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

Coney Island dead? Naw!

Coney Island was looking pretty good for being dead. A new gear had been put on the Wonder Wheel. The sun licked at the windows of the Freak Bar. There was the smell of fresh-laid paint. But the condolence calls kept coming: disbelief from Boston, despondency from London. Friends came by on maudlin visits. Ferris wheel lovers sent their deep regrets. “My own mother calls from Tucson — true story,” said Kenneth Hochman, a marketing executive who does a lot of work in Con

The Thrilla Continues to Thrill

The fight — striking in its brutality, merciless in its exposing of the truth that both fighters were seriously diminished — went 14 rounds before Frazier’s trainer, Eddie Futch, told his man that he had nothing to be ashamed of, but that he had no business going out for the 15th. Over the years the fight has prompted the usual sportswriting mix of exhausted hyperbole and intermittent eloquence. It was an unmatched test of wills. It was an exercise in prosecutable malfeasance that l

Poet’s Muse: A Footnote to Beethoven

Haydn almost certainly encountered him as a child in a Hungarian castle, where the boy’s father was a servant and Haydn was the director of music, and Thomas Jefferson saw him performing in Paris in 1789: a 9-year-old biracial violin prodigy with a cascade of dark curls. While the boy would go on to inspire Beethoven and help shape the development of classical music, he ended up relegated to a footnote in Beethoven’s life. Rita Dove, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former United States p

The Last Pullman Porters Are Sought for a Tribute

For more than a century, Pullman porters were a part of American train travel, until competition from planes and automobiles led to the decline of sleeper cars. Now the last generation of porters — who played a critical role in African-American history — is rapidly dying off. And Amtrak is attempting to locate the last few for National Train Day. In 2001, the A. Philip Randolph Museum compiled a national registry of black railroad employees who worked from the late 1800s to 1969, a

Celebrations Mark 90 Years of Bauhaus

Bauhaus, the modern design movement that originated in the eastern German city of Weimar, marks its 90th birthday on April 1. Celebrations will include a special exhibition at the city's Bauhaus Museum. Bauhaus might be turning 90, but for enthusiasts of the German design movement, the art, furniture and architecture it inspired still looks fresh and young. The school was founded in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius, who wanted to create something bold and forward-thinking in the wak

Actor Sam Waterston and Historian Harold Holzer in Special Performance Edition of BILL MOYERS JOURNAL on PBS

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL brings television viewers a deeply moving and intimate performance by award-winning actor Sam Waterston and eminent historian Harold Holzer. Lincoln's Legend and Legacy features the spoken poetry and prose of American writers as different as Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Allen Ginsburg, Langston Hughes, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and many others who have struggled to find words that adequately describe this tall, plain and gangling man and the transcendent significance of his

CBS Turns Out ‘Guiding Light’

CBS announced Wednesday the cancellation of the longest-running scripted program in broadcasting history, the soap opera “Guiding Light.” The show has been on radio and television for 72 years, beginning on NBC radio in 1937 and moving to CBS television in 1952. The show’s run will end with an episode Sept. 18. The move came after many years of steeply declining ratings for the hourlong soap, which is owned by Procter & Gamble and thus was a link to the

Handel 'was binge eater and problem drinker'

George Frideric Handel was a binge eater and problem drinker whose gargantuan appetites resulted in lead poisoning that eventually killed him, according to a study. By the time of his death 250 years ago this month, aged 74, the composer of Messiah had for 20 years been fighting severe health problems, including blindness, gout, bouts of paralysis and confused speech. According to David Hunter, music librarian at the University of Texas and author of more than 60 arti

Artworks by Jewish artist forced to flee Nazi Germany discovered in attic

The 22 drawings and paintings taken from one of Germany's pre-war satirical magazines are by a little-known Jewish artist Dodo Burgner, who fled the Nazis in 1936 and settled in Britain with her husband and two children. The art deco style work dates from 1927 to 1933 and evokes the decadence of bohemian society in pre-war Berlin. One design shows a couple dancing in front of a jazz band, while another depicts New Year celebrations with a woman holding a pig, a good luc

V&A has Baroque answer to world economic crisis

On the eve of world leaders meeting to avert the worst economic crisis in more than half a century, the V&A showcased its new display – which contains more gold leaf than a whole team of Premier League footballers' mansions. Nigel Llewellyn, who is curating the exhibition with Michael Snodin, insisted it did not matter that extravagance was currently passé. He said: "In the midst of all this austerity, what better than to enjoy the Baroque?"

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." Bought by Baron Alphonse de Rothschild at a Paris auction in 1893, it had remain

Madness & Modernity exhibition at London's Wellcome Collection

A fantastic new exhibition at London's Wellcome Collection charts the sometimes blurred line between artistic genius and insanity. Madness & Modernity focuses on how the issue of mental illness was broached in fin de siécle Vienna. This was a period of artistic flux in Austria's imperial capital, with radical departures from tradition felt across the arts. Prominent artists of the day crossed paths with mental illness. The first room opens, for example, with a trio of spookily d

Important painting found in Minn. church closet

An important 19th century painting has been brought back to public view after languishing for decades, forgotten beneath a pile of reproductions in a church closet. The Rev. Steven Olson of Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Dassel approached the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in 2007, looking for advice on how to preserve a painting he had found in a janitor's closet. The museum's experts determined the painting was the long-forgotten "Christus Consolator," which was painted by

A Telescope to the Past as Galileo Visits U.S.

Only two of the dozens of telescopes Galileo built survive. Neither have ever been out of Florence since Galileo’s time. That is, until this week, when Giorgio Strano, curator at the Institute and Museum of the History of Science there, escorted this humble tube to the Franklin Institute. Scholars do not know when Galileo built this particular telescope, or what he saw with it, but it still has its original optics. A brief audience with the telescope — under the stern gaze of Dr. St

Tyson: The documentary

When Mike Tyson was approached by the director James Toback about doing a documentary on his life and times, the former heavyweight champion of the world joked, "I was expecting that with any film about my life would only ever end up being sold on street corners." Tyson may long ago have lost the ability to live up to his self-acclaimed tag as "the baddest man on the planet", but he has seemingly found wit to replace his left hook. Tyson has previously put in two

England People Very Nice writer courts fresh controversy with Afghanistan play

Playwright Richard Bean has left a trail of controversy in his wake at the National Theatre where his play England People Very Nice, about three centuries of immigration to east London, has been accused in some quarters of racism - even provoking (admittedly small-scale) protests outside the theatre. Now he is preparing for his latest outing, as the writer of one of 12 plays about Afghanistan to be staged later this month at the Tricycle theatre in London. Bean brushes off the Natio

Sickert in Venice at the Dulwich Picture Gallery

If your idea of bliss is taking Escher-like escalators into the bowels of the Jubilee line, then trying to coax train information from lounging attendants at London Bridge station, then listening with ears peeled to muffled station announcements that send you scurrying several platforms over to leap aboard an outgoing train that you hope is for Dulwich, where you arrive to be greeted by 500 narrow steps to climb, so that on entering the Dulwich Picture Gallery you are actually grateful to be off

Eiffel Tower gets a birthday makeover

Paris celebrated the 120th birthday of its “Iron Lady” yesterday, treating the Eiffel Tower to a facelift a century after it was supposed to have been dismantled. A team of 25 steeplejack painters from the poorer fringes of Europe clambered to the top and started brushing on 60 tonnes of semi-gloss, the 17th coat it has received since its opening on March 31, 1889. The men, working for a Greek shipyard company, will take about 18 months to finish the job, using brushe

Exhibition explores dark era of the Spanish Civil War

On April 1, 1939 Spain became a land of winners and losers. With the capital of Madrid firmly under his control, General Francisco Franco officially ended the bloody Spanish Civil war, which had killed more than 500,000 people. Much has been written about the role of German and Italian military support in Franco’s victory, yet the new exhibit in Berlin tries to paint a more complete picture, also telling the stories of Germans who fought against Franco’s forces. The 70

An avant-garde play revives an ancient hatred

Here's a sketch for a racist play about "moral decline" in black America since the civil rights era. Act I: Heroic protestors gather at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., in 1965 to march in defiance of a segregationist state. Act II: The scene moves to San Francisco in the early 1970s, where the radical politics of the Black Panthers quickly give way to robbery and murder. Act III: A New York City crack house, circa 1985. Act IV: the trial of O.J. Simpson. Act V: Th