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

In American Wife, novelist Curtis Sittenfeld fleshes out the interior life of our enigmatic first lady

Laura Bush is a lot more popular than her husband, so when many W.-haters see the first lady in photos or on TV, they must wonder, How does she live with him? The speculation about the first marriage has been fueled by Laura Bush's few titillating suggestions that she might be a closet liberal whose political views, particularly on abortion and homosexuality, directly contradict her husband's. (She was a librarian, after all.) When I look at Laura Bush, I have more Us Weekly sorts of questions,

Wanted: A Healthy Cash Infusion for Italy’s Starved Cultural Institutions

On some days visitors to the Luigi Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography here may find its director in the front booth handing out entrance tickets. It’s not a meet-and-greet situation: The museum is chronically understaffed. In recent weeks museumgoers have tended to speed past the glass-encased artifacts from Oceania and Asia or skim Homo’s evolution to sapiens. They can’t afford to tarry. The Pigorini has no money for air-conditioning, and the Roman sun is mercil

South Africa: The last preserve of 20th-century painting

LONDON: South African avant-garde painting of the 20th century has not loomed large in the public mind in the past, but this may be about to change. On Tuesday and Wednesday, a sale organized by Bonhams will turn the spotlight on some surprising artists who sprang up at the southern tip of the African continent. They were as diverse as their individual backgrounds and their versatility reflects their own fragmented life stories. Few had an easy time.

Hezbollah Exhibit Celebrates War and 'Martyrs'

A new exhibit in Lebanon celebrates Hezbollah's 2006 war against Israel and commemorates fallen military leader Imad Mugniyah. Though gruesome and kitschy, the show has been a huge success. A blue laser projects a dancing Star of David on smoke wafting out of a destroyed tank. A loudspeaker roars into life, booming out artillery salvos, hammering out rifle shots. Above the noise, you can hear orders barked out in Arabic and fighters on the front speaking through walkie-talkies. For

Glyn Maxwell's play is a dull history lesson

I know no artistic director who is more sensitive to, or pugnacious about, bad notices than Dominic Dromgoole of the Globe, so it's been a relief this year to discover that most of the shows have been excellent. This closing production, however, is a bummer, and reveals Dromgoole's Achilles' heel. He rightly wants to put big meaty new plays on his stage as well as Shakespeare, but he has a bad habit of confusing ambitious intentions with actual achievement. Liberty, abo

Why war museums rely on the Holocaust

Holocaust exhibitions are a lot more popular than Monty's tank, and the Imperial War Museum's new one looks like a canny attempt to lure people into its permanent collection London's Imperial War Museum does have an image problem, I admit. Who goes there? Plenty of men with their sons, obviously. Veterans, nostalgists and military history buffs. But it's not, traditionally, the kind of place you take your girlfriend to if you want to look hip. It is, frankly, quite depressing.

Scientists use particle accelerator to date wine

French scientists have devised a way of using particle accelerators to authenticate vintage wines, one of France's top research bodies said this week. The new method tests the age of the glass in wine bottles by analyzing X-rays emitted when the bottles are placed under ion beams produced by a particle accelerator, the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) said in a statement.

Oscar for Capra's 'Prelude to War' given to Army

The Army, with a hand from Hollywood, has received a long-lost Oscar back into its ranks. The little statue took a long, and largely unknown path before being passed from Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Sid Ganis to an Army general during a Wednesday night ceremony and screening. In 1942, a few weeks after Pearl Harbor, filmmaker Frank Capra joined the Army and was assigned to create a film series, "Why We Fight." Major Capr

Coming this November--a Hollywood movie about Harvey Milk

Milk Directed by Gus Van Sant, this homegrown Greek tragedy -- the City Hall assassinations of Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone -- is fueled by Lance Black's passionate, meticulously researched screenplay. For decades, the desire to create a fictional template for the slain gay politician's achingly brief career has tempted, absorbed and ultimately frustrated an array of talents, from Oliver Stone to Milk biographer Randy Shilts, to Van Sant himself. To Black, the core of the prob

Rare manuscripts of Quran on display at Tehran exhibit

A collection of rare manuscripts of the Holy Quran attributed to the Imams are currently on display at the 16th annual International Holy Quran Exhibition. The collection has been put on display by the Astan-e Qods Razavi Organization for Libraries, Museums and Archives Centers. The manuscripts, which are mostly donated to the Astan-e Qods Museum, are attributed to Imam Ali (AS), Imam Hassan (AS), Imam Reza (AS), and Imam Musa (AS) and are on exhibit at the Astan-e Qo

Rolling Stones 'lips' sell for $92,500

Mick Jagger's pout is officially fit for a museum. London's Victoria and Albert Museum announced Tuesday that it bought the original artwork for The Rolling Stones' famous "lips" logo, inspired by the singer's mouth. The museum said it bought the work at an auction in the United States for $92,500. The lips-and-tongue logo was designed by London art student John Pasche in 1970, and first used on the band's "Sticky Fingers" album the next

The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial You See Over There By the Tidal Basin Is Not the Original

If you scroll through the National Park Service list of national park birthdays, you’ll see a September entry that seems more than a bit odd. The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, the list informs us, was established on September 1, 1959. Whoa! Can that possibly be true? The memorial to FDR was established a lot more recently than that, wasn’t it? Indeed, a quick check of the record shows that the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial that sits on 7.5 acres of prime land near the Tida

Campaign to save home of Britain's most famous regiment

A campaign has been launched to secure the spiritual home and museum of one of Britain's most famous regiments. The Black Watch Heritage Appeal aims to raise £3.2 million to allow it to buy, expand and improve the former regiment's headquarters at the 19th century Balhousie Castle in Perth. The building is owned by the Ministry of Defence but campaigners are concerned that the lease could be terminated at any time. They want to purchase the site by the end of this year a

Rare footage of Marilyn Monroe found

Previously unseen footage of screen icon Marilyn Monroe, taken while she was filming the 1959 hit Some Like It Hot, has been discovered in Australia. The behind-the-scenes amateur film, featuring Monroe and co-stars Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, was taken by a US naval officer after the actress invited him to visit the set at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, California. The two-and-a-half minute, eight-millimetre film will be auctioned off in Melbourne later this mon

Author of book series sends kids on a history treasure hunt

When Rick Riordan was recently researching the life of Benjamin Franklin for the first book in a new children’s fiction series about the most powerful family in the world, he came across an essay about flatulence written by the founding father better known for his experiments with electricity and awaking early. “Come on, when you’re writing for kids, that’s just a must right there,” said Mr. Riordan during an interview at the New-York Historical Society, where he sat on a bench in f

Repairing a House With Superman Ties

In comic books, Superman was born on Krypton and rocketed to Earth on the eve of his planet’s destruction. In real life, the Man of Steel was born more than 70 years ago in Cleveland, a creation of the writer Jerry Siegel and the artist Joe Shuster. But even Superman may not have been able to save the childhood home of Mr. Siegel, who died in 1996. The house, at 10622 Kimberley Avenue in the Glenville neighborhood of Cleveland, has fallen into disrepair, and an online charity auctio

Lost Buddhas on show

An exhibition of ancient Buddhist statues has opened, which has been compared to the archaeological discovery of the First Emperor's terracotta army. The Lost Buddhas: Chinese Buddhist sculpture from Qingzhou opened on August 29th at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Thirty-five of the 6th-century stone Buddhas are on display in Australia for the first time after being unearthed by construction workers at a sports field in 1996. 400 figurines were uncovered, having been wrapped and buried in t

Henry VIII will not get fat in historically inaccurate The Tudors

The makers of BBC show The Tudors have said Henry VIII will not gain weight so that he retains his sex appeal. The show's bosses have said Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who plays Henry in the costume drama will not be required to put on a fat suit to reflect the king's expanding waistline. Henry, who died in 1547, was thought to have grown to more than 20st, with a waist of 54in, famously needing a hoist to life him on to his horse towards the end of his life. But executive producer Morga

Brick by Brick, a Weekend Warrior Builds a Medieval Retirement Home

SNELLING, Calif. — Most days, the talk here among the farmers and almond growers along this stretch of two-lane blacktop 18 miles from the nearest on-ramp concerns heat units — as hot summer days are known — and the hull split that signals the approach of almond harvest season. But there is also the Kasteel Noz, the turreted brick castle with two towers and a moat that Casper Noz, a 51-year-old contractor who was born in the Netherlands, has been obsessively building by himself almo

Henry VIII will not get fat in historically inaccurate The Tudors

The show's bosses have said Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who plays Henry in the costume drama will not be required to put on a fat suit to reflect the king's expanding waistline. Henry, who died in 1547, was thought to have grown to more than 20st, with a waist of 54in, famously needing a hoist to life him on to his horse towards the end of his life. But executive producer Morgan O'Sullivan said: "We still want him to be appealing. "We don't want to d