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

Flags of Our Fathers (Movie)

Oscar season is only just getting under way, but on credentials alone a presumptive front-runner would have to be Clint Eastwood’s “Flags of Our Fathers,” the World War II epic about the men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima, which began screening for selected journalists this week in New York. ... A big, booming spectacle that sprawls across oceans and generations, “Flags of Our Fathers,” which opens on Oct. 20, was anything but a simple undertaking. With much of film following the surviving flag

Discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls (Exhibit/Seattle Pacific Science Center)

The Dead Sea scrolls have awed audiences everywhere they have been exhibited. Discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls is an original exhibition exploring both the context of the scrolls and the science and scholarship associated with their discovery and interpretation. Regarded by many as one of the greatest archeological discoveries of the 20th century, these scrolls predate Christianity. Until their discovery, the oldest Hebrew biblical manuscript known to scholars was written in 895 C.E.* The

The U.S. vs. John Lennon (Documentary)

This movie documents the FBI's investigation of Beatle John Lennon in the early 1970s. It features interviews with historian Jon Wiener.

Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela (PBS)

One black-and-white photograph turns up several times in Thomas Allen Harris’s “Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela,” to be shown tonight on PBS’s “P.O.V.” series. It shows a dozen young black men, half of them seated, the other half standing behind them as if for a class picture, most with beaming smiles. As Mr. Harris points out in this important documentary, some called them the Twelve From Bloemfontein, for the South African city where they lived. The photo was taken almost half a century ago

Mr. Conservative (HBO)

First came Rory Kennedy, then Ivy Meeropol, and now CC Goldwater. Yet another young woman from a famous family has turned documentarian. Maybe there’s something in the granddaughter’s vantage that translates smoothly into the form: modern documentaries are typically observant, archival, conscientious, interrogative and ideologically tentative. A girl who grew up listening to blowhard arguments, staying out of fights and keeping watchful track of people’s feelings may find in documentary both