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

Heirs Make Huge Claim Over Dutch Works of Art

Just as the Dutch government was moving to discourage new claims for restitution of art looted during World War II, the heirs of a Dutch Jewish art dealer have filed one of the largest claims to date for paintings now held in Dutch museums. Four heirs of the dealer, Nathan Katz, who died in 1949, say that he was the rightful owner of more than 200 artworks recovered in Germany at the end of the war and handed over to the Dutch government. The claimants are Mr. Katz’s four children:

Sally Field to play Lincoln's wife

Actress Sally Field is all set to play Mary Todd Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's long-gestating biopic Lincoln. The film will be based on historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's ˜Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. According to Hollywood Reporter, the movie may focus on the 16th US president's role in leading the North in the Civil War. The newspaper also reported that Liam Neeson has been signed to play Lincoln in the movie. Ea

Jane Jacobs, Foe of Plans and Friend of City Life (Exhibit/NYC)

Nearly a half century ago, at the dawn of an era renowned for its utopian dreams and dystopian diagnoses, a journalist who loved the American city wrote an attack on all the professional planners and idealists who believed they could design the perfect urban habitat, the city beautiful, a metropolitan Eden. Forget it, was the message Jane Jacobs elegantly hammered home in that 1961 book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” There is no utopia to be found. And every fantasy

Smithsonian Channel To Make Its Debut, But Only on DirecTV

The Smithsonian's controversial cable television programming will debut Wednesday, but right now only those with a specific satellite dish will be able to see it. Subscribers to DirecTV, one of two main satellite TV carriers, will have access to the 75 hours of programming from the Smithsonian Channel, produced in cooperation with Showtime Networks, the network will announce today. Several groups objected to the contract because the Smithsonian signed over to Showtime s

N.C. exhibit showcases 400 years of state history, art

Hundreds of paintings, pieces of furniture and other artistic creations that span nearly 400 years of state history will become part of a permanent gallery at the North Carolina Museum of History when the exhibit opens Saturday. "Pleasing to the Eye: The Decorative Arts of North Carolina" contains items ranging in age from a childhood portrait painted in 1639 of King Charles II of England to a cup and saucer created in 1994 by a sixth-generation North Carolina potter.

Salon gives Ken Burns's series a big thumbs up

Sixty-two years ago, the greatest conflict in the history of humanity came to an end. Fifty to 60 million people had died. Many millions more were wounded or had lost their homes. Nations were shattered. The most appalling genocide ever had taken place. And for the first time, nuclear weapons had been used, raising the specter of human extinction. Every way of trying to tell a story this vast carries with it blind spots, reveals its own assumptions and biases. Ken Burns'"The War" is n

Bring battle painting 'into view'

A painting of King William of Orange heading to the Battle of the Boyne should hang in public, a nationalist assembly member has said. The artwork has been largely hidden from public view since being bought by the Stormont Government in 1933 for £209 and four shillings. The plea for a wider platform came after it was found hanging in the Speaker's office last month. The SDLP's John Dallat said a prominent place in Stormont should be found. He said it

Letters show Picasso was no collaborator

He stayed in Paris when the Nazis invaded, keeping his head down and prompting claims that he must have collaborated with Hitler's regime. But, covertly, Picasso played a "brave" role in supporting the French Resistance, according to previously unpublished letters revealed this weekend. Professor Peter Read, head of the French department in the University of Kent at Canterbury, has gained access to a collection of letters proving that Picasso actively and courageously supp

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Jesse Woodson James was murdered 125 years ago, in April 1882, shot from behind by a friend who was one of his greatest admirers. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which opens in limited release today, is taken from Ron Hansen’s 1983 novel of the same title. That title serves as a nod to the dime novels that made the James gang the desperado superstars of their era, and in the movie the 20-year-old Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) hoards the novels in a box under his bed, al

If Grant Had Been Singing at Appomattox

WHOEVER said that history doesn’t repeat itself never reckoned with Philip Glass. No, it is not a matter of musical repetitiveness, though there is plenty of that. In this case the motivation for a new Glass opera echoes that of a much older one, and both works loom large in the new season. “Appomattox,” based on the surrender of Robert E. Lee to Ulysses S. Grant at the end of the Civil War, will have its premiere at the San Francisco Opera on Oct. 5. And in April the Metropolitan O

West Side Story Turns 50

"It's just really hard to believe that its 50 years," said Chita Rivera after the curtain went up on the West Side Story half a century ago this week. Chita Rivera, as the original Anita, would help change the American musical, reports CBS News correspondent Anthony Mason. "When you take me back, its still so thrilling and so moving," said Rivera. The movie would later take it to the rest of America. West Side Story was young, edgy an

Gerda Taro: A Wartime Photographer in Her Own Light (Robert Capa's partner) (Exhibit/NYC)

Sometime in the spring of 1936, the lovers and photographers André Friedmann and Gerta Pohorylle changed their names and, in the process, the history of photography. To distinguish themselves from other Jewish émigrés in Paris at the time, Mr. Friedmann, a Hungarian Jew, took the name Robert Capa; Ms. Pohorylle, also Jewish and born in Poland, became Gerda Taro. Working at times as “Capa,” an imaginary American photographer, they began documenting the Spanish Civil War, capturing the ruined town

Columnist bemoans state of history on British television ... The golden age is over!

Call it the Restoration effect: a factual programming schedule suffering from a surfeit of cosy, insular and often cloying television. In the words of Channel 4 head of television Kevin Lygo to the MediaGuardian Edinburgh Television Festival, "a factual output dominated by soft focuses, mountains, coasts, rivers, birds and heritage". What is more, this "warm-bath TV" is starting to distort the medium's treatment of the past. Rather than asking the hard questions of ourselves

Early Efforts to Market Shakespeare Were Hardly Classic (Exhibit/Wash.DC)

The idea was born over dinner in 18th century London. John Boydell, a prominent and well-to-do publisher and politician, was convinced that England lacked a suitably accomplished and vigorous tradition of history painting -- the grand style of epic moments and great men, spread across huge canvases, that was generally regarded as the highest and most edifying form of painting at the time. So, after consulting with the eminent artists of his day, he decided to jump-start it -- by commissioning do

NYT review of Ken Burns's WW II series says it's parochial

World War II didn’t happen just to us. But it would be hard to glean that from Ken Burns’s 7-night, 15-hour tribute to the greatest generation that ever bought war bonds, joined the Marines or tightened rivets on a B-17 Flying Fortress. The London blitz, Stalingrad, Bergen-Belsen and the Warsaw uprising are parentheses in this respectful, moving and meticulously illustrated anthology of small-town lives turned upside down by what one elderly veteran calls “a necessary w

Pols to try to seize Dracula's castle

Romanian politicians have launched a battle to seize Bran Castle, known as Dracula castle, from its aristocrat owner only a year after he was recognised as the rightful heir to the Transylvanian bastion. The 14th century castle that was home to Bram Stoker's fictional count was returned to Archduke Dominic of Austria, Prince of Tuscany, in 2006 after it was held for 50 years by Romania's communist regime. But now a group of Romanian politicians are claiming the handove

Ken Burns's history of WW II occasionally nostalgic, but usually insightful

[Marianna Torgovnick is a professor of English at Duke University and director of the Duke in New York Arts and Media program. She is author of The War Complex: World War II in Our Time (University of Chicago Press, 2005).] As a title, The War could refer to many things: the Civil War, World War I, Vietnam, Iraq. But for Americans who lived through the years from 1941 to 1945, it means just one thing — the Second World War, "the good war," "the big one," as Archi

Effort to protect the view from the Edward Hopper house

TRURO, Mass. — Walking the beaches and dunes of South Truro, it is easy to see how the artist Edward Hopper and countless others were captivated by the scenery, a sweeping expanse of sand and sunlight bouncing off Cape Cod Bay. Now some worry that the view from Hopper’s small whitewashed home is in jeopardy, as well as the home itself. The parcel has become the subject of controversy, with some residents trying to protect what they see as a piece of American artistic history and oth

Iran keeps Picassos in basement

TEHRAN -- Habibollah Sadeghi looks vaguely irritated to see me: not surprised, seeing as he has spent the last 10 days evading my phone calls, letters and polite appeals delivered through intermediaries. He knows I want to see his Picassos. He doesn't want to show them to me. But Iranian hospitality being what it is, Sadeghi is forced to invite me into his office for tea. "I got your letter," he says. "Frankly, I was somewhat offended that you seem to think our painti

Is the laugh track dead?

These are uncertain times for the laugh track. For the past few seasons, the most talked-about television comedies—The Office, 30 Rock, My Name Is Earl, Curb Your Enthusiasm—have looked and sounded more like films than sitcoms. Partly, the change has been visual: These new shows forgo the studio-soundstage look of traditional TV comedy, opting for a more cinematic, single-camera style. More jarring, though, for generations raised on Dick Van Dyke, All in the Family, or Cheers, the new crop