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

Wooden figure of Jesus Christ is not work of Michelangelo, art historians say

The 41cm long figure, named Cristo Ritrovato (Christ Refound) was bought late last year from a private collection and since then has been on a marathon tour of the country. It started in Rome where among those to admire it were Pope Benedict XVI and various senior government officials and has also been displayed in Milan, Trapani, Palermo and is currently on show in Naples. More than 60,000 people have seen the sculpture but there is a growing concern within the Italia

Brooks McNamara, Theater Historian, Is Dead at 72

Brooks McNamara, a theater historian who shepherded a vast and disorganized array of letters, photographs, scripts, sheet music, set and costume designs, business records and other memorabilia into a valuable historical collection known as the Shubert Archive, died on May 8 in Doylestown, Pa. He was 72 and lived in Doylestown and Manhattan. The immediate cause was pneumonia, said his wife, Nan. Mr. McNamara had been suffering from sporadic cerebellar ataxia, a degenerative nerve dis

Amelia Earhart's soaring spirit

There's something about Amelia Earhart. More than seven decades after she disappeared without a trace in the South Pacific on her flight around the world, Earhart remains the most famous female aviator in history, a timeless heroine and inspiration to generations of women, filmmakers and fashionistas. Flying was just the beginning. Earhart was also a fashion icon and designer with her close-cropped hair, pants and leather jackets. She was a leader in women's rights and

Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire (video)

Related Links

Dear Donna Reed: A Pinup So Swell She Kept G.I. Mail

“It has been a long time since any of us boys have seen a woman, so we are writing to you in hopes that you’ll help us out of our situation,” Cpl. Frank J. Gizych lamented in a letter posted from the fog-shrouded Aleutian Islands. “Since we know that it’s impossible to see a woman in the flesh, we would appreciate it very much if you could send us a photo of yourself.” It was July 1944, and America was at war. From bases and battlefields in Europe and on Pacific islands, soldiers, s

Mystery Jane Austen suitor who sparked rift with sister named

A new biography of Jane Austen claims to have identified Dr Samuel Blackall as the mystery suitor who broke the novelist's heart and sparked a rift with her sister. Although Austen never married, the emotional warmth of her romantic novels has always fed speculation about her private passions. The 2007 film Becoming Jane explored her youthful flirtation with a handsome Irishman named Tom Lefroy who – it is suggested – was the inspiration for the rugged Mr Darcy in Pride and Pr

NYT publishes hand-drawn pictures of WW II by Bataan Death March solder

Click here to see pictures. Click here to read the article.

"Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian"

The idea behind the 2006 megahit "Night at the Museum" had enough inherent charm that it was completely possible to look beyond the movie's clunky structure and overly sentimental framing device and just enjoy the ride. Ben Stiller played Larry Daley, a divorced dad who, after failing at numerous other careers (and thus coming to feel he'd become a disappointment to his young son) takes a job as a night watchman at the Museum of Natural History in New York, only to find that the exhib

‘Made in U.S.A.’ Shines After Makeover (Met Exhibit/NYC)

When the Metropolitan Museum set up its first sculpture department in 1886, it threw in anything and everything that wasn’t framed, stitched or printed: “all the sculptures, pottery, porcelain, glassware, jewelry, engraved gems, bronzes, inscriptions, and other such objects of art, commonly termed Bric-a-Brac.” No doubt to some eyes the museum’s newly reopened American galleries look like Bric-a-Brac City. Twenty generously appointed period rooms, 12 of them seriously spiffed up, a

Animatronic Obama Going to Disney World With High-Tech Style

Barack Obama was standing on a riser inside a warehouse here, delivering an inspirational speech about the blessings of freedom, when his left index finger began to twitch uncontrollably, unnerving his aides. The nation’s 44th president was in obvious distress. At least it looked like him. But with silicone skin and a tangled nest of wires for veins, this Obama was a 21st-century reproduction. More specifically, it was an audio-animatronic representation of the presiden

'Sherlock Holmes' violin created

A violin made from a tree in the garden of author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's childhood home is to be played to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth. The violin was carved from the sycamore tree by Edinburgh-based luthier Steve Burnett. It was made as a tribute to Conan Doyle's creation, Sherlock Holmes, who played the violin while solving cases.

Calling the Queen's Authenticity into Question (Nefertiti)

For decades, people have marvelled at the bust of Nefertiti. Now, some scholars say it's a fake -- made to hold a necklace. Museum scientists are eager to prove these theories wrong, but the mysterious statue might not be ready to reveal her secrets yet. Of course they copied her. You can see it clear as day. At the Altes Museum on Berlin's Museum Island, a brief film runs in a silent loop on a monitor. It shows laboratory workers handling a replica of the Nefertiti bust built to te

'The Producers' is not a musical about Nazism but about the boundaries of taste

The Berlin transplant of Mel Brooks's ridiculously popular 2001 Broadway musical, "The Producers," based on his 1968 film about two Jewish con men who cook up a scheme to produce the world's worst musical and defraud the investors, was anxiously awaited in the German capital. In the weeks leading up to opening night, newspapers here were full of headlines like "Can Berlin Laugh at Hitler," in reference to the show-stopping musical number "Springtime for Hitl

Calling Queen Nefertiti's Authenticity into Question

Of course they copied her. You can see it clear as day. At the Altes Museum on Berlin's Museum Island, a brief film runs in a silent loop on a monitor. It shows laboratory workers handling a replica of the Nefertiti bust built to test a new portable base for it. The monitor is part of a current display at the museum, one which includes four work stations set up in a large, glass cubicle to show just how complex conserving great works of ancient art is. Museum visitors can look over

"The Pictures Generation 1974-1984" (Exhibit/NYC)

"On Saturday, September 30, 1967," as artist Robert Smithson was careful to specify, he embarked on a trip from New York's Port Authority Bus Terminal to his hometown. He was about to undertake what in his now-famous text he would call "A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey." (It's not clear whether the piece should be called an essay or a story; perhaps it's best to call it an artwork made of writing and pictures.) The monuments in question were things like concrete

The timeless beauty of La Renaissance à Prato (Exhibit/Paris)

After all the recent noise and media coverage lavished on Koons, Warhol, and others of similar ilk (Arcimboldo, Raetz and Dali), it was something of a soulagement to slip back some six hundred years into the timeless beauty of La Renaissance à Prato, an important exhibition currently showing at the Musée du Luxembourg, the oldest museum in Paris. Over fifty paintings and sculptures from the Prato City museum, currently closed for renovation, recount the artistic legacy of the city f

Voice of Mickey Mouse Dies

Wayne Allwine, the man voiced Mickey Mouse for over thirty years died from complications due to diabetes Monday, The Hollywood Reporter announced in a heartfelt obituary Wednesday. His wife Russi Taylor, who voices Minnie Mouse, was by his side at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. Allwine first lent his famous falsetto to the character for The New Mickey Mouse Club. He was an Emmy-winning sound effects editor whose voice reverberates at Disney parks, on television and in stage broadcasts a

'Kryptos' and Dan Brown: Inside the CIA's code of secrecy

For 19 years it has sat beyond the public's gaze in an inner courtyard on the campus of the Central Intelligence Agency, a not uninteresting sculpture with 865, apparently randomly selected letters perforating a solid scroll of copper. But Kryptos is not merely a sculpture, and artist Jim Sanborn chose its constituent letters in a far from random fashion. They make up a code so complex that even the CIA's most esteemed cryptologists can't crack it. Everyone at the CIA has known this

Was "Little Orphan Annie" a brief for conservatism?

The idea that "Little Orphan Annie" as a historical document full of clues to contemporary American political culture is not, perhaps, self-evident. Many of us remember the comic strip, if at all, primarily as the inspiration for a long-running Broadway musical; the latter being a genre of which I, for one, have an irrational fear. (If there is a hell, it has a chorus line.) Yet there is a case to make for Annie as an ancestor of Joe the Plumber, and not just because both

Fritz Lang, Trailing Nazis (now on DVD)

AN English sportsman (Walter Pidgeon), dressed in the full gentleman-hunter uniform of corduroy jacket and puttees, moves silently through a dark Bavarian forest, a high-powered rifle in hand. He lies on the ground to line up his shot, and through his telescopic sight we see his target moving into the crosshairs: no less than Hitler, strutting on a balcony at his mountain retreat. Pidgeon squeezes the trigger, but no shot rings out; he is merely on a “sporting shoot,” to see if he can get within