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

The Rape of Europa--now a movie

Pillage and destruction of cultural property has always been a by- product of armed conflict. Yet no military power in history has equaled the Third Reich in its ability to use culture not merely as a trophy of war, but as a weapon of war: a means to dominate, demoralize and control the nations that it sought to conquer by stripping them of their cultural and spiritual identity. Only through the systematic confiscation, theft, concealment, forced sale and destruction of mi

What's the Beatles backlash all about?

In case you hadn't heard, the Beatles blow. They're overrated lightweights who aren't as influential as certain pivotal punk bands, and they're to blame for all that soft rock commemorated in the latest Time Life Music infomercial. And those Sgt. Pepper costumes are, let's face it, cornier than any boy-band outfit of the '90s. Of course, what you have heard and already know is that Beatle-bashing is as old as the Beatles' music itself: They've been derided by everyone from Lou Reed

British film crew arrested in Nuremberg for shooting scene with actor in SS uniform

A British film director and his crew found themselves under arrest in Germany for shooting a scene with a man in full S.S. uniform on a busy street. Police swooped on the street in Nuremberg as Joshua Newton was preparing to shoot a scene for his movie "Iron Cross" which is due to make its debut at next year's Cannes film festival. The movie stars Hollywood veteran Roy Scheider of "Jaws" fame and is a flashback thriller about a man who returns to Eur

50 years ago, the Dodgers left Ebbets Field for Los Angeles. Isn’t it time their ghosts left, too?

The story of the Brooklyn Dodgers is very likely the most mythologized nostalgia bath in the entire 400-year history of New York. The official version—a legend you’ve probably fallen asleep to during late-night documentaries or wondered vaguely about while barreling down the Jackie Robinson Parkway—goes roughly like this. A hundred years ago, Brooklyn was the meltiest part of the New York melting pot. In Bay Ridge and Crown Heights and Midwood, mustachioed fathers with giant Old-World bice

Toots Shor: A Pal to Stars, Mobsters and Other Crumb Bums (Documentary)

One day in 1997, when Kristi Jacobson was working in the documentary division of ABC News, she glanced over a co-worker’s shoulder and noticed Toots Shor’s name in the New York Times crossword puzzle. Ms. Jacobson casually mentioned that Mr. Shor, the fabled New York saloonkeeper, was her grandfather. Her colleague, a history and sports buff, “freaked out,” Ms. Jacobson, 36, recalled recently. “It was embarrassing, but I had to admit that I didn’t know much about my grandfather,” Ms

Shakira : Pop queen pursuing history lessons

Shakira may get high grades in singing and swivelling her hips, but what about ancient Western history? For the past month, the Colombian pop star has attended a class on ancient civilisations at the University of California, Los Angeles. "She went when she finished her tour, for the summer," Shakira's manager Fifi Kurzman said. The class began in August and ended on Thursday, though Shakira did not attend the last few classes, according to course

Joyce's Ulysses cinema gets a reel good makeover

A SMALL band of historians is celebrating after an old music hall and cinema featured in the James Joyce epic 'Ulysses' was restored to its former glory. The old run-down site of the Antient Concert Rooms, which went on to become the Academy Cinema on Dublin's Pearse Street, has been refurbished as part of a new development. Historian Damien Cassidy said: "We need to pay more attention to old Dublin and famous landmarks. If we don't do something soon we won't recog

History Channel crew filming outside the Old State House for "Save Our History" series

The History Channel's Emmy Award-winning series, "Save our History" traveled to Massachusetts to produce "Revolution in Boston," which explores the Old State House as well as the African Meeting House as both undergo preservation procedures. Built in 1713, the Old State House accommodated the government offices of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and when fervor to oppose the British crown was stirred, hosted speeches and stirring debates by patriots. In July 1776,

Sifting the Dustbin of Literary History

JONATHAN BANK, the artistic director of the Mint Theater Company, swings his arm over the clutter of his desk and plucks out a small piece of ruled white paper. On it are written, in cursive hand, the titles of eight obscure plays, their authors penned in next to them. “Somebody handed this to me a long time ago,” Mr. Bank said. “I don’t remember who or when. I put it away. I slipped it into a book. Then I found it again a year ago.” Whoever wrote the list might have been some sort

Brad Pitt plays Jesse James in Andrew Dominik’s new movie

Andrew Dominik’s ambitious new film, “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” (opening Friday), feels more like a novelty than it would have in, say, the 1950s, when westerns were as ubiquitous as tumbleweeds in a ghost town, or even in the late ’60s and early ’70s, when the counterculture grooved on the romance of banditry. It seems as if it has been a while since we’ve seen Jesse and his brother Frank and their narrow-eyed partners in crime stride slowly, warily into a bank

Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt: Jane Fonda's role in global warming

[Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt are the authors of “Freakonomics.” More information on the research behind this column is online at www.freakonomics.com.] If you were asked to name the biggest global-warming villains of the past 30 years, here’s one name that probably wouldn’t spring to mind: Jane Fonda. But should it? In the movie “The China Syndrome,” Fonda played a California TV reporter filming an upbeat series about

Cruise Movie Gets OK to Film at Key Site

The German government will allow the makers of a movie starring Tom Cruise as the country's most famous anti-Hitler plotter to film at the site where the hero was executed. Shooting of ''Valkyrie,'' which has attracted controversy because Cruise is a prominent Scientologist, began in July. At the time, the government didn't give permission to shoot at the so-called Bendlerblock -- part of the Defense Ministry and now a memorial to the anti-Nazi resistance -- citing concerns over ''the dignity of

'Lost' Noel Coward play uncovered

A Noel Coward play which had been untouched for almost 90 years has been rediscovered by Welsh academics. Two University of Glamorgan professors found the one-act play among archives in the British Library during research for a book they were writing. The Better Half, was last performed in 1922 by the London-based Grand Guignol company, but never published. The play is described as "a comedy of manners" which focuses on a husband and wife and her best f

In Germany the Old West is an obsession--thanks to Karl May

... A few months ago the director of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Tex., told me in passing how his museum was frequently overrun by visiting Germans, so the curious German obsession with the Wild West — which newly arrived Americans repeatedly discover to predictable eye-rolling from Germans, for whom it’s hardly news — was not exactly unknown to me. Still, the extent of it is a little astonishing. At powwows — there are dozens every year — thousands of Germans

China's terracotta army invades Britain

China's terracotta army is set to invade Britain on Thursday as some of the famous warriors go on show in London in a hotly-anticipated exhibition. The British Museum is hosting "The First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army" until April 6 and advance ticket sales are already breaking box office records, according to The Times newspaper. About a dozen warriors are set to go on show. Around 100,000 tickets have already been sold and the exhibition could outstrip t

Lessons from Iwo Jima

In February 1945, a U.S. force of some 70,000 Marines invaded Iwo Jima, a tiny volcanic island 522 miles south of Tokyo defended by over 22,000 Japanese. American intelligence expected the island to fall in five days. Instead the battle lasted seven times as long—from February 19 until March 26—ending in 6,800 U.S. fatalities, close to 20,000 U.S. wounded, and the death of 20,700 defenders. Twenty-two Marines and five Navy personnel received Medals of Honor from this ferocious engagement.

Remembering Lower Manhattan’s Day of Horror, Without Pomp or Circumstance (Exhibit/N-Y Historical Society)

It isn’t memory that is the issue. It is commemoration. Memory, at least right now, is readily summoned. Commemoration is something else altogether. The new exhibition at the New-York Historical Society, for example, is not a commemoration. “Here Is New York: Remembering 9/11,” which opens today, is exclusively about memory, which doesn’t diminish its power. In two galleries 1,500 inkjet-printed photos taken six years ago during those apocalyptic days are mounted with simple station

Documentary Lets Dalton Trumbo Speak (Through Surrogates)

Sixty years after a Congressional panel grilled 10 uncooperative writers, directors and producers about their supposed Communist connections, Hollywood still quarrels over the heroes and villains of its Red Scare. The propriety of giving Elia Kazan — one who “named names” — an honorary Oscar in 1999 remains a contentious subject. And only five years ago Stanley Kramer’s widow bitterly battled the makers of a television documentary that depicted her late husband using the blacklist t

The Legacy of Luciano Pavarotti

[Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.He can be reached at:

History’s Real Stuff (Sorry, Miss Grundy)

ON the kind of humid summer day that sends visitors to Washington running for cool cover, not even free air-conditioning could lure more than a trickle of tourists into the art museums lining the National Mall. But 35 miles south at the National Museum of the Marine Corps near Quantico, Va., visitors in a virtual boot camp tested their mettle against drill instructors and their marksmanship on an M-16 laser-rifle range. Up the Potomac at Mount Vernon, crowds spilled ont