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

Ancient Egyptian recipe inspires modernized brew

An ancient burial chamber at Gordian in central Turkey supposedly houses the tomb of King Midas. Midas was not only a myth, but an actual king of the ancient kingdom of Phrygia around 700 B.C.E. His intact tomb seems to have been the location of the final funeral party for its permanent resident, and someone neglected to clean the 157 different drinking vessels left behind. Some of these vessels still had some residue on them. The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Stamp collector’s Holocaust Memorial to be displayed

When Ku Klux Klan violence spiked across the South in the 1970s, and a hitherto unknown group in California began publicly denying that the Holocaust had ever occurred, Ken Lawrence decided to fight back — using his skills as stamp collector. Painstakingly, over 30 years, he researched and assembled a collection of postal memorabilia documenting the range and depth of horrors of what he termed “the Nazi scourge.” He gathered items that showed not just the persecution of Jews and Com

Milton Regained: A Helluva Party on 400th birthday

John Milton won’t turn 400 until Dec. 9, but a number of institutions have already jumped the gun on celebrating his quadricentenary. The New York Public Library, for example, gave him a show that opened in March, the Morgan Library & Museum opens its exhibition in October, and there has been a yearlong program of lectures, exhibitions and performances at Christ’s College, Cambridge — Milton’s alma mater and an institution for which he had no great fondness. It’s hard to know wh

Name a street in Moscoe after Solzhenitsyn?

In death as in life, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn remains a difficult, polarizing figure for Russia, a fierce critic not only of Communism but also of the decadence and materialism of post-Soviet Russia. So it was perhaps inevitable that the seemingly simple act of naming a Moscow street in his honor would become complicated. When President Dmitri A. Medvedev decreed last month that Mr. Solzhenitsyn, who died on Aug. 3 at 89, be memorialized “for his extraordinary contribution” to Russian

War and Japan: The Non-Fiction Manga of Mizuki Shigeru

Many Japanese neonationalists contend that it is “masochistic” to look critically at the nation’s wars of the 1930s and 1940s. They assume that criticism of Japanese militarism and love of the country and its traditions are somehow mutually exclusive. In place of an honest look at past crimes, revisionists present Japan as a victim, originally of Western imperialism, and now of a conspiracy of defamation by its neighbors. Manga artist Mizuki Shigeru (b. 1922), creator of the famous

John Adams: The short ugly hero of America

John Adams is the Pete Best of American history,” Tom Hanks says, a rich, rolling chuckle hovering in his warm, familiar voice. “You’ve got all these famous names - George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alex-ander Hamilton - but it’s Adams who triangulates the founding of America. He was the last person to speak before they signed the Declaration of Independence. He was the second president. He fought the first true election. The reason he’s unknown - even in America - is the g

Mark Rothko: 1961 Tranquil, transcendent. 2008 Routine, repetitive

Sometime in the early summer of 1961 the Whitechapel Gallery staged an exhibition of Mark Rothko, then quite recently famous, and well into what is known as his “signature style”: large, unframed canvases of vertical format, painted with symmetrical rectangular blocks of contrasting colours. Rothko had hit on this idiom some 14 years before, when he often used the colours of spring fields, autumn woods and sunsets. By 1961 he had settled into gloomy mauves, blues, browns and purples - an effect

Violins of Holocaust victims played in Jerusalem concert

Sixteen violins used by Jewish Holocaust victims - including an instrument whose case was used to smuggle explosives that blew up a Nazi base - were played on Wednesday in a concert in Jerusalem. "Each violin has its own story," said Amnon Weinstein, 69, who together with his son has spent more than a decade restoring the violins collected from across Europe. Weinstein, a violin maker, said he received the instruments in various states of disrepair, many of them decorated with star

Grant and Lee in War and Peace on View October 17, 2008 – March 29, 2009 (N-Y Historical Society)

Casting a dramatic new light on the events that defined a nation, from the conflicts and rivalries of a fast-growing young republic to the fitful efforts at reconstruction after a terrible Civil War, the New-York Historical Society will present the major exhibition Grant and Lee in War and Peace from October 17, 2008 through March 29, 2009. Organized by the New-York Historical Society in collaboration with the Virginia Historical Society, the exhibitionexplores the most critical dec

French cuisine, exalted by chefs as a world heritage treasure

Their battlefield is filled, they know, with hidden land mines and cunning enemies. So around a half-dozen French chefs and culinary experts from the ad hoc "French Mission for Food Heritage and Cultures" are preparing for war with weapons they know best. They ate and drank their way through a three-hour strategy session recently to help their country face the daunting task before it: to persuade the United Nations to declare French gastronomy a world treasure

Pistol that sparked First World War goes on display

A pistol used to assassinate the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, sparking the First World War, is to go on display for the first time in the UK. The pistol used to assassinate the Archduke Franz Ferdinand is to go on desiplay at the Imperial War Museum Photo: Heeresgeschichtliches Museum The gun and a homemade grenade are being unveiled at the Imperial War Museum to mark the 90th anniversary of the end of a war which claimed 21 million lives. The Archduke's assassinati

Guggenheim chooses a curator, not a showman

After a seven-month search, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation on Tuesday named Richard Armstrong of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh as its next director. Armstrong, 59, who has been director of the Carnegie for 12 years, succeeds Thomas Krens, who announced in February that he was stepping down after nearly 20 years. In a decision that was widely reported in the art world, Guggenheim trustees settled on Armstrong in late August but did not vote formally unti

Away Down South, 2 Museums Grapple With the Civil War Story

Richmond | For Northerners, the history of the Civil War seems pretty much settled. We know that from the nation’s founding, economic and cultural differences — particularly those surrounding slavery — created tensions between the North and the South; that the elimination of slavery only fitfully became a Union goal during the war; and that it ultimately took a century for black Americans to glimpse the equality guaranteed by the nation’s ideals.... Things are interpreted more ambig

Terrorist chic or debunking of a myth? Baader Meinhof film splits Germany

The bloody legacy of the Baader Meinhof Gang which caused mayhem across West Germany with its politically-motivated assassinations, bombings and kidnappings is to be portrayed on cinema screens this week in a new film which claims to debunk the myth of 1970s terrorist chic. Just how raw the darkest chapter in Germany's postwar history remains has been demonstrated by the angry reaction that the Baader Meinhof Komplex has prompted from victims' families, the children of gang members

Is Baader Meinhof film a 'tasteless action movie'?

For a blockbuster movie that claims to be the first to show the warts-and-all horror of what has been described as Germany's biggest post-war tragedy, the beginning of The Baader Meinhof Complex is disarmingly innocuous. The film opens with shots of the idyllic playground of Germany's rich and famous, the North Sea holiday island of Sylt. It is the late 1960s and a newly married couple from a wealthy Hamburg background are shown cavorting about on the lawn of a luxury seaside home.

Pistol that sparked First World War goes on display in the UK

The gun and a homemade grenade are being unveiled at the Imperial War Museum to mark the 90th anniversary of the end of a war which claimed 21 million lives. The Archduke's assassination in Sarajevo in June 1914 started a domino effect of allied nation disputes which led to the First World War. Other pieces in the In Memoriam: Remembering the Great War exhibition include the Victoria Cross awarded to poet and soldier Wilfred Owen and a wreath tossed into the carriage ca

Violins of Holocaust victims played in Jerusalem concert

"Each violin has its own story," said Amnon Weinstein, 69, who together with his son has spent more than a decade restoring the violins collected from across Europe. Weinstein, a violin maker, said he received the instruments in various states of disrepair, many of them decorated with stars of David, a testimony to their former Jewish owners. "By restoring their violins, their legacy is born again," said Weinstein, who lost most of his family in th

Afghan TV to air Iran’s "Prophet Joseph"

Iranian TV series “Prophet Joseph” will be aired from the Afghanistan National Television (ANTV) in the near future. Directed by Farajollah Salahshur, the 45-episode series focuses on the life of the Prophet Joseph (AS) from his childhood to adulthood. The film was aired by IRIB channel 1 in late June and is concurrently on Al-Kawsar satellite network, which was warmly welcomed by the Arab audience. The series focuses on the life of the Prophet Joseph (A

Too much for the Nazis: Munch's 'Vampire' comes out of the dark after 70 years

One of the most sensational and shocking images in European art, Edvard Munch's painting of a man locked in a vampire's tortured embrace – her molten-red hair running along his soft bare skin – created an instant outcry when unveiled a century ago. Some believed the Norwegian artist's anguished 1894 masterpiece, Love and Pain – since known as Vampire – to be a reference to his illicit visits to prostitutes; others interpreted it as a macabre fantasy about the death of his favourite

New evidence on mystery of famous 'faked' Capa photo

The stark black-and-white image of a Spanish Civil War soldier tumbling backwards in the moment of death is one of the best-known – and most controversial – war photographs ever taken. Now, 72 years after the Falling Soldier was first published, an exhibition at the Barbican in London aims to have the last word on whether or not the picture was faked. It will show for the first time in the UK every image taken by the photographer Robert Capa the same day. The Falling So