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

NYT reviews the new Creation Museum in Kentucky

The entrance gates here are topped with metallic Stegosauruses. The grounds include a giant tyrannosaur standing amid the trees, and a stone-lined lobby sports varied sauropods. It could be like any other natural history museum, luring families with the promise of immense fossils and dinosaur adventures. But step a little farther into the entrance hall, and you come upon a pastoral scene undreamt of by any natural history museum. Two prehistoric children play near a burbling waterf

Star Wars 30 years old

When you can get ideological opposites like Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich to agree, you know you must have something that will stand the test of time. That is what George Lucas managed to do with "Star Wars." The current and former House speakers are just a couple of the two dozen fans and critics who offer their insights into the 30-year "Star Wars" phenomenon in a new documentary, "Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed," airing at 9 p.m. Monday

HBO's 'Bury My Heart' exhumes a painful history

When he first read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dick Wolf says "it shook me to my core." "I had been watching cowboy and Indian movies growing up, and this was a completely different view of history -- the first point of view from Indians," says Wolf, executive producer of NBC's Law & Order franchise and spinoffs. So when Wolf was approached by HBO to produce historian Dee Brown's seminal 1970 work about the displacement and slaughter of the la

Disney's Upcoming Blockbuster to Spin a Fairytale of Black History

"Blacks were never subservient to whites?" Kids say the darndest things. At least, they will after viewing Disney's upcoming "The Princess and the Frog," the unwittingly controversial introduction of Disney's first black princess. Alas, nobody warned Mickey about portraying pre-Civil Rights Act blacks in today's Don Imus world. Now the company has a political nightmare on its hands, and in its continuing efforts to mollify the race police, Disney has rewritten A

Titanic achilles heal (Documentary/History Channel)

When the 2006 History Channel special, TITANIC: MISSING PIECES, discovered missing pieces of the Titanic on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, it dramatically changed the tale of the ship's final, doomed moments. Now, further research of the find reveals a tangle of deception and half-truths that dramatically changes our understanding of the greatest maritime disaster in history. The dramatic re-writing of the tale continues exclusively on The History Channel(R) with the world premiere of TITANIC

Those Tired, Those Poor: A Journey as Important as Its Destination: Golden Door (Movie review)

In its basic outline the story told in “Golden Door,” Emanuele Crialese’s beautiful dream of a film, is hardly unfamiliar. Some version of this immigrant’s tale — setting out from the old country, crossing the Atlantic in steerage, arriving at Ellis Island — is part of the family history of millions of Americans. But what makes Mr. Crialese’s telling unusual, apart from the gorgeousness of his wide-screen compositions, is that his emphasis is on departure and transition, rather than arrival.

Paul Simon concert sponsored by Library of Congress

Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, and Mr. Simon’s South African collaborators, the Zulu choir Ladysmith Black Mambazo, brought back the past in two rare reunions in a concert sponsored by the Library of Congress at the ornate Warner Theater in Washington on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Celebrating Mr. Simon’s selection as the recipient of the library’s first Gershwin Award in recognition of excellence exemplifying the Gershwins, the concert was punctuated by high-fives and hugs. Mr. Simon joined Ladysm

Artist Ivan Sinnaeve uses remains of the millions of shells that fell on Flanders' killing fields to make his own tribute to the Scots who fought and fell in WWI

A LASTING symbol of hope has been created from the debris of death left in the World War One battlefields. A Belgian craftsmen is using tiny pieces of lead shrapnel which still litter the killing fields of Flanders to make 10in models of brave Highland soldiers who fought and fell there in the Great War. Wheelchair-bound Ivan Sinnaeve - known as Shrapnel Charlie - sells the detailed figures, complete with kilts and bagpipes, for £35 from Passchendaele Museum in Zonnebek

You're 100, pilgrim: John Wayne celebrated as actor and patriot on anniversary of his birth

On the 100th anniversary of John Wayne's birth, the Duke still swaggers through the American psyche as not just an actor, but a patriot his centennial spawning fond remembrance, and perhaps a few small protests on the side. Wayne's legacy is unique because of the dual perspectives that pervade his memory. Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Garry Wills, who wrote "John Wayne's America" in 1997, described Wayne as "the most popular movie star ever, but also the

Manuscript That Inspired 'Titanic' Character Revealed in Paris

When Helen Churchill Candee wrote a 42-page memoir of the Titanic's maiden voyage, she had no idea she was writing herself into the role of a Hollywood heroine. "Titanic" director James Cameron reportedly took his inspiration for the character Rose from that manuscript, which is on public view for the first time at the Museum of Letters and Manuscripts in Paris. But unlike the young Rose, as played by Kate Winslet, Candee was a 50-year-old American divorcee wh

Documentary about Simon Wiesenthal panned by NYT

The legacy of the concentration camp survivor and Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal is one of unimpeachable bravery, but "I Have Never Forgotten You," a new documentary, is a suspect monument to his courage. Directed by Richard Trank, also its co-author, the film effectively sketches Mr. Wiesenthal's life, from his tenacity in surviving the genocide that claimed much of his family, to his determination to identify, find and punish ex-Nazis after World War II, at a time when man

The History Channel Orders up Fourth Season of Digging For The Truth

The History Channel has picked up a fourth season of Digging For The Truth, which follows adventurers and scientists as they travel the globe searching for answers to come of civilizations greatest mysteries. Former Navy pilot Hunter Ellis and adventurer Zay Harding will be taking over hosting duties for this season, replacing Josh Bernstein, who left the show to join the Discovery Channel, where he will serve as a producer and host on new shows for the network. “Since

Anti-Semitic entertainment is being shown on Arab television

[Nonie Darwish is an American of Arab/Moslem origin. A freelance writer and public speaker, she runs the website www.ArabsForIsrael.com. ] The anti-Semitism of the Arab news media is a well-documented phenomenon. Less well known in the West is the extreme hatred of Jews that saturates much of the Arab entertainment world. Consider the Egyptian film, “A Girl from Israel” (“Fataah Min Israeel” in Arabic), which was shown earlier this month

Venezuela giving Danny Glover $18m to direct film on epic slave revolt

Venezuela is to give the American actor Danny Glover almost $18m (£9m) to make a film about a slave uprising in Haiti, with President Hugo Chávez hoping the historical epic will sprinkle Hollywood stardust on his effort to mobilise world public opinion against imperialism and western oppression. The Venezuelan congress said it would use the proceeds from a recent bond sale with Argentina to finance Glover's biopic of Toussaint Louverture, an iconic figure in the Caribbean who led a

Paul Simon Awaits Library of Congress Distinction, Says 'I Was Meant to Be a Songwriter'

Paul Simon has performed many great songs, but for him, writing one is an even better experience. Simon will be honored for that skill next week by the Library of Congress with its first annual Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. He's been singing since he was a child, and said while there are different ways to define a great song, some stand out for a very simple reason. "I would say the simplest one is a song that other people can sing easily. And when they walk aro

Rhett, Scarlett and Friends Prepare for Yet Another Encore

It’s taken 12 years, three authors and one rejected manuscript, but tomorrow will be another day when “Rhett Butler’s People,” the second sequel to Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind,” is published this fall. Less a conventional sequel than a retelling from Rhett Butler’s point of view, the new book, to be published by St. Martin’s Press in November, is written by Donald McCaig, a former advertising copywriter turned Virginia sheep farmer who has written well-reviewed novels ab

Hamilton: Passionate, puzzling founding father

How much acting do you like in your documentaries? If you want none, avoid PBS' Alexander Hamilton. This two-hour documentary, premiering at 9 p.m. Monday, enlists New York stage actors to speak the words of historical figures. The actors dress in period costume and deliver monologues directly to the camera. These performers, especially Tony-winner Brian F. O'Byrne as Hamilton, bring edge and passion to their speeches. This is no dry history lesson. This is the past pre

Reviving a Nazi-era play to make a point (nudge, nudge) about today's politics

Fear and Misery of the Third Reich: Docudrama. By Bertolt Brecht. Directed by Susan E. Evans and Charles E. Polly. (Through Sunday, Eastenders Repertory Company at Traveling Jewish Theatre, 470 Florida St., San Francisco. Thursday through 20 at Jewish Community Center of the East Bay, 1414 Walnut St., Berkeley. Two hours, 40 minutes. Tickets $20. Call (510) 568-4118). ? An eye-opening view of how the German people allowed themselves to be taken over and stampeded into war and horr

Warhol painting fetches 71.7 million dollars at New York sale

A painting by American pop artist Andy Warhol sold at auction for 71.7 million dollars in New York late Wednesday, easily beating the previous record for the artist's works. The 1963 painting, "Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I)," narrowly missed the record for the most expensive post-war work to sell at auction -- a record set Tuesday when a painting by Mark Rothko sold for 72.8 million dollars. Warhol's work, a surreal and gruesome image of an overturne

Another chance for 'The Other Conquest' (The Mexican film depicting the Spanish clash with the Aztecs returns to theaters eight years after its premiere)

Its tagline could be "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Aztecs But Were Afraid to Ask Mel Gibson." But writer-director Salvador Carrasco hopes that with the re-release of his movie "The Other Conquest" (La Otra Conquista) in U.S. theaters this month, comparisons or elaborate introductions won't be required. That's partly because Carrasco's much-extolled first feature film, set during the bloody encounter between the Spanish conquistadors and Aztec ki