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

NY film critics name 'United 93' as best picture

"United 93," a tense drama focusing on one of the hijacked planes used in the Sept. 11 attacks, won the best picture prize on Monday in the New York Film Critics Circle Awards. Helen Mirren took out the best actress honor for her role as ruling Queen Elizabeth II in "The Queen," while Forest Whitaker won best actor for his portrayal of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in "The Last King of Scotland." The awards, voted on by New York film critic

The sordid history behind Africa's conflict diamonds

If "Blood Diamond" is not causing alarm among jewelers, as the World Diamond Council (WDC) insists, it should be. The new movie, which depicts atrocities fueled by illicit sales of African "conflict diamonds," could - and should - lead to public outrage. Set in Sierra Leone, a small west African country rich in diamonds, it will leave an indelible impression of how leaders of the romance industry turned a blind eye to the way their policies funded some of the wor

Holocaust exhibits link faces, horrors (Cleveland)

First you see the faces of Holocaust survivors in stark photographs. They set the stage for the horrors to come, displayed in blunt but richly textured wall hangings at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage. "Sometimes — I don't know if it's right or wrong — I feel guilty myself that I survived," said Polish-born Sylvia Malcmacher, 80, one of the subjects in a black-and-white photo by Herbert Ascherman Jr. She lost her parents and both sisters in the Holocaust.

Clint Eastwood's 'Letters' Iwo Jima film resonates in Japan

Hiromasa Murakami went to see Clint Eastwood's "Letters from Iwo Jima" to find out if an American could tell the Japanese side of a battle that became a symbol of U.S. patriotism, but for Japan was a bitter memory of defeat. After viewing the film on Saturday when it opened it Tokyo, Murakami thinks Eastwood got it right. "It was marvelous," the 50-year-old carpenter said as he emerged from the theater. "How should I express it? It was the same

Why Clint Eastwood's film about Iwo Jima was a box office flop

At the very same moment that Sacha Baron Cohen's Yank-bashing Borat was setting box office records in the United States, Clint Eastwood's sombre, dignified Flags Of Our Fathers, commemorating a handful of America's most revered war heroes, was dying a slow, quiet death at multiplexes all across America. Hollywood is now trying to figure out what went wrong. It is certainly a conundrum. Unlike last summer's crummy The Da Vinci Code, which garnered harsh reviews and poor word-of-mout

Edwardian Nobody will see diary come to life on TV

The 19th century novel The Diary of a Nobody, described by Evelyn Waugh as "the funniest book the world" is to be adapted for television. George and Weedon Grossmith's novel, centring on the misfortunes of Charles Pooter, a self-delusional city clerk with lofty social aspirations, is to be screened by BBC4 as part of its Edwardian series in the Spring. Hugh Bonneville, who featured in the film Notting Hill and starred in BBC2's Tsunami, is to star as Pooter i

What a job - finding memorabilia for Hard Rock Cafes

Don Bernstine travels the world visiting rock stars in their homes and backstage and spends tens of thousands of dollars of his employer's money buying guitars, concert costumes and other music memorabilia. So, it's no surprise that the Hard Rock Cafe's memorabilia hunter says he'll give up his job when someone pries it from his" cold, dead fingers." Bernstine's job for the past five years has been hunting down the instruments, clothes, lyrics and other music ephemera that adorn

Nearly 50 Years Old, Barbie Bounces Back

As dolls go, Barbie has had her ups and downs. She's achieved iconic status, amid multiple alterations to her figure, face and wardrobe. She's survived a very public breakup with Ken and withstood fierce competition from other dolls who've snagged some of her market share. Sales also have slumped in recent years, as they did at the beginning of the women's movement in early 1970s _ when"girls weren't supposed to just go to the prom and marry Ken," says Chris Byrne, an independent toy co

Communist-era love story cinches top Moroccan film award

A love story set in bleak communist-era East Germany scooped the top Gold Star award at the sixth Marrakesh International Film Festival studded with international luminaries."Der Rote Kakadu" or"The Red Cockatoo", by German film director Dominique Graf, trumped 15 other films vying for the best-film award in the sun-washed Moroccan city. "We wanted to reward a movie that was true and recalled a painful period for many nations," said jury president and noted movie director Roman Polan

Berlin Opera's heads of Mohammed, Buddha, Jesus go missing

Severed heads of the Prophet Mohammed, Buddha, Jesus and Poseidon that were to have been used in a hotly disputed staging of a Mozart opera in Berlin this month have vanished, the opera house has said. "It seems the four heads are gone," Deutsche Oper spokesman Alexander Busche told AFP. "We do not know when they disappeared or who is responsible." He said new props would have to be made before a scheduled performance of "Idomeneo" on Decem

Thomas Hardy 'infected wife with syphilis'

The wife of Thomas Hardy died of syphilis, according to research that unravels the mystery of why her husband was driven to expressing so much guilt in the elegies he wrote after her death. Scholars knew that the author of classics such as Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd had an eye for pretty women and that Emma Lavinia Hardy had withdrawn affection from him, but they have long struggled to explain the guilt and self-accusation within his Poems of 1912–13.

Jahangir Razmi Wins Recognition For 1980 Pulitzer Photo

More than a quarter of a century after an anonymous photograph of an Iranian firing squad won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography, the Pulitzer Prize Board has said it will award the certificate and $10,000 cash prize to Iranian photographer Jahangir Razmi. The board said it will revise its records to grant Mr. Razmi his prize and invite him to the awards ceremony in New York May 21 at Columbia University, whose journalism school hosts the prizes. The ide

Polish Archeologists Prepare WWII Items

An open pocket knife, two Smith and Wesson revolvers, now rusty, and an airman's gilded badge _ all flew with the Canadian and British crew of a World War II bomber on its final mission carrying aid for Poland's desperate revolt against the Nazis. The personal items are undergoing cleaning and conservation at a Warsaw museum after being recovered from the striking excavation of a Royal Air Force Halifax bomber shot down over southern Poland more than 60 years ago. Warsaw

Chirac, Mubarak unveil Egyptian treasure trove in Paris

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his French counterpart Jacques Chirac unveiled an exhibition of sunken treasures recovered by French underwater explorers and spanning 1,500 years of Egyptian history. Mubarak, in Paris as part of a five-day European tour, toured the display of 500 rare pieces at the Grand Palais in Paris in company of his wife Suzanne, Chirac and his wife Bernadette. The artefacts, dating from 700 BC to 800 AD, were recovered by a team of archaeologists led by t

Mad Mel and the Maya

On the Yucatán peninsula, where many of the Maya of Mexico live, there is an often-told story about people like Mel Gibson, whose bloody movie in the Yucatecan Maya language, Apocalypto, will be released December 8. I first heard the story from Miguel Angel May May, a tall man among the Maya, handsome, now in his 40s, with a touch of gray in his hair. He speaks Yucatecan Maya so eloquently that when young people who have begun to lose their language and culture first hear him, they shed tears fo

Yes, Soldiers of France, in All but Name (WW II film review)

“Days of Glory,” the English title of Rachid Bouchareb’s new film — called “Indigènes,” or natives, in French — has a rousing, somewhat generic war-movie ring. And Mr. Bouchareb, a French director of Algerian descent who has made four previous features, sticks close to the conventions of the genre as he follows a small group of World War II infantrymen from North Africa through Italy and across France into Alsace. His combat sequences are filmed with exquisite precision and edited with admirable

Vietnam’s Eternal Flames: The Zippo as Much More Than a Keepsake

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — “Off the record,” Bradford Edwards said, though this seemed an odd thing to say when stating the obvious. “Off the record I’m a little obsessed with the Vietnam Zippo.” He collects the metal lighters by the hundreds; he studies them; he celebrates them as tiny symbols. He searches for deeper meanings in the epigrams etched into their shiny sides by the American soldiers who left them behind. With grave whimsy he turns them into art.

In Vietnam After the War (but Not That War) (Play)

For too many Americans the history of Vietnam started when our soldiers began to die there in gruesome numbers in the 1960s. As Mac Wellman pointedly illustrates in his odd little term paper of a play, “Two September,” at the Flea Theater, the roots of America’s ultimately disastrous involvement actually date back to the turbulent late days of World War II. It will not be news to downtown theatergoers that Mr. Wellman has written an odd little drama. This brainy playwright is known

One of the world's great collections of World War I artifacts has an updated venue in Kansas City.

Kansas, MO World War I has been pulled into the 21st century by a just-opened museum here that aims to deliver a highly tactile, thought- provoking experience to visitors. The National World War I Museum, created by one of the world's premier museum-exhibit designers, occupies space directly below the recently restored and expanded Liberty Memorial. Eleven years in the making, the museum vividly tells the story of the four-year global catastrophe that reshaped the world. Visitors ex

JFK conspiracy museum making way for sub shop

Surely an institution that floats the idea of two Lee Harvey Oswalds can blame its closure on a more complex plot than making way for turkey subs. But the head of The Conspiracy Museum tells a rather bland tale about why its gallery of cover-up explanations behind President John F. Kennedy's assassination is temporarily shuttering December 30 after 13 years. "Basically," says Tom Bowden, the museum's president, "they're putting a Quizno's here."