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

Famous Five return to solve last case

New Enid Blyton stories featuring original characters from some of her most famous books are to return in a series of novels, her estate said yesterday. The Famous Five, The Faraway Tree and Malory Towers will all be revisited in 20 new books planned by the author's estate. The Famous Five will be the first to return, with The Famous Five's Survival Guide. The new book sees the grown-up Julian, Dick, Anne and George, revisit the only case they failed to solve in t

English Civil War relocates to Africa

Channel 4 is to make a rare foray into costume drama with a four-part series set at the time of the English Civil War - in which the outdoor scenes were filmed in South Africa. The makers of the programme chose to make The Devil’s Whore, starring Andrea Riseborough, in countryside an hour’s drive north of Cape Town because it was cheaper. “It’s much more affordable to film there and we found a region where the countryside just looks similar to England, with oak trees and other fami

Portraits by the artist as a very young man: early Lucian Freuds discovered

The brutal realism of his work has made him the world’s most expensive living artist, with each new painting that surfaces attracting great interest from collectors. Today six of Lucian Freud’s previously unseen paintings and drawings, including a portrait of the poet Sir Stephen Spender, are revealed in The Times. The works, from the 1940s and 1950s, had been hidden away in private collections across the world until an art historian and one of Freud’s assistants tracked them down f

Aristotle Onassis ordered Robert Kennedy's assassination, according to play

The Greek shipping magnate was determined to marry John F Kennedy's widow, Jackie, and knew that her brother-in-law opposed the union. He used his billions to fund a Palestinian terror organisation which ordered Kennedy's murder, according to a theory advanced in a book, Nemesis, by Peter Evans, which has provided the source material for a play which opens next month. Aristo, starring Robert Lindsay as Onassis, is written by Martin Sherman and opens at the Chichester Th

The Nazis, the Jewish banker, and the battle for two priceless Picassos

The paintings are not only priceless, but they have been among the star attractions at New York's Museum of Modern Art and the city's equally renowned Guggenheim Museum for more than four decades. Both are early Picassos painted at the beginning of the 20th century – before the two world wars that would engulf Europe and ultimately lead to the current blockbuster of a legal battle. One of the canvases is Le Moulin de la Galette, a Picasso painted in 1900 that, unlike the artist's la

Teaching With Scorcese's Gangs Of New York

This past spring I wrote a post titled "Teaching Bad History---Without Badly Teaching History." It was instigated by this list of historically inaccurate movies. At the time I was focused only on the listed movies and what I've done in the past to teach a few of those bad films. I should've, however

Unseen film of Peter Cook and Quentin Crisp

A series of interviews with the likes of Peter Cook, Sean Connery and Enoch Powell are to be broadcast for the first time. The recordings were made by the late actor, comedian and broadcaster Bernard Braden during more than 350 meetings with the famous faces of the 1960s. His conversations with Robert Maxwell, Cilla Black, Lulu and Quentin Crisp have now been edited into an hour-long programme that will be shown on Five this autumn. 1968 Unseen also feature

A misleading documentary about a misleading documentary about 9-11

Flash back to late summer 2006 -- remember that docudrama The Path to 9/11, which explicitly contradicted the findings of the 9/11 Commission Report in almost every area, in order to cast blame on the Clinton Administration? (Let's not relive all of the inaccuracies it contained, but see here, here, and here for just a few. Also, my Nation column on the issue,

The occasional historical accuracy of Kingdom of Heaven is hampered by Ridley Scott's desire to make everyone seem nice

Kingdom of Heaven tells the story of the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin in 1187, the climax of the Saracen sultan's dramatic reconquest of the Holy Land from the Crusaders. Saladin's victory triggered the Third Crusade, led by Richard the Lionheart. In Ridley Scott's film, it is also replete with allusions to modern American adventures in the Middle East. The film's hero, Balian (a disastrously miscast Orlando Bloom), is a composite of two real-life brothers, Balian and Baldwin of Ibe

Photo Mystery Solved: C’est Chagall!

After a research-intensive journey that involved our readers, historians, archivists, writers and curators in the United States and France — and even the former Rolling Stones bass guitarist (and accomplished photographer) Bill Wyman — City Room can confirm that an unidentified and undated photograph from the archives of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey depicts Marc Chagall and his second wife, Valentina Brodsky, known as Vava. The identification of the photograph comes from Bella M

Lennon Killer 'Ashamed And Sorry'

John Lennon's killer has admitted that he is ashamed and sorry for murdering the former Beatle nearly 30 years ago. Mark David Chapman told parole officials during his latest bid for release from prison that he has come to realise the seriousness of what he did when he shot the music star outside his Manhattan apartment building on December 8, 1980. He was denied parole for the fifth time "due to concern for the public safety and welfare" after being interview

First Beatles contract for sale

The first contract that led The Beatles to worldwide fame is going under the hammer. The 1962 agreement with their manager Brian Epstein was signed by John Lennon, Ringo Starr and the dads of both Paul McCartney and George Harrison's - because the pair were both under 21. Ted Owen, Managing Director of The Fame Bureau, said: "This is sort of equivalent to a peace deal or something. It's one of the big, big contracts in history as far as social, cultural, political

BBC to remake Buchan classic

One of the centrepieces of the BBC's Christmas schedule will be a feature-length adaptation of The Thirty-nine Steps, the spy thriller later turned into a film by Alfred Hitchcock, "reimagined" for the Jason Bourne generation. The BBC is set to unveil its plans for the new version, which will star Spooks actor Rupert Penry-Jones, today before filming begins in Scotland next month. An instant hit on its publication in 1915, John Buchan's novel features a rest

Conservative blasts new Trumbo documentary

[Lloyd Billingsley is the author of From Mainline to Sideline, the Social Witness of the National Council of Churches, and Hollywood Party: How Communism Seduced the American Film Industry in the 1930s and 1940s.] At the opening of the United Nations on June 26, 1945, U.S. Secretary of State Edward Stettinius delivered a speech he didn’t write. The writer was Dalton Trumbo, a highly paid Hollywood screenwriter and Stalinist. How did a scribe like Dalton Trumbo score that kind of a g

Germany Thanks Russia for Returned Art, Asks for the Rest Back

Fifty years ago, the Soviet Union returned 1.5 million art treasures looted at the end of World War II to East Germany. Twenty-eight German museums are staging a series of exhibitions to say thank you. Gratitude is one half of the message. The other is: Can we have the remaining 1 million works back now too, please? Ever since reunification in 1990, Germany has been gently pressuring Russia for the return of the art, with few results. Many Russians, including museum dir

Claus von Stauffenberg: the true story behind the film Valkyrie, starring Tom Cruise

On 20 July 1944, a German colonel left a bomb in the Führer's office. It exploded, just missing its target, and the following day the officer was shot. With the daring plot now being made into a film - starring Tom Cruise - Berthold von Stauffenberg, son of the would-be assassin, tells Nigel Jones how his father's 'moral sacrifice' shattered his and his family's lives Just before 1pm on a boiling hot day in 1944, a 10-year-old boy sat down to lunch at a grand country house in the hi

Shakespeare's first playhouse discovered

Archaeologists have unearthed what is thought to be Shakespeare’s first playhouse and one of the earliest in London. Museum of London Archaeology made the discovery in Shoreditch during the construction of a new theatre by the Tower Theatre Company. One of London’s first playhouses, The Theatre was established in the area by James Burbage in 1576 but the exact location has never been found. William Shakespeare’s first plays were enacted here and he also performed there with The Lord Chamberlain’

Wartime celebrity spies listed in secret files

The National Archives have released 750,000 secret documents relating to the Second World War US intelligence service. The Office of Strategic Services archive includes 35,000 personnel files, which includes details of famous figures enlisted. These included the director John Ford, celebrity chef Julia Child, actor Sterling Hayden, baseball player Moe Berg and historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. The sons of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt and author Ernest Hemingway also worked for the OSS, which r

Titanic romance with echoes of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio

A romance aboard the Titanic with echoes of the screen affair has been disclosed by a survivor's relative. Joanna Wood said the love story involved her great aunt, Roberta Maioni, who was a maid travelling first class on the Titanic's maiden voyage in 1912, and a young ship's steward who died as the liner sank. During the voyage, 21-year-old Roberta is believed to have fallen in love with the young employee and when the Titanic struck an iceberg he gave her his lifejac

Book Based on Prophet Muhammad's Child Bride Yanked At 11th Hour

A racy, historical novel based on the Prophet Muhammad's child bride A'isha was supposed to hit book stores in the U.S. Tuesday. But in a rare case of self-censorship to preempt possible violent reaction by Muslims, one of the world's largest publishing houses pulled the plug on the book just before its release date. Sherry Jones, author of The Jewel of Medina, said she received word from Random House Inc. that the book's release would be "postponed indefinitely.&q