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

Salinger Suing Copycat

J.D. Salinger never had much tolerance for phonies: the reclusive author filed a lawsuit in a federal court in Manhattan seeking unspecified damages against the writer of the copycat book 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye. In the new book, written by a man with the pen name JD California, Caulfield is 76 and an escapee from a retirement home. The book is dedicated to Salinger, but the lawsuit says the book is “a ripoff pure and simple,” that doesn’t parody or comment upon the original. The

A Romeo and Juliet wedding?

An Italian soccer player is the first person to marry under the balcony where, legend has it, Romeo wooed Juliet. Verona Mayor Flavio Tosi conducted Monday's wedding between Luca Ceccarelli, who plays for Hellas Verona, and his Juliet — girlfriend Irene Lanforti — in the 14th-century Casa di Giulietta, or House of Juliet. The idea is part of a campaign by Verona, where William Shakespeare set his tale of star-crossed lovers, to foster its image as a romantic city.

Mark Burnett’s “Expedition Africa” a home run for History

Executive producer Mark Burnett’s “Expedition Africa” is a visual thrill ride that retraces the historic trails of Dr. Livingstone, who set out in 1865 to find the source of the Nile River. ### An exciting series shaped by the man who brought “Survivor” to the smallscreen begins this Sunday on History. Executive producer Mark Burnett’s “Expedition Africa” is a visual thrill ride that retraces the historic trails of Dr. Livingstone, who set out in 1865 to f

Continuing Controversy over 'Michelangelo' Sculpture

The Italian art world is in a messy "is it or isn't it" debate over a wooden sculpture that may or may not have been made by Michelangelo. Standing just 40cm (16 inches) high, it depicts Christ on the Cross, but leading art experts simply cannot agree who made it. This is not a tale about fakery or imitation - everyone says the statue is a Renaissance piece of art from around 1495, when Michelangelo would have been 20. But who actually crafted it?

Jacqueline Kennedy's drawings of JFK for sale

Possibly the first auction of works of art by the late Jacqueline Kennedy is to be held by the Chicago auctioneer Richard Wright today. The eight drawings, all signed and dated 1961, are in very professional cartoon illustrator's style, each depicting her husband, John F Kennedy, in one situation or another. In one, the President is holding a press conference in his bedroom covered only by a towel as he dries himself off after a shower. Each of the drawings is estimated at $3,000 t

Kursk play opens at the Young Vic, London

Theatre is capable of taking its audience more or less anywhere merely through word and action and the odd prop. Even for the most imagination-stretching of art forms, however, life on board a submarine might be deemed a bridge too far. It’s been memorably done on film — the one that submariners all swear by is Das Boot rather than The Hunt for Red October. But how can theatre fully convey the cabin fever, the mental bends, the chronic uncertainty of the submerged life at sea? Audi

Edvard Munch exhibition opens at the Hunterian gallery, Glasgow

It was painted in 1893, but, more than 100 years later, Edvard Munch’s The Scream still manages to convey the anxiety, loneliness and alienation of modern life more succinctly than any other image, or the most gloomy Leonard Cohen song. Few images have acquired such iconic status as the agonised, wailing figure standing on a road by the bay against a blood-red skyline. Along with the Mona Lisa and Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, it is one of the only works that is instantly recognisable eve

Documentary made about one of life's sui generis: A co-founder of DHL who ended up in Vietnam

... The man in question is Larry Hillblom, who merited a brief obituary in The New York Times when his World War II-era seaplane disappeared in the Pacific Ocean off Saipan in 1995, but scarcely a line before or since. That’s a pity: He merits a book. Hillblom, a native of Kingsburg, is the “H” in DHL, the express-delivery company he co-founded in 1969 after noting, as an impoverished law student at the University of California, Berkeley, that he could make a buck ferrying legal do

Vandals daub paint on Rome museum

Vandals have splashed red and green paint onto the back wall of the controversial modern museum, the Ara Pacis, in Rome. They also left a toilet outside and several rolls of toilet paper. The museum, designed by the American architect Richard Meier, was opened in 2006 to house a 2,000-year-old carved marble altar of the Emperor Augustus. Many criticised the building, in Rome's historic centre, as too modern, too large, and out of character.

What East Germany Was Really Like (Photo display)

They wanted to clean up the basement but found a treasure trove of photos instead. After Berlin teacher Manfred Beier died, his sons stumbled across 60,000 pictures. Their father, it turns out, created one of the best documentations of life in East Germany, and the first days of the West. It's amazing how little you can know about your own father: After the death of Berlin resident Manfred Beier in 2002, his sons Wolf and Nils began to sort out their inheritance and came across a tr

HBO Series: Churchill at War

For five years, Winston Churchill played perhaps the single most important role in thwarting the Nazis during WWII, with his intrepid leadership and rhetoric inspiring millions of Britons and other members of the free world to fight Hitler's Germany to the bitter end. Continuing the story of Churchill told in HBO's award-winning film, "The Gathering Storm," INTO THE STORM is set against the backdrop of World War II, and offers an intimate look at the making of a nation's h

Poets, Academia: A Couplet in Conflict

When Ruth Padel resigned last week as Oxford’s professor of poetry after only nine days on the job, it put an end — for now, at least — to a tale that began with past charges of sexual harassment against Ms. Padel’s primary competition for the position, the Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, and grew to include discreet tip-offs, fervid editorials, and Ms. Padel’s eventual admission that she had helped publicize the allegations against her rival. Ugly stuff, in other words, and mightily

Robert Fan Designed Magnificent Buildings. Then Mao Came Along

The Washington Post's Maureen Fan went to homes designed by her grandfather, architect Fan Wenzhao, or Robert Fan, who left Shanghai when the Communists took over in 1949. [Includes video.]

The U.S.S. Enterprise, in Strange New World of Museum

PHILADELPHIA — It is best to approach “Star Trek: The Exhibition” at the Franklin Institute here with phasers set to stun. And to avoid any quantum entanglement, make sure that if you visit the show before it closes on the stardate equivalent to Sept. 20, your transporter is in working order. Otherwise, there is just no telling the confusion that might result. You might think, for example, that most starships of the 23rd and 24th centuries pretty much looked like the U.S.S. Enterpri

Big Ben celebrating 150th anniversary

Defiantly low-tech yet accurate to the second, Big Ben is having its 150th birthday Sunday, its Victorian chimes carrying the sound of Britain into the 21st century. It's a birthday the world can share in. The peals of London's favorite clock are carried globally by BBC radio, and its 315-foot tower, roughly 16 stories, is the city's most famous landmark. But getting inside and seeing Big Ben, the sonorous main bell that gives its name to the whole contraption, isn't e

Love Makes the Postage Meter Go ‘Round (The New U.S. Love Stamp)

Robert Indiana’s sculpture Love is an iconic

Computer Game Lets People Live the Life of Cave Dwellers

The computer-based adventure game Secret of the Lost Cavern lets players explore Europe 17,000 years ago through the eyes of Arok, a teenage boy who leaves his tribe to discover the world beyond the valley where he grew up. Arok's journey is set up as a series of puzzles. First, he has to learn about cave painting and figure out how to make a spear-thrower before finding his way through a maze of caves. Each part of the journey includes lessons about Upper Paleolithic life that weave together ar

Hamburg rebrands itself as Beatles City

Hamburg, hit by declining tourism figures, is calling on the Beatles to ease it through the crisis. Or, as the Fab Four would have put it: Help! “John Lennon used to say that he was born in Liverpool but grew up in Hamburg,” says Ulf Krueger who has been pushing the port to brand itself as a Beatles city for more than 20 years. The moment has come: a five-storey Beatles museum, complete with a life sized model of the Yellow Submarine and a mock-up of the Hamburg clubs where

Tom Paine being celebrated on the 200th anniversary of his death

Join The Nation's John Nichols, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, Nation Editorial Board member Eric Foner and many others in a tribute to the life and work of a great American patriot on the 200th anniversary of Thomas Paine's death.

U. of Illinois Wonders if Vandals or Racists Damaged Indian Art

An outdoor exhibit of American Indian art is vandalized five times in two months. Are the culprits destructive students, racists, or both? It depends whom you ask. Beyond the Chief, a collection of street signs honoring different tribes, opened in February at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Within five weeks, vandals had bent the signs and — in an instance that suggests the culprit was either a poor speller or British — written in permanent marker: "