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

Hidden misery of Mao’s slave teenage brides told in new film

THE film’s title, 8,000 Girls Ascend the Heavenly Mountain, suggests that Chinese audiences will see a tale of joy when it is aired on television this autumn. It dramatises the lives of thousands of girls aged 13 to 19 who went to China’s remote far west in the 1950s to follow soldiers sent to colonise the turbulent Muslim region. In real life it was a trip to purgatory. As shooting for the film unfolds in Beijing under the watchful gaze of party censors, an astonishi

Director brings pre-Celtic clash alive

The Roman legions who manned Hadrian’s Wall faced a warrior tribe they never managed to conquer. That much we know. But who were the mysterious people they confronted, and how did they manage to hold off the might of imperial Rome? That is the challenge that the film director Kevin Macdonald has set himself in his latest film, The Eagle of the Ninth, to be shot in Hungary and Scotland later this year. After award-winning films such as Touching the Void, The Last King of Scotland and

Magna Carta awarded UN status

Yesterday, July 30th, the four surviving copies of the 1215 Magna Carta, held by the British Library, Salisbury Cathedral and Lincoln Cathedral, were awarded ‘Memory of the World’ status by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). Their inscription on the Memory of the World International Register was approved by the Director General of UNESCO, Mr Koichiro Matsuura, following a recommendation by the 14-member International Advisory Committee of UNESCO’s Memory of the Wo

British Cinema After Mr. Hitler's War

As everyone knows, the British cinema of the postwar period consisted of David Lean ("Great Expectations"), Laurence Olivier ("Hamlet") and those charming Ealing comedies ("The Man in the White Suit"). Except that it didn't. The Britons weren't just producing high-toned, literary films intended for export, though it's easy to get that impression from reading most of the standard film histories. Britain was also home to a rich tradition of genre filmmak

Rare Buddhist artefacts hidden in the Gobi Desert for seven decades are found

The historic artefacts were buried in the 1930s during Mongolia's Communist purge, when hundreds of monasteries were looted and destroyed. The relics include statues, art work, manuscripts and personal belongings of a famous 19th Century Buddhist master. The leader of the search team, Michael Eisenriegler, described it as an "adventure of a lifetime". A total of 64 crates of treasures were buried in the desert by a monk named Tudev, in an attempt

Researchers unveil Mozart piano pieces in Austria

Mozart's momentous legacy grew Sunday as researchers unveiled two piano pieces recently identified as childhood creations by the legendary composer. The works — an extensive concerto movement and a fragmentary prelude — are part of "Nannerl's Music Book," a well-known manuscript that contains the Austrian master's earliest compositions, the International Mozarteum Foundation revealed while presenting the pieces in Mozart's native Salzburg.

Terror drama staged in back of a Belfast taxi

Until now no taxi driver in the history of road transport could ever brag to paying customers about once having a theatre in the back of his cab. But a play that literally traces the route of Belfast's so-called "terror tours" can fulfil that boast. Two Roads West is set in a most unusual theatrical setting - the inside of a Belfast black taxi cab. For just over an hour an audience of up to five people travel around in a theatre-on-wheels as the taxi criss-crosses the Fall

Review: “The Golden Age of Dutch Seascapes” at the Peabody Essex Museum (MA)

What with all those cataclysmic storms, shipwrecks, sea battles and marauding pirates in 17th-century Dutch marine paintings, it’s a wonder anyone dared venture off land at all. There are periods of calm in “The Golden Age of Dutch Seascapes” at the Peabody Essex Museum here, but the overall impression is harrowing. Yet the intrepid shipbuilders of the Netherlands launched vessels by the tens of thousands during the 1600s, and the Dutch ruled the known — to Europeans — aquatic unive

A Legacy of War: Fake Art in Vietnam

Even the director of the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum here doesn’t know how many of the artworks and artifacts under his care are genuine and how many are extremely skillful copies. But he says he is going to try to find out. There are nearly 20,000 of these mystery objects, on the walls and in storage, including paintings, sculpture, lacquerware, pottery, ancient statues and traditional crafts. “We are making efforts to have a comprehensive review of items on display and i

East Germany's overlooked architectural achievements

The former East Germany made significant contributions to modern architecture. Today, they would be historical landmarks full of insights into life in the GDR. But many have been lost. Germany has a lot to celebrate this year: 60 years since the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany, 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and 90 years since the founding of the Bauhaus architecture movement in Weimar, to name but a few of the anniversaries. But while the Bauhaus birth

'Destroyed' Edmond Rostand play discovered

A long lost play written by the creator of Cyrano de Bergerac has been discovered in national archives more than a century after the author attempted to destroy all copies. Edmond Rostand, who was feted as a French William Shakespeare when he brought out Cyrano in 1897, was appalled by his first play after it was panned by critics as "indecent" and "insane". The Red Glove, a vaudeville comedy written a decade before Cyrano and when the author was jus

Henry II's lavish 12th century court brought back to life at Dover Castle

The splendour of a 12th century royal court has been recreated in Dover Castle keep, which new research suggests was originally built as a medieval PR exercise by Henry II. The great tower is thought to have been constructed as a show of wealth and power to 'impress' foreign pilgrims and dignitaries on their way to the shrine of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury who was murdered by four of the king's knights in 1170.

'Destroyed' Edmond Rostand play discovered

Edmond Rostand, who was feted as a French William Shakespeare when he brought out Cyrano in 1897, was appalled by his first play after it was panned by critics as "indecent" and "insane". The Red Glove, a vaudeville comedy written a decade before Cyrano and when the author was just 20, was pulled after 17 performances. Rostand was so ashamed of the work after the success of Cyrano that he paid a theatre not to put it on and the manuscript was though

Henry II 'spent a fortune on Dover Castle to counter Becket cult'

The fiery monarch spent at least £6,440 throughout the 1180s – more than a quarter of his average annual income – building and furnishing the impressive keep at the castle, according to a study of his finances by John Gillingham, Professor Emeritus in medieval history at the London School of Economics. The rooms have just been renovated and refurbished in a £2.45 million project managed by English Heritage, to resemble how they would have done in Henry's day. Prof Gil

Anthony Blunt memoir available in British Library Reading Rooms

Last Thursday, July 23rd, the manuscript memoir of Anthony Blunt became available for study in the Manuscripts Reading Room at the British Library. The manuscript was given to the British Library in July 1984, just over a year after Blunt’s death, by a donor who wished to remain anonymous and on the condition that the manuscript be withheld from public access for 25 years. Anthony Blunt began to write his memoir in 1979, after his public exposure as a spy. Anthony Frederick Blunt (1

British photographer's extraordinary images of American icons... using up to 30,000 U.S. troops

These are the extraordinary pictures of the Statue of Liberty and icons of U.S. history captured on camera by an ingenious British photographer - using up to 30,000 soldiers. Englishman Arthur S. Mole took the pictures of soldiers returning to America after World War I. Now the unique collection of the remarkable pictures has been brought together for the first time at the Carl Hammer Gallery, in Chicago, USA. Mole's work was the first to use a unique techn

Holocaust survivor dies before winning back ownership of paintings she made at Auschwitz

Mrs. Dina Babbitt, who fought unsuccessfully for more than three decades for the return of portraits that she painted in Auschwitz, passed away on Wednesday, at age 85, in Felton, California. She had suffered from cancer for several years. The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, which has been leading the fight for the return of Mrs. Babbitt's paintings, will continue its efforts to persuade Poland's Auschwitz State Museum to return the paintings to the Babbitt family

Obama, The Movie

In one of the fly-on-the-wall moments of HBO's upcoming documentary "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama," speech writer Jon Favreau gets an election night call from his boss. After some consultation with Obama about the victory address, Favreau inserts a line about the hard road ahead. Now, as President Obama's poll numbers fall and he is mired in an uncertain push for health care reform, the scene and the documentary itself may feel like a morale booster to his s

Matt Damon's History report

Jason Bourne is getting historical. Matt Damon, star of the "The Bourne Identity" and other action films, dropped by the TV press tour in Pasadena on Wednesday to promote his longtime passion project. And there weren't any spy chases or high-tech gizmos in sight. Damon is an executive producer of "The People Speak," an unusual History documentary that features Damon, Marisa Tomei and other celebrities performing selections from diaries, speeches and other primary

Solzhenitsyn's widow takes Putin to task

Vladimir Putin received a rare public rebuff from the widow of Alexander Solzhenitsyn for using the term "propaganda" in discussing the author's account of Soviet Gulag life, The Gulag Archipelago. The Prime Minister, a scion of the Soviet intelligence world that suppressed Solzhenitsyn's works for most of his life, had meant only praise in proposing his account of the horrors of camp life for Russia's school curriculum. Language, however, can be a sensitive m