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

Italy earthquake has caused 'incalculable' damage to cultural heritage

Experts today spoke of "incalculable" damage to Italy's cultural heritage as the scale of the impact of the L'Aquila earthquake on the area's historic buildings became apparent. Many Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque and Renaissance buildings in the 13th-century city were badly damaged in Monday's tremor. "The damage is more serious than we can imagine," said Giuseppe Proietti, a culture ministry official. "The historic center of L'Aquila has been dev

Henry VIII: Dressed to Kill - in the Tower of London

In addition to being the most highly functioning armour yet produced, seen close-up, the armour of Henry VIII is richly decorated, with astonishing attention to detail. The various armours were the most lavish ever seen in their day, and reflected the cutting-edge of craftsmanship as well as international fashions - including decorations by Holbein and imports from Milan. What's more, the decorations themselves - the religious imagery, heraldic and political symbols -

The transformation of the Transfiguration in the church of St Catherine

The resurrection of one of the most important art works in Christendom can be celebrated this Easter. The magnificent mosaic of the Transfiguration in the church of St Catherine, in Sinai, has been brought back to new life. Now, as a long and extremely delicate conservation project reaches its conclusion, The Times can show the first pictures from the freshly restored apse that for some 1500 years has glimmered in the imagination of religious pilgrim and cultural traveller alike. S

The Beatles’ hits get back to their best

The entire Beatles catalogue is to be digitally remastered, their record label announced yesterday. Engineers at Abbey Road Studios, northwest London, have spent four years using a mixture of state-of-the-art recording technology and 1960s musical equipment to create what EMI Music and Apple Corps said would be the “highest fidelity the catalogue has seen since its original release”. All 12 Beatles studio albums will be rereleased on CD in September to coincide with th

Forthcoming exhibition: Moctezuma, Aztec Ruler, at the British Museum

Almost 500 years after European adventurers dressed him up as a collaborator and stole his throne, the British Museum is preparing to rehabilitate one of history’s great rulers. Moctezuma II, or Montezuma as he is often called today, was the last elected Aztec emperor and ruled over an empire that stretched from the shores of the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico. However, posterity knows him as the man with the misfortune to be in charge when Hernán Cortés’s conquistadores arrived in

Archiving Writers' Work in the Age of E-Mail

Leslie Morris is used to handling John Updike's personal effects. For decades, Mr. Updike had been sending a steady stream of manuscripts and papers to Harvard University's Houghton Library, where Ms. Morris serves as a curator. But in late February, several weeks after the iconic writer died, some boxes arrived with unexpected contents: approximately 50 three-and-a-halfand five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks — artifacts from late in the author's career when he, like many of his pe

Xbox game based on Iraq conflict battle angers veterans

A video game based on one of the bloodiest battles during the Iraq conflict has been branded 'crass and insensitive' by those affected by the fighting. Six Days In Fallujah, published by Japanese games giant Konami, is described as a 'survival horror' title for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles. Developed in collaboration with a handful of Iraq veteran US Marines - who have lent their videos, photos and diaries to the designers - the controversial action game is d

Smithsonian extends museum hours

The National Museum of American History, National Air and Space Museum and National Museum of Natural History will stay open two hours later, until 7:30 p.m. every day through Labor Day. The museums open at 10 a.m. and typically closed at the end of the work day.

History of Street Gangs Lives in Musicals, Books and Memories

There were the Dukes and the Scorpions, the Hellbenders, Baby Beacons, Baldies and Green Lanterns. Among the most notorious were the Egyptian Kings. In El Barrio, in northern Manhattan, the Dragons and the Viceroys reigned. It was post-World War II New York and the children of Latino immigrants were flooding into neighborhoods that whites and African-Americans had long fought over. In this ethnic Petri dish, teenagers formed ranks, wearing exclusive clothing, marking their area with

Bob Dylan on Barack Obama, Ulysses Grant and American Civil War ghosts

Bill Flanagan: In that song Chicago After Dark were you thinking about the new President? Bob Dylan: Not really. It’s more about State Street and the wind off Lake Michigan and how sometimes we know people and we are no longer what we used to be to them. I was trying to go with some old time feeling that I had. BF: You liked Barack Obama early on. Why was that? BD: I’d read his book and it intrigued me. BF: Audacity of Hope? BD: No

Statue of Liberty’s little sister strolls out of the park

A 3m (10ft) bronze replica of the Statue of Liberty is taken down from its permanent place in a park in Paris for a journey to an exhibition on the outskirts of the city. The two-tonne figure is the work of the French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, who, along with the engineer Gustave Eiffel, was responsible for the original 93m (305ft) Statue of Liberty, which was given to America by the French in 1886.

Review: Utagwa Kuniyoshi exhibition at the Royal Academy in London

When you look at works of art that are very foreign to your experience, you naturally seek connection across the divide. Among modern civilisations, Japan provides an extreme example of this gap. Between the 17th century and the 1860s, it pursued a policy of almost complete isolation. Its art was therefore produced solely by its own people, for its own people, from its own materials. In order to establish a link in the minds of potential punters, the work of Utagawa Kuniyoshi (curre

Painter challenges history with Seattle Art Museum exhibit

Titus Kaphar gives history a chance to live in the present. He's a young painter who had turned his passion for history into a body of work that asks contemporary questions of historically significant paintings, mostly from the 18th and 19th centuries. The question he asked George Washington drew me to a showing of Kaphar's work, which opened at the Seattle Art Museum Friday and runs through Sept. 6. Kaspar copied part of that famous painting of George Wash

Fund Twain church? Group opposition.

A group that advocates the separation of church and state is warning a Nevada city that it will sue if the city gives anymore money to a church that Mark Twain helped build in his 20s. The Americans United for Separation of Church and State decided not to sue over Carson City's two past payments to the First Presbyterian Church, because courts are generally reluctant to force religious institutions to return funds already awarded, attorney Alex Luchenitser said. In Febr

14th century bucket sells for £1.6m at Sotheby's

The bucket is actually a glass finger bowl, intricately gilded and decorated with colourful enamels, that dates from 14th century Egypt or Syria. It was made during the Mamluk dynasty that ruled the region from 1250 to 1517. Passed around during meals attended by the dynasty's elite, an inscription on it reads: "I am a toy for the fingers shaped as a vessel. I contain cool water."

'Binge-eating and lead poisoning killed Handel'

A "binge-eating disorder" and subsequent lead poisoning contributed to the death of the Baroque composer George Frederic Handel, according to a music academic. But more than two decades of ill health ironically helped Handel produce some of the best music of his life, Dr David Hunter of the University of Texas at Austin has claimed. He has published his theory in a catalogue for a new exhibition called Handel Reveal'd at the Handel House Museum in London, whic

Lost drawing of Henry VIII's great victory uncovered

A drawing of Henry VIII's famous victory over the French at the "Siege of Boulogne" in 1544 is to go on public display for the first time in more than 400 years after lying undiscovered and mislabelled in the British Library archives. The image, drawn by a "war artist" commissioned to record the Tudor king's military achievements, dates to 1545 and is one of four "views" documenting Henry's second invasion of France. For centuries art histo

Tate Modern to restage 1971 show that sent art-lovers into a frenzy

The Tate Gallery provoked a national debate in 1971 with a show where visitors seesawed, slid, balanced, climbed and crawled around the exhibits. It closed after only four days because of the totally unexpected public response. Visitors ran riot, screaming, injuring themselves and generally forgetting that they were British and in a supposedly serious art gallery. Even so, the art critic Guy Brett, writing in The Times a few days later, suggested that, despite the “pandemonium . .

German Films Delve into Difficult History

He looks anxiously at the sky, watching the low-flying fighter planes drop their bombs into the fleeing crowd. It is December 1937, and German businessman John Rabe, the representative of the Siemens Group in the eastern Chinese city of Nanking, is witnessing Japanese fighter pilots as they attack the company's facility there, killing helpless civilians. In that moment of despair, he suddenly has an idea. Rabe, a long-standing member of the Nazi Party, quickly orders his workers to

Should We Care What Shakespeare Did in Bed?

Was Shakespeare a hottie? Was Homer a hunk? John Milton: six-pack abs? Dante: hot or not? You would think, from recent coverage of the portrait newly claimed to be of Shakespeare (a claim front-paged by the New York Times early last month) that these are valid literary questions rather than evidence that the culture of celebrity has irretrievably corrupted literature. Fortunately, the Times story was written by the redoubtable John Burns, who included a good dose of skepticis