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

"The Unknown Soldier": Disturbing the Guilty Archives of the Wehrmacht (Documentary)

“The Unknown Soldier,” a new documentary by Michael Verhoeven, takes on one of the comforting myths of postwar Germany: the idea that ordinary German soldiers were for the most part unaware of and uninvolved in the worst crimes of the Nazi regime. In a version of history held by many Germans, the SS and other specialized organizations conceived and carried out policies of extermination against civilians, while the Wehrmacht rank and file went about the usual business of fighting the

My Lai movie to be reminder of war atrocities: Oliver Stone

Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone said he wanted his film portrayal of the 1968 My Lai massacre by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam to serve as a reminder of war atrocities, newspapers reported on Friday. Stone has been visiting central Vietnam since Wednesday and went to the site of the killing of 500 civilians, mostly women and children, on March 16, 1968, the worst recorded U.S. war crime committed in Vietnam. Two dailies, Thanh Nien (Young People) and Tuoi Tre (Youth), qu

Film 'solves Rembrandt masterpiece mysteries'

The Night Watch by Rembrandt has perplexed scholars for centuries with its array of hidden clues and coded messages. Peter Greenaway uses his new film, Nightwatching, to claim that the artist used the painting to expose a murderous conspiracy amongst Amsterdam's ruling classes. Completed in 1642, The Night Watch was commissioned by local militiamen who wished to be immortalised on canvas. Rembrandt was then one of Europe's most celebrated artists. According to Greenaway

Clinging to Memories of a Ghost Who Haunts Chile (Movie Review/Salvador Allende)

One from the heart, “Salvador Allende” is the Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán’s plaintive look back at the rise and violent fall of the world’s first democratically elected Marxist president. Mr. Guzmán, who went into exile after the Sept. 11, 1973, coup that led to Allende’s death, has returned to the country of his birth with a camera in hand and a storehouse of passionate memories. Alas, little of that passion informs the filmmaking in this documentary dirge, a memento mori about “the other

On Display, the Agonized Objects and Photos of 9/11 (Exhibit/N-Y Historical Society)

A rust-red I-beam from the World Trade Center. A battered landing gear. A melted ribbon of aluminum skin from the twin towers. Hour by hour, working through the night in his studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, to forge elegant black steel mounts for these and other tortured artifacts from Sept. 11, 2001, the sculptor Richard Webber started “communing with them,” he recalled. In their presence, “you could almost hear what happened that day.” Ultimately, he fashioned seemingl

Documentary lifts curtain on pocket books called Stalags that featured Nazi pornography for Israelis

It was one of Israel’s dirty little secrets. In the early 1960s, as Israelis were being exposed for the first time to the shocking testimonies of Holocaust survivors at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a series of pornographic pocket books called Stalags, based on Nazi themes, became best sellers throughout the land. Read under the table by a generation of pubescent Israelis, often the children of survivors, the Stalags were named for the World War II prisoner-of-war camps in which the

The Princess and Her Pea-Sized Legacy

"She was the people's princess. And that's how she will … remain." I marked the 10th anniversary of the death of the princess of Wales by watching Tony Blair's sob-choked 1997 tribute to Lady Diana on YouTube. Like some 89 percent of Britons, I can, of course, remember where I was when the BBC announced her death in a car crash in Paris, where I was when I saw Blair's tribute the first time around, and where I was when Elton John sang"Goodbye England's Rose" at her funeral in Westminster A

Film Takes Us Back 38 Years, to That First Walk (on the Moon)

They are old men now. That much is obvious from the tight camera shots. Nonetheless, it is hard to fathom: has it been 38 years since the first of them set foot on lunar soil? “In the Shadow of the Moon,” a documentary that premieres this week in New York and Los Angeles, tells the story of the Apollo program and the race to reach the moon, as President John F. Kennedy declared in 1962, “before this decade is out.” And so, on July 20, 1969, we did. Note the “we.” It is

Da Vinci's Ad Lib Painting Style Revealed

Leonardo da Vinci did not mix colors on a palette, but directly on the canvas he was painting, Italian researchers have found. The discovery occurred when one of the Renaissance master's artworks was bombarded with a narrow beam of high-energy ions. Presented at Ecaart 2007, an international conference running in Florence, Italy, until September 7, the study decodes for the first time Leonardo's painting technique. Researchers at the Nuclear Techniques Laboratory for Cu

Molly Pitcher Fought at Battle of Brandywine in Male Disguise, September 11, 1776 says New Mystery Novel

September 11 marks the 130th anniversary of the Battle of Brandywine, the largest battle of the Revolutionary War when General George Washington had more troops under his command than he ever would have again. Among them may have been Molly Pitcher, America's most famous military woman, says Professor Linda Grant De Pauw, author of In Search of Molly Pitcher (http://www.lulu.com/content/948354), a mystery story combined with an historical research guide for middle schoolers, which

Singing the Lament of a Fugitive Slave

IN the fall of 2002 the composer Richard Danielpour was in residence at the American Academy in Berlin, orchestrating the first act of his first opera, “Margaret Garner” but still awaiting the words for the final scenes. For weeks, in calls to Princeton, N.J., he had been hounding his librettist, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison, who would answer quietly: “Good things take time. You have to wait.” Finally, in late October, the fax machine began disgorging pages. Mr. Da

Remembering Jack Kerouac

[A friend of the author of "On the Road," published 50 years ago this month, tells why the novel still matters.] One snowy January night in 1957, I found myself in a Howard Johnson's in Greenwich Village buying a hot dog and baked beans for a virtually unknown writer named Jack Kerouac. It was a blind date arranged by Allen Ginsberg, who always looked out for his male friends. As Allen no doubt saw it, Jack needed a place in New York to stay for a while until he could take

Tom Cruise: 'I Bear a Great Responsibility to Stauffenberg'

Despite media criticism of his membership in Scientology, Tom Cruise chatted this week to a German magazine about his upcoming film about a Hitler assassination plot and the walks in Berlin's parks he enjoys with Katie and Suri. He also lashed back at critics, telling them to "see the film" before dissing it. After more than a month of filming in a country whose press is often quick to vilify him for his membership in the Church of Scientology, Tom Cruise has spoken to a G

A New Stage for Arthur Miller’s Most Private Drama of Fathers and Sons

It had been something of an open secret for years, but most people did not learn the story of Daniel Miller until last week, when Vanity Fair published an article called “Arthur Miller’s Missing Act.” As described in Suzanna Andrews’s 5,000-word article, Arthur Miller, who died in February 2005, and his third wife, the photographer Inge Morath, had a son born with Down syndrome in 1966. Soon after, they made the painful decision to put the child, Miller’s youngest, in an institutio

After 10 Years, Fascination With Diana Hardly Fades

Ten years have passed since Diana, Princess of Wales, died and Britain erupted in a febrile convulsion of grief and anger, but in some ways you would hardly know it. The tabloids are still spinning breathless tales of conspiracy, cover-up and royal squabbling. “Document That Proves Diana Was Pregnant,” said a recent headline in The Daily Express, nicknamed The Diana Express because of its enthusiasm for even the most tenuous news about the princess. “Charles ‘Hijacks’ D

History Detectives: Is This Letter From Lincoln the Real Thing?

For those of you who may not have watched the PBS series, “History Detectives” last night, Shelbyville native and Lincoln historian, John Lupton played a central role in authenticating a document supposedly written by Abraham Lincoln in 1858. Lupton is Associate Director of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield , IL .. His position there requires him to make sure the documents that enter into the collection are authentic

Decades-long restoration of Vatican Raphael frescoes almost completed

VATICAN CITY — As visitors ooh and aah at the vivid hues revealed by the cleaning of Michelangelo's frescoed ceiling in the Sistine Chapel, some of the greatest work of a fellow Renaissance giant has been quietly restored to glory a few rooms away. Now, nearly 30 years after work began, the restoration of Raphael's frescoes in the rooms named after him in the Vatican Museums is approaching completion. Restorers said in recent interviews that their work in the Raphael St

New book claims Merlin had Scottish roots

Merlin the magician - hirsute confidant of King Arthur and the architect of Camelot - was, in fact, Scottish, according to a new book. Not only Scottish but, to be precise, hailing from Ardery Street, just off the Dumbarton Road, in the Partick area of Glasgow. While the English, Welsh and even the French have laid claim to the wizard with the peaked hat for centuries, this is the first time that anyone has tried to shift Camelot north of the border. But Ad

Jack Kirby, a Comic Book Genius, Is Finally Remembered

The fear of being forgotten after death is endemic in the creative arts. In the case of the iconic comic book artist Jack Kirby, it happened while he was still alive. By the 1960s, Mr. Kirby had already revolutionized the comic book business more than once. Working as principal artist and in-house genius for Marvel, he created a voice and an aesthetic unmatched by any other company. Marvel took his talents for granted and denied him the credit and compensation he clearly deserved. W

The Nureyev Nobody Knows, Young and Wild (Documentary)

A POINT comes in the afterlife of an artist when, for the time being, biography has pretty much done its work. The essential history is known; the ambience is broadly understood; the relationship between the life and the work has yielded its chief mysteries. Barring bombshells any future surprises are apt to be minor: not revelations, just minutiae. To judge by the title, the 90-minute documentary “Nureyev: The Russian Years,” written and produced by the British filmmaker John Bridc