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

Discovery’s Jesus Tops History’s Dark Ages

As historical documentaries go, the alleged final resting place of Jesus drew more curiosity from viewers Sunday than the Dark Ages. Discovery Channel’s much hyped March 4 John Cameron-produced special, The Lost Tomb of Jesus -- which claimed to have found the remains of Jesus of Nazareth and his family within a 2,000-year-old tomb -- drew 4.19 million viewers and a 3.2 household rating, according to Nielsen Media Research. While falling well short of the network record

Gali Girls line of dolls celebrates Jewish history, values

Taking its cue from the wildly successful American Girl dolls and novels, a small company in New Jersey has been carving out its own niche -- character dolls representing Jewish girls from different countries and centuries. Gali Girls began in 2004 as one woman's quest to supplant the provocative messages of Barbies and Bratz with contemporary dolls that elevate traditional Jewish values such as modesty, kindness, charity and respect. "I'd noticed the growing popu

This is Sparta? The history behind the movie '300'

Go tell the Spartans, passerby. That here, by Spartan law, we lie, read the ancient elegy on stone at Thermopylae, the ancient battle site where the Greeks, 300 Spartans and their allies, held off masses of invading Persians in 480 BC. Hollywood, our modern Mount Olympus that churns out fresh myths along with popcorn and soda pop, is taking on this historical battle that defined ancient Greece long ago. Thermopylae was a narrow mountain pass, wide enough for one chariot, with cliffs

Debate Ensues After WWII Drama Shows Germans as Victims

The latest chapter in a series of taboo-breaking television dramas, a two-part series shows Germans as victims of violence at the end of World War II and sparks controversy among Polish and German political leaders.Some 11 million Germans tuned in to the first of a two-part series on public broadcaster ARD Sunday night to watch a TV drama showing Germans as victims of violence as they fled eastern Europe at the end of World War II. The first part of "Die Fl

Vidor, Texas--a Sundown Town--can't shake its past

THE only thing that’s black and white in the book is the color of the photographs,” said Billy Hartman, a 37-year-old lifelong resident of this small town. “You couldn’t get anything out of the book as being prejudiced.” Not all of Mr. Hartman’s neighbors are inclined to agree. The book is “Rough Beauty.” The photographer is Dave Anderson, a former communications aide in the Clinton White House and “MTV Choose or Lose” tour manager. And the town is Vidor, population 11,

Captain Smith, the Tides Are Shifting on the James (Exhibit/Virginia)

JAMESTOWN, Va. — At the banks of the James River here, not far from where an archaeological dig has found pottery shards and remains of settlers from 400 years ago, a proud Capt. John Smith faces the waters and the setting sun. A wooden stockade extends near the shoreline — the water has moved inland over the centuries — showing where his frail fort once stood. But Smith stands heroically tall, his bronze cape seeming to ripple in the brisk winter winds. Even the inscription proclaims his import

Madame Tussauds set to open in D.C.

Abraham Lincoln is coming back to life just a block away from Ford's Theatre. A wax figure of the 16th president will be the first thing visitors see when they enter the next Madame Tussauds wax museum scheduled to open in the United States. The attraction is set to open in October and will be located in the former Woodward & Lothrop department store, a Washington landmark located down the street from the historic theater where Lincoln was fatally shot, company offi

Zodiac Movie: Undying legend of a killer

The Zodiac, the notorious Bay Area serial killer of more than 35 years ago who threatened schoolchildren, dodged police and incessantly wrote to local newspapers bragging about how clever he was, is the subject of a Hollywood movie opening Friday. When you're sitting in that theater, take a hard look at that graying loner down there in the 10th row. You could be staring at the Zodiac. This is the case that won't go away. The killer's catch-me-if-you-can taunting of po

World Book Day poll ... winner is Pride and Prejudice

In the end, quality tells. People may have bought The Da Vinci Code in its millions but, when asked to name the most precious book they have read, they relegated it to 42nd place and chose Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. In the poll for World Book Day today, the highest-ranking contemporary adult fiction novel is Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong, which came only 17th. By contrast, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte was third; Wuthering Heights by her sister Emily was seventh;

The Things They Left Behind: Photographs From Poland’s Lost Jews

They are exquisitely ordinary family snapshots: six young men and women on the beach, playfully arranged in a pyramid; a bourgeois family flaunting its Sabbath best of fur-lined topcoats and rakishly angled hats; a dark-haired Orthodox mother with an infant cradled in her arms and her five children, three barefoot, lined up stiffly in front of a tumbledown shack. There are dozens of other photographs just as posed and stilted, and strangers scanning them might barely pause for a se

Iwo Jima's Lesson in Empathy

On March 9, 1945, 346 B-29s left the Marianas, bound for Tokyo, where they dropped 1,858 tons of incendiaries that destroyed one-sixth of Japan's capital, killing 83,000. Gen. Curtis LeMay, then commander of the air assault on Japan, later wrote, "We scorched and boiled and baked to death more people in Tokyo ...than went up in vapor at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined." That was inaccurate -- 80,000 died at Hiroshima alone. And in his new biography of LeMay, Barrett Tillma

Honus Wagner baseball card sells for $2.35m

The "Holy Grail of baseball cards," the famous 1909 Honus Wagner tobacco card once owned by hockey great Wayne Gretzky, has sold for a record-setting $2,350,000, the seller of the card said Monday. The anonymous buyer has only been identified as a Southern California collector. SCP Auctions Inc., a company that holds sports memorabilia auctions, said it bought a small share of the card. It is scheduled to be shown at a news conference at Dodger Stadium Tuesday.

Did John Wilkes Booth survive? Theory is that Lincoln’s killer had escaped to Tennessee

SEWANEE, Tenn. — A signature in the Franklin County Courthouse and a mummy last seen in 1975 convinced two Tennessee men that John Wilkes Booth, the killer of Abraham Lincoln, escaped capture, traveled South and lived into the 20th century. Now one of those men is hoping to use DNA evidence to prove it. The other man, Arthur Ben Chitty, a historiographer at the University of the South who died in 2002, spent 40 years amassing anecdotal evidence that Mr. Booth married a

Amazing Grace gets thumbs up review in New Yorker

Written by Steven Knight (“Dirty Pretty Things”) and directed by the veteran Michael Apted, the movie is upbeat in tone, conventional in form, and often reminiscent of earlier inspirational pictures about heroes who overcome defeat and go on fighting against impossible odds. Yet, as square as this movie is, it has been made with eloquence and jaunty high spirits, and it tells a good story that is virtually unknown here. If Americans recognize the name Wilberforce at all, they are p

Wilberforce and the Roots of Freedom (Movie)

William Wilberforce is one of the great forgotten men of history. That will change, and Wilberforce will be simply one of the great men of history, when the remarkable new film Amazing Grace opens nationwide this weekend. Amazing Grace commemorates the bicentennial of the British ban on the slave trade (1807), an antislavery movement led by Wilberforce. Without him, there would have been no end to the slave trade, certainly not in his time. And, without his conversion to Christianit

What the new movie covers up about William Wilberforce

It is rare that a Hollywood film takes up a subject like William Wilberforce (1759-1833), the British parliamentarian who devoted nearly his entire 45-year political career to banning the British slave trade. Alas, a lot of people watching"Amazing Grace," Michael Apted's just-released film, may get the impression--perhaps deliberately fostered by Mr. Apted--that Wilberforce was a mostly secular humanitarian whose main passion was not Christian faith but politics and social justice. A

Ring-a-king idea wins tech prize

Tourists may soon be able to call up a virtual Macbeth on their mobiles to get the true history behind William Shakespeare's tragic Scottish king. The idea has won Seabridge Consultants in Forres, Moray, a £40,000 share of a £120,000 technology prize. The company intend to use the money to develop a system where people will hear an actor's voice or receive a text telling the story of the real Macbeth. He became king in the 11th Century after killing Duncan I in b

Collector of £1m in autographed stars who wanted Garbo's so badly he borrowed £100,000

With Oscar night looming, a list of nominees ranging from Helen Mirren to Forest Whitaker are keeping their fingers crossed this weekend. Closer to home, however, a collector who has spent more than 30 years gathering the autographs of Hollywood stars who have picked up the awards is confident he is on to a winner. Alan Robinson is expected to make as much as £1 milllion when the bulk of photographs signed by every actor to win an Oscar since the awards began in 1929 is

Wendy's chain to close first restaurant

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Wendy's International Inc. said Friday that sagging sales will force it to close the restaurant where the nation's third-largest hamburger chain began in 1969. The iconic restaurant, filled with memorabilia and photographs of the late Wendy's founder, Dave Thomas, will close March 2. "This is a very difficult decision, but the truth is we kept it open for sentimental reasons much longer than we should have," company spokesman Denny Lynch said.

Breathless headline about the bones of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

JERUSALEM -- In a scene worthy of a Dan Brown novel, archaeologists a quarter of a century ago unearthed a burial chamber near Jerusalem. Inside they found ossuaries, or boxes of bones, marked with the names of Jesus, Joseph and Mary. Then one of the ossuaries went missing. The human remains inside were destroyed before any DNA testing could be carried out. While Middle East academics doubt that the relics belong to the Holy Family, the issue is about to be