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

Film Star in Kampala, Conjuring Amin’s Ghost

KAMPALA, Uganda, Feb. 17 — This year, the Oscar buzz has made it all the way to Kampala. On Saturday, none other than Forest Whitaker, a leading contender for best actor, parted a crowd of paparazzi in front of a chic hotel here in Uganda’s capital, and then strutted down a stretch of genuine red carpet for the official opening of “The Last King of Scotland.” Official being the key word. Because the movie, about the blood-soaked reign of Uganda’s mercurial dictator, Idi

Fueled by obscenity, HBO's series "Rome" shocks us back 2,000 years -- and reflects the horror show in Iraq today

In his book "Mythologies," the French theorist Roland Barthes turned his jaundiced gaze on, among other things, bad movie haircuts. In a chapter titled "The Romans in Films," Barthes mocked the dos in Joseph Mankiewicz's 1953 film "Julius Caesar." "[A]ll the characters are wearing fringes. Some have them curly, some straggly, some tufted, some oily, all have them well combed," Barthes wrote. "What then is associated with these insistent fringes? Quite

Hitler comedy drawing comment in Germany

Despite the tangible presence of reminders of the Third Reich all over Berlin ˜ from the bullet-scarred buildings near the Reichstag to the converted Wehrmacht communications headquarters in which my daughter's school is located ˜ its tragic history is, at the same time, oddly invisible. Depictions of Adolf Hitler and Nazi symbols are mostly outlawed in Germany, and it remains something of a taboo to mention him in day-to-day conversation. So, it has been a bit of a shock in recent days to see p

1969 comedy about Stalin released on DVD

Peter Bacso’s The Witness is a comedy about Stalinism, oxymoronic as such a description might sound. The film was made in 1969, but immediately banned by the Communist government of Hungary, and only released in 1981. The film is apparently famous and widely popular in Hungary, but it is not very well known elsewhere. The American DVD is marred by missing subtitles in a few scenes, though for the most part my class and I were able to keep track of what was going on. In terms of form

History Channel Documentary on Nixon Praised by NYT

“Nixon: A Presidency Revealed” is the title of a documentary appearing on the History Channel tonight, and it immediately invites the question: What, really, is left to be revealed? Was John Dean secretly a woman? Were H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman actually receiving their orders from Pluto? Was it because of some previously unknown affiliation with strange fashion cultists that Spiro T. Agnew wore ties with polka dots the size of half-dollars? And, in the absence of such disclosures, what

Amazing Grace--New Movie About William Wilberforce--Receives Rave Review in IHT

Two hundred years ago next month, Britain ended its participation in the slave trade. The move hardly absolved the country of the sin of having shipped millions of Africans to the New World for sale as chattels. But it was a rare point of light in one of the darkest chapters of human history — and it set in motion the gradual emancipation of slaves across the Americas. Now, in a somewhat daring attempt to combine education and entertainment, the story of how William Wilberforce, al

Louvre staff strike over stress of looking after masterpieces

Staff at Paris's Louvre museum have gone on strike, demanding a bonus for the stress of looking after the Mona Lisa and other popular masterpieces. Access to the museum was made free for visitors after strikers blocked access to ticket desks, reports say. The Musee d'Orsay was also shut after attendants there stopped work. Attendants are demanding a bonus they say other categories of staff have been offered, and because they suffer more stress being on t

Statue to commemorate historic Hawaii Elvis concert

HONOLULU -- A life-size bronze statue of Elvis Presley in his signature 70s studded, white suit will scheduled to be unveiled this July in front of the Neal Blaisdell Center. The statue is intended to commemorate the King's historic 1973 concert "Elvis: Aloha From Hawaii." The concert was the first musical event ever sent around the globe by satellite. Fifty-one percent of T-V-viewing households tuned into the concert, which raised 75-thousand dol

Researchers discuss part played by Blackbeard's vessel in slave trade (Exhibit/NC)

BEAUFORT - In a display case at the N.C. Maritime Museum, beside a model of the Queen Anne's Revenge, sits a detached cross section of the replica representing the half deck. It's meant to illustrate how these added decks provided more space so that slave merchants could pack more of their commodity on board, said David Moore, museum nautical historian. The West African captives would have laid there, side-by-side, for much of their two- to three-month trip to the Carib

How Jim Crow affected life in Penn. (Documentary/PBS)

This month, WQED premieres a new documentary called Jim Crow Pennsylvania, hosted by Emmy Award-winning producer Chris Moore. Jim Crow Pennsylvania, Thursday, February 8 at 8pm; Friday, February 9 at 10pm; Saturday, February 10 at 1am; Sunday, February 11 at 3pm; and Sunday, February 25 at 5pm. This WQED-produced documentary looks at how 'Jim Crow' practices affected black Pennsylvanians: the first African American family to purchase a home in Levittown; the role of the

Little-known US naval campaign against the slave trade (Documentary/History Channel)

Time Warner Cable and The History Channel(R) Present a Special Screening of USS CONSTELLATION: BATTLING FOR FREEDOM in Honor of Black History Month. The program, which premiered to a national audience Saturday, February 10 at 7pm (CT) on The History Channel, explores the little-known story of the U.S. Navy's Africa squadron, dedicated to ending the slave trade stemming from the west coast of Africa, prior to the beginning of the Civil War. Prior to the local screening,

Eastwood says his WWII films expose futility of war

Hollywood star Clint Eastwood said his acclaimed picture "Letters from Iwo Jima" aimed to show the futility of war, after its European premiere at the 57th Berlin Film Festival. The groundbreaking film, which is almost entirely in Japanese, depicts the pivotal wartime battle through the eyes of Japanese soldiers fighting American GIs. Another, earlier film, "Flags of our Fathers," tells the American side of the story. It has been showered with praise

Nixon: Odd but Brilliant (Documentary/History Channel)

"He was a man who craved privacy and wanted secrecy."--David Taylor, filmmaker Richard Nixon's personality, as revealed through a series of audio tapes, was as complex and secretive as his political agenda. Filmmaker David Taylor, preparing his new History Channel documentary, donned headphones to hear "hours and hours" of the recently released tapes, dating back to 1971, from the Oval Office and Camp David. "It allowed me to litera

Oliver North's Tiff With the Smithsonian: Museum Rejects TV Host's Request to Film Enola Gay

The Smithsonian Institution rejected a request from Oliver North to film a stand-up in front of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb. This is the latest flap in the Smithsonian's development of programming for a cable television network. North, who hosts a Fox News Channel series called "War Stories," returned fire, condemning the Smithsonian's decision. He said in an opinion column that the museum's action raises questions about the propriety of the

New Orleans: City of Feel-Good Music and Feel-Bad History (PBS/Documentary)

It’s “the only place I’ve ever been where if you listen, the sidewalks will speak to you,” the artist John T. Scott says in tonight’s “American Experience” on PBS . Ah, yes, dear old Chicago. Er, wait, it must be Brooklyn. Or maybe Boston? Philadelphia? San Francisco? No, it’s New Orleans, and tonight’s program is full of statements like Mr. Scott’s from historians, writers, artists and others determined to oversell the city, as if somehow to compensate for Hurricane Katrina’s destructio

New Orleans: A Rich History Almost Washed Away (Documentary)

The "HELP US" signs, rescue boats cruising city streets, dead bodies, crying babies: In the year and half since Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans remains defined by the disaster which overwhelmed it in 2005. Now comes the PBS-produced New Orleans, which attempts to remind us of what made it special in the first place. Airing Monday, Feb 12, New Orleans has the unfortunate luck of coming on the heels of Spike Lee's critically acclaimed documentary When the Levees Broke: Requiem for a City.

"The invisible enemy should not exist" (Exhibit/what went missing from the Iraq museum)

Lombard-Freid is pleased to present The invisible enemy should not exist, Michael Rakowitz’s most recent project, an attempt to reconstruct the archeological artifacts looted from the National Museum of Iraq in the aftermath of the American invasion in April 2003. The title of the exhibition takes its name from the direct translation of Aj-ibur-shapu, the ancient Babylonian street that was used as a processional way and that ran through the Ishtar Gate. This magnificent blue tile ga

For a taste of history, try Mrs. Lincoln’s cake recipe

Mary Todd made this vanilla-almond cake for Abraham Lincoln when they were courting. Celebrate Presidents Day by baking a cake that was a longtime favorite of the Lincoln family. According to Lincoln’s Table by Donna D. McCreary, the vanilla-almond cake was invented by a Monsieur Giron of Lexington, Ky., Mary Todd Lincoln’s hometown. The cake was intended for the visit of the Marquis de Lafayette to Lexington in 1825. It was such a triumph that the Todd ladies be

All _______ on the Western Front (You Decide) (NYC/play)

AFTER seeing the first 1929 production of the great World War I drama “Journey’s End,” the journalist J. B. Priestly called it “the strongest pleas for peace I know.” A reviewer for The Daily Mirror in London called it “a much better argument against war than sentimental propaganda plays,” and the novelist Hugh Walpole said it “managed to hit the hardest blow in its swollen stomach that war has yet had.” More than 75 years later a revival of the play, by R. C. Sherriff, is opening o

Cyberspace meeting for Great Escape Vets

Former prisoners of war from Stalag Luft III, the scene of the Great Escape, have reunited in cyberspace. Alex Lees, Jack Harrison and Melville Carson took part in a video conference to reminisce about their time in the camp during World War II. The meeting linked the men from their homes at the veteran's charity Erskine and in Rothesay and East Lothian. A spokesman for Erskine said the "historic and emotional" reunion lasted more than an hour.