being built at the University of Connecticut.The open-air amphitheater, which will accommodate 500 people, is being built on land given to the Center for Hellenic Studies years ago by the university. Center officials said they see the project as a way of giving back to the community."I would like to say, anything we do, even if it's a bigger project than this, it would not be big enough to say thank you to the U.S. or Connecticut,"

Belfast: City history captured on walls

The life and times of a group of 18th century revolutionaries has been marked with a new work of public art which has gone on permanent display in Belfast. The four paintings in the city's Cathedral Quarter depict the history of the Society of United Irishmen - a movement co-founded by Wolfe Tone that sought to create an independent Ireland free from English rule in the 1790s. They have been erected in the newly-restored Warehouse Lane in the Four Corners area where Bel

Museum ship prepares to return to Manhattan pier

The former aircraft carrier Intrepid is ready to make its way back to Manhattan and resume its post as a floating museum. Repainted, refurbished and loaded with new exhibits, the vessel was to arrive Thursday afternoon at the same Hudson River pier where it previously spent 24 years as the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. The two-hour, five-mile return voyage from Staten Island was to be the reverse of the one it took 22 months ago, again with a passing salute to t

Will Oliver Stone see success with his George W. Bush biopic?

Forty-three years ago, two men enrolled at Yale University. One of them dropped out a year later, volunteered to fight in Vietnam, then made a movie about his experiences entitled Platoon. His name is Oliver Stone. The other dodged combat and went on to become the 43rd President of the United States. His name is George W. Bush. If all this sounds like the premise of a Hollywood blockbuster, then it is – sort of. The movie is W., a Bush biopic that – and here’s the twist – is direct

Italian war veterans denounce 'insulting' Spike Lee film

It is a story that underpins Italy’s postwar democracy: the honour lost under Benito Mussolini was regained through the struggle of the partisans and their help for the Allies. Now the partisans are fighting for their reputation after a new film by the director Spike Lee which, they say, insults the memory of the Italian Resistance during the Second World War. Miracle at St Anna retells the story of the massacre of 560 civilians – including women and children – in August 1944 by SS

New York stories playing at the Museum of Modern Art

Part of the charm of New York is its only partly tongue-in-cheek reluctance to grant that anyone else does anything better. Beaches? Yeah, the Caribbean's got that whole luxury thing down but really the Hamptons are more convenient. Tacos? Sure, they're pretty good in Mexico but have you tried that place at 49th and 10th? Studio movies? Well, yeah, Los Angeles is where it's at now but between the wars all the killer action was right here ... The last is the intriguing premise of Hol

Springtime for Hitler and Russia

It features high-kicking Nazis, a potato-peeling Eva Braun and a hapless Russian spy lording it in the SS. Welcome to Hitler Kaput! Super Agents 008, a Russian farce wowing native audiences. The spoof comedy, which has been reigning supreme at the top of the Russian box-office for the past fortnight, describes the rollicking adventures of a Soviet undercover agent in the top echelons of the Third Reich. Herr Hitler gets high on cocaine and plans his military proceedures using potat

Philip Glass takes on Walt Disney

In what may be one of the more incongruous musical pairings of recent times, composer Philip Glass is to write an opera about the life of Walt Disney. The work, a commission from the New York City Opera, will be based on the novel The Perfect American by Peter Stephan Jungk, which recounts the last years of Disney's life from the point of view of a fictional Austrian cartoonist. "The story of the last days of Walt Disney, American icon and creator of perhaps the most pervasive

Berlin's Jewish Museum retraces artwork looted by Nazis

More than a half-century after Nazis looted artwork from European Jews, an unprecedented Berlin exhibition tells both sides of the story: how property was seized and efforts, at times fruitless, were made to have it restored. "Looting and Restitution: Jewish-owned Cultural Artifacts from 1933 to the Present", at the Jewish Museum Berlin until January 25, focuses on 15 different pieces plundered from Jewish families during World War II. Using photos and docume

World Heritage Site Photography Exhibit On Display at Interior Department

Washington, D.C., is awash with museums. Some are easy to find and worth visiting, some are near-impossible to find and occasionally worth visiting. The Interior Department's museum is in the latter category. Located just inside the Interior Department, which is bordered by "E" and "C" streets and 19th and 18th streets, the museum is tucked into a few small first-floor rooms. As Yogi Berra might say, you'd never know it was there unless you knew it was there. In

Moscow museum celebrates Georgia war

The tattered Georgian flags, the NATO-style uniforms and the U.S. assault rifles clutter a small corner of the Russian Central Armed Forces Museum in Moscow. They are trophies from Russia's recent war with Georgia, gathered haphazardly but displayed with a clear message. "Now people understand who started this," said Aleksandr Nikonov, the museum's director. And, he did not have to add, who finished it. Along with the ragtag spoils of war, photographs displaye

China bans Western religious music

Musicians and tour organisers have told The Daily Telegraph that a series of significant performances have been affected amid a tightening of political control over the arts and Christianity. Among the victims are the Academy of Ancient Music, one of Britain's leading orchestral and choral groups, which was invited to sing The Messiah at the Beijing International Music Festival in October. The performance will go ahead but has been made "by invitation only" to

Massive Pyramid Planned as Global Mausoleum in Germany

One day, a monumental structure intended as a global mausoleum could rise from the vast fields of eastern Germany's Saxony-Anhalt region. Planned for the area around the city of Dessau, a pyramid nearly twice as high as the Empire State Building in New York could be the final resting place for people from all over the world. Every stone contains an urn and reservations can be made online. If demand is low, the height of the pyramid will be reduced. Dutch st

Resistance library opens at University of Tehran

Iran’s first Resistance Library was inaugurated during a ceremony at the University of Tehran’s central library on Saturday. Some 35 books on the theme of the Sacred Defense were unveiled during the opening ceremony which was attended by officials and academics. Focusing on the theme of Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), the library’s books feature memoirs, history, novel, poetry and children books. Ten other Resistance Libraries were opened concurrently in ten un

Osbert Lancaster - much loved British cartoonist, illustrator and theatre designer - is celebrated in a centenary exhibition

Revered as the greatest pocket cartoonist to have graced the nation's newspapers, Sir Osbert Lancaster (1908-1986) was a man of many talents. He published sketches of architecture, illustrated book covers and was a successful theatre designer. As such, he was considered one of the most important artistic personalities of his generation. This week a major exhibition will celebrate the centenary of his birth by bringing together lesser-known and unseen sketchbooks, theatre sets and photographs.

WaPo pans Spike Lee's new WW II movie

Much like the four soldiers at its center, there's a taut wartime thriller caught behind enemy lines in "Miracle at St. Anna." But unlike the African American GIs pinned between German troops and the racist and incompetent Army brass they serve, the movie that "Miracle" might have been winds up a casualty of schmaltzy, patronizing sentiment on the one hand and overweening ambition on the other. Directed by Spike Lee with an unusually heavy hand (even for him), &q

Spike Lee pulls out all the stops with this sprawling World War II drama

pike Lee's "Miracle at St. Anna" is an ambitious sprawl, a picture that's dramatically compelling in some places and plodding and didactic in others. It's also occasionally moving, even when it bends too close to sentimentality. Watching it, I got the sense that Lee had simply decided to pull out all the stops, to sink himself into one hell of a story -- part World War II drama, part mystery, part meditation on what it means to fight for a country that might not give a damn about you -

Francis Bacon exhibit in London a sensation

That the Francis Bacon retrospective here at Tate Britain has been mobbed since opening several days ago should surprise nobody. The show is a landmark, a knockout, and its timing turns out to be nearly perfect. Sixteen years have passed since the Irish-born Bacon died, at 82, during which the art world has radically changed, and the generation of Americans weaned on postwar abstraction and congenitally skeptical of Bacon is being gradually displaced. The other day there were dozens

Experts create videogames museum

An archive to preserve the history of videogames is being set up by university experts. Nottingham Trent University says the global videogames industry is worth about £22bn and steps are needed in order to record its development. The archive will be housed at the National Media Museum in Bradford and put together by researchers from Nottingham Trent University. The collection will include consoles, cartridges and advertising campaigns. The arch