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

Ken Burns's love story--America's parks

Documentary film maker Ken Burns, creator of "The Civil War," is releasing a new series, "National Parks: America's Best Idea." Burns told KIRO Radio's Dave Ross, "National Parks" isn't a travel diary or nature film, but a true story of people with stars you've heard of: the Roosevelts, John Muir, and John D. Rockefeller. "What you have is a human drama set against some of the most spectacular scenery on Earth," said Burns.

New book explains how Che became CHE!

Not just in the hearts of revolutionaries, Marxist insurgents and rebellious teenagers, but on T-shirts, watches, sneakers, key chains, cigarette lighters, coffee mugs, wallets, backpacks, mouse pads, beach towels and condoms. He’s not only been used by politicians like the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, to promote their own agendas, but he’s also been employed by merchants to sell air fresheners in Peru, snowboards in Switzerland and wine in Italy. The supermodel Gisele Bündche

Meet the female Oskar Schindler

Re: The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler, the television movie airing on Sunday on CBS. Oskar Schindler’s yellowed, handwritten list of Jews was found last week in Australia, nestled among the papers of author Thomas Kenneally. It made the international news because everyone has heard of “Schindler’s list,” thanks to the Oscar-winning movie. But how many have heard of “Sendler’s list”? On April 19, America will meet “the female Oskar Schindler”—the woman who smuggled 2,

A portrait of William Shakespeare? 'Codswallop' says expert

One of the country's most eminent art historians has branded as "codswallop" claims that a portrait, which will go on display in Stratford-upon-Avon this week, is of Shakespeare. Comments by Sir Roy Strong, a former director of the Victoria and Albert museum and the National Portrait Gallery, have stoked the furious row among Shakespeare scholars, who disagree about the true identity of the man in the controversial "Cobbe portrait". Organisers of the

Berlin Wall given a facelift as freedom painters return

The concrete has been scrubbed, the graffiti removed, the metal de-rusted and now Thierry Noir, the first artist to paint on the Berlin Wall, is set to start all over again. Noir, a Frenchman who risked his life in 1984 to paint the first major works of art on the barrier that then separated the communist east from the capitalist west of Germany's capital, is now organising the restoration of his paintings as well as those of around 120 other artists. Noir's giant naive art images w

Shakespeare's sonnets turn 400

Happy 400th anniversary to Shakespeare's sonnets. They are still going strong. You can buy dozens of different editions, ranging from pocket keepsakes for lovers to hefty hardbacks with hundreds of pages of scholarly explanations. Last summer you could hear Simon Callow recite the whole sequence of 154 at the Edinburgh Festival. And this month in Berlin the avant-garde American stage director Robert Wilson has teamed up with the singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright to turn 24 of them into cross-dr

Romans recast as GIs in history lesson for Iraq and Afghanistan

The world’s best equipped army ventures into a wild mountain landscape to punish an enemy that it barely understands and badly underestimates, with predictably disastrous results. It is easy to see how film-makers might spot a contemporary resonance in the legend of the lost Ninth Legion: a detachment of crack Roman troops who set off to fight the Picts in Scotland in AD117 and never came back. Five or six films about this lesson from history have been mooted since th

Actors campaign to save cinema where Alfred Hitchcock saw first films

Protesters attended a candlelit vigil at outside the EMD Cinema in Walthamstow, east London, where Hitchcock saw his first movies. Images of the filmmaker were projected on to the outside of the building and demonstrators wore Hitchcock masks on Sunday night. The cinema, which first opened as a dance hall in 1887, closed its doors to the public in 2003 when it was purchased by Brazil-based religious organisation the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG).

Earliest colour picture of King Edward VII found lying in cupboard

The informal portrait of the king was taken by Lionel de Rothschild, the banker and Conservative MP, in September 1909. He is shown in Highland costume enjoying the autumn grouse season at Tulchan in Strathspey, about 15 miles from Balmoral. He died eight months after the photograph was taken. The picture is an example of an autochrome, the first colour photographic method to be commercially viable. It lay in a collection of 700 autochromes that was wrappe

Capone's last hit ... a song?

He never sang to the feds, but it turns out Al Capone had a song in his heart. All it took was a stint in Alcatraz to bring it out. Now, more than 70 years later, the tender love song that the ruthless crime boss penned while sitting in the pen is being recorded and released on CD. And an inscribed copy of the music and lyrics to "Madonna Mia" is up for sale at $65,000. "It's a beautiful song, a tearjerker," said Rich Larsen of Caponefanclub.com, wh

Jousting accident turned Henry VIII into a tyrant, according to a new documentary

Henry VIII became the tyrannical monster remembered by history because of a personality change following a serious jousting accident, according to a new historical documentary. After the accident – just before he became estranged from the second of his six wives, Anne Boleyn – the king, once sporty and generous, became cruel, vicious and paranoid, his subjects began talking about him in a new way, and the turnover of his wives speeded up. The accident occurred at a tou

Young Queen pictured in major retrospective of Sir Cecil Beaton's photographs

Beaton captured a myriad of actors, pop stars and leading members of the Royal family over half a century until his death in 1980, becoming a major influence on younger photographers such as David Bailey. Among the images is a touching portrait of the Queen, when she was HRH Princess Elizabeth, taken in 1942 on the occasion of her becoming Commander-in-Chief of the Grenadier Guards. Another is a delicate picture of Julie Andrews, the actress, her girlish features refle

How a forest fire may have pushed Thoreau to Walden Pond

BY THE SPRING of 1844 Henry David Thoreau had accomplished almost nothing. He was 26 years old and had spent the better part of his life more or less adrift. In the seven years after graduating from Harvard, Thoreau tried to support himself in a variety of ways, as a teacher, tutor, writer, surveyor, and as a general handyman. He lived for a time with his friend and mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and later in New York City with Emerson's brother, only to return to Concord to reside once again with

One man's bid to keep China's ancient music alive

An obsessive passion to revive a nearly forgotten music enjoyed by China's elite more than a thousand years ago has cost Li Kai his wife, his job and most of his savings. But the energetic, ever-smiling 57-year-old insists he has no regrets. "When I play the music, I'm happy -- I don't feel tired, I don't feel hungry, and I'm not bored," he said as he introduced the ensemble he set up almost a decade ago. "I've been doing this for years, and

A Stamp of Disapproval (Stamp Collecting’s Fate in the Internet Age)

One of the innocent victims of our Brave New Electronic Age has been, I suspect, the hobby of stamp collecting. I’d give odds that there are a great many young people who are only dimly aware of the existence of the institution known as the Post Office. Who needs the Post Office when there is email and texting and tweeting and heaven only knows what else, for I don’t? Far less, then, are they likely to notice those little gummy rectangles pasted on the outside of what is snarkily called “snail m

Cruise to mark Titanic centenary

A travel company is to mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic with a cruise following the route, it has announced. The Titanic, built in the Belfast shipyard of Harland and Wolff, sank on its maiden voyage in April 1912, with the loss of more than 1,500 lives. The Balmoral, operated by Fred Olsen Cruise Lines, whose parent company now owns H&W, will recreate the voyage. The 97th anniversary of the sinking was marked with a ceremony

Soviet Bunker - the strangest tourist trap in Europe (Lithuania)

As a German shepherd barks and lunges towards them, two dozen audience members scurry down a dimly lit hallway. An army officer, in a camouflage green wool overcoat and cap, menacingly directs them into a room that reeks of mildew and stale cigarettes. Once inside they are forced to face a wall — with their hands behind their backs — covered with a huge red and white Cyrillic banner that reads, “You should be careful and watchful.” At first there is a smattering of tense giggles an

Viggo Mortensen in role as professor corrupted by the Nazis in 'Good'

Viggo Mortensen's starring role in his new film Good is being hailed by its distributors as an extraordinary change of pace – a fact that makes him sigh resignedly. One can see why. In Good, adapted from the acclaimed 1981 stage play by C P Taylor, Mortensen plays John Halder, a mild-mannered German literature professor in the Thirties who writes a novel that advocates compassionate euthanasia. The book is seized on eagerly by senior figures in the Third Reich, who use it for propa

Newly-discovered painting of John Dryden, the first Poet Laureate

The oil is believed to have been painted when Dryden was appointed in 1668, to celebrate the creation of the post. Dryden, aged then in his mid-30s and at the peak of his career, appears with a slight smile, wearing a wig and surrounded by a decorative oval surround and wreath. Short quotations on the surround by six Roman poets, Virgil, Horace, Martial, Juvenal, Ovid and Statius, refer to the tradition of wreathing poets with laurels, ivy, oak or olive, and the main in

Memories fading on Vegas icon Liberace

A town that lives in the present has little use for its past. We blow up the buildings, rename the theaters and replace the marquees. Of course, at any given time, Las Vegas had performers who in different ways came to symbolize the Las Vegas of a certain period, Old Vegas is best captured by Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and, of course, Liberace. Of those three, only Liberace has failed to leave an extensive legacy that attracts new generations of fans. In the future, this will cert