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

Mormon movie controversy involving "September Dawn" (Video)

CNN's Brooke Anderson reports on a new film that some critics say takes an anti-Mormon stance. [The film tells the story of the Mountain Meadows Massacre.]

Is this a real Jackson Pollock? A mysterious trove of pictures rocks the art world

When Jackson Pollock smashed his green Oldsmobile convertible into a tree in East Hampton, on New York's Long Island, 51 years ago this month, his violent death at the age of 44 only enhanced his mythic status as the iconic American renegade, who'd splattered—or dripped—his tortured psyche across his revolutionary canvases. Now firmly established as the most important American artist of the 20th century, Pollock still makes headlines—most of them containing dollar signs. Last November an early P

Ambition and History Meet in China's Hollywood

The size of Paramount and Universal Studios combined, Hengdian in southern China is the world's largest film studio. In just 10 years, Hengdian has transformed itself from a poverty-stricken farming village to a collection of replica palaces, temples and historical streets, open to film crews, often for free. A life-size reproduction of Beijing's Forbidden City — home to China's emperors — is just one of Hengdian's 18 sets. TV series, commercials and some of China's mos

Bryan Singer’s 'Valkyrie,' slated for 2008 summer release, unfolds the failed assassination attempt against Hitler

Slated for 2008 summer release, ‘Valkyrie’, a United Artists Entertainment LDC production, will be shot at locations in Germany. The true story is being directed by Bryan Singer (‘The Usual Suspects,’ ‘Superman Returns’ and ‘X-Men’), while Christopher McQuarrie (‘The Usual Suspects,’ ‘The Way of the Gun’) has joined hands with Nathan Alexander for the screenplay. The studio staged a coup by bagging Tom Cruise to play the lead, Colonel Claus Von Stauffenberg, the aristocratic German

Ken Burns' latest documentary lets those who lived World War II tell what it was like - while they're with us.

The presence of Ken Burns' father looms large in his son's latest PBS epic. But viewers won't know it. An unidentified photograph of Lt. Robert Kyle Burns Jr. is the first and last image in The War, a 15-hour documentary series about World War II. It launches Sept. 23. Burns hadn't planned to use the photo, a beloved possession since college. After all, his dad had spoken to him about the war only once before his death in 2001. But as War began takin

'Casablanca' to be remade by Bollywood

The setting is not Rick's Café in Nazi-controlled Morocco but a restaurant in southern India, and the conflict is not the Second World War but the current ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. But fans of the movie Casablanca may recognise one or two similarities – the hard-bitten restaurateur who risks everything to help his former lover and her husband, the drama of smouldering human passion played out against a backdrop of senseless violence in which the problems of three people do not a

How Did Elvis Get Turned Into a Racist?

ONE of the songs Elvis Presley liked to perform in the ’70s was Joe South’s “Walk a Mile in My Shoes,” its message clearly spelled out in the title. Sometimes he would preface it with the 1951 Hank Williams recitation “Men With Broken Hearts,” which may well have been South’s original inspiration. “You’ve never walked in that man’s shoes/Or saw things through his eyes/Or stood and watched with helpless hands/While the heart inside you dies.” For Elvis these two songs were as much ab

Reconsidering Bonnie and Clyde 40 years later

THE story of “Bonnie and Clyde” has been told so many times that it has acquired the patina of legend. It’s the kind of historical fable that circulates to explain how the world once was and how it came to be the way it is now: a morality tale in which the wild energies of youth defeat the stale certainties of age, and freedom triumphs over repression. I’m not talking about the adventures of the actual Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, who robbed and shot their way through Texas, Okla

Israel Museum: A Museum to Get Lost In, and How Israel Is Fixing It

THE Israel Museum is one of the finest in the Middle East — if you can figure out how to get in and find the art. Founded in 1965 by Teddy Kollek, the long-serving Jerusalem mayor, to ensure that Israel would have a national museum of world rank, the museum was a vital symbol of the new nation. Mr. Kollek wanted, and got, “a modernist temple to culture” surrounded by other symbols of Israel’s modern statehood, like the Knesset, the Supreme Court and the National Library, said the mu

Susan Meiselas ... Well-Traveled Photographer, Recording and Then Returning

Susan Meiselas is looking a bit shaken. She has just heard that her trip to Guinea, scheduled to start the next day, has been canceled; her driver there has been assaulted and is fleeing the country. She is working with Human Rights Watch photographing child domestic workers, and clearly someone didn’t like it.... “Part of what happens if you stay and take pictures is that you feel you will protect people just by standing there,” she said. “But you can’t stand there that long, and y

Crossing the Line (2006) A Defector’s Second Life, Embracing North Korea

“Crossing the Line” tells of four American servicemen who defected to North Korea, with an emphasis on James Joseph Dresnok, a k a Comrade Joe, who became a privileged North Korean citizen and appeared in propaganda extolling Communism. Mr. Dresnok, a poor, abused orphan from Virginia, was already married when he deserted in 1962. He married twice more in North Korea — to a woman who was probably Romanian, then to the daughter of a Korean woman and a Togolese diplomat — and has thre

Florentine sculptor Desiderio da Settignano rediscovered (Exhibit/Wash.DC)

Reputation is the strangest thing. An artist is celebrated; he’s on top of the world. He dies, and his work is forgotten, or misremembered, or misunderstood as fashions change and canons form. Then suddenly he’s back in the spotlight, or what survives of him is, with scholars scrambling to make up for lost attention and time. This is the basic story of the 15th-century Florentine sculptor Desiderio da Settignano. He was a star in his day, and his name continues to hold a firm place

New movie--Best Wishes for Tomorrow--looks for honor amid the recriminations of war (Japan)

War crimes constitute one of the leading issues of our time. But what exactly is a war crime, who should be held responsible, and how should perpetrators be brought to justice? Whether we are talking about World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq or any other conflict, the principles and execution of justice should be the same for all sides. Let me cite one example. Bombers are on a mission to drop high-explosive incendiary devices on a city

A Lens Into the Belgian Congo (Photography Exhibit/Brussels)

When Dr. Emile Muller returned to Belgium in 1938 after working for 15 years in the Congo, he didn't say much to his family about his time there. But he brought home a suitcase of nearly 3,000 photos. These black-and-white images -- 400 of which were painstakingly restored and 150 of which are now on display in the Ambre Congo gallery here -- offer a passport to daily life in the Belgian Congo of that era. When Dr. Muller arrived in 1923, Belgium had been in the Congo for nearly 50

One man's play about the Medal of Honor transcends politics

The play is "Beyond Glory," written and performed by Stephen Lang at the Roundabout Theater in New York. In barest outline, Mr. Lang, who originated the role of the accused Marine colonel in the Broadway production of "A Few Good Men," brings to life eight recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor from World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Without interruption for 80 minutes, Mr. Lang recreates eight different men, who relate the hellish events that earned them the Medal of H

N-Y Historical Society Exhibition on 9/11

New-York Historical Society president Louise Mirrer and curators Marilyn Kushner and Stephen Edidin will introduce Here is New York: Remembering 9/11/01 -- a haunting new exhibition commemorating the sixth anniversary of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks and featuring 1,300 photographs, a display of found-objects pulled from the rubble and hundreds of oral histories -- at a press preview on Thursday, September 6th, 10 AM to 12 NOON, at the New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park Wes

China's Terracotta Army on the move

Emperor Qin Shihuang's army is on the move. Some of China's terracotta warriors are being loaned for a major exhibition at the British Museum in London. Hiromi Kinoshita, the curator of the exhibition, said visitors were likely to be surprised by the exhibition, which will include a dozen statues and other artefacts "What many people may not realise is that excavations have continued, and there are new, recent discoveries of fabulous life-size terracotta acrobats,

Kerouac: The novel that launched the Beats, the hippies and designer jeans turns 50

Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" gets the full 50th anniversary treatment next month, and both cheerleaders and hand-wringers acknowledge that it radically changed American culture—somehow or other. True, the National Quiet Desperation Index has only risen since 1957, and if the book's exaltation of junker cars and diner food had really taken hold, we'd have fewer SUVs and fast-food franchises. But "On the Road" showed, and continues to show, generations of young readers a more i

Bollywood rewrites history

History sells on screen if marketed well in contemporary Bollywood. Even as the Mahatma returns on reel again in a biopic about Harilal Gandhi ( Gandhi My Father ), are historical films the flavour of the season, especially with Ashutosh Gowarikar’s Jodhaa Akbar lined up for release soon? A year after Gandhigiri became uber cool, thanks to Rajkumar Hirani’s Lage Raho Munnabhai , does mainstream cinema make people more conscious about a historical leader? Rajendra Khimani, regis

"CSI: NY" is history after Canada ruling that it shouldn't run on History Television channel

"CSI: NY" may be popular viewing with Canadians, but it's not fit for Canada's History Television cable channel. That's the verdict of Canada's TV watchdog, which has rejected broadcaster Alliance Atlantis Communications' argument that "CSI: NY" offered History Television viewers "a critically acclaimed look at forensic policing in post-9/11 New York City." The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, responding to a co