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

Mark Twain rises again

They can't keep Mark Twain quiet. The centenary of his death takes place next year but he is in the news again with the publication of a "new" short story, The Undertaker's Tale in The Strand magazine. This in turn heralds a new whole new collection of fiction and non-fiction, Who is Mark Twain?, to be published next month. Thirteen years ago, Twain made the headlines (and a special feature in the New Yorker) when a new "comprehensive"

John Keane's Intelligent Design: More Paintings about War and Religion, Flowers Gallery, London

Photographs of the painter John Keane show him as unsmiling and intense. Some of his self-portraits - which include one of him walking naked through a Central American village, carrying a bloody heart - have the same feel. One half of his new exhibition, Intelligent Design, is in this spirit. The other half, though, is more playful - a dazzling series of visual conjuring tricks. Taken as a whole, it represents a departure for an artist whose career so far has been about chronicling the great pol

A 25-year-old play about Mary, Queen of Scots is bang up to date (UK)

It all began in a modest Chinese restaurant in Grindlay Street, opposite Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre. The actor-director Gerry Mulgrew had just finished the Communicado Theatre Company’s production of Carmen, in which he played a talking dog. It was 1984, three years before the 400th anniversary of Mary, Queen of Scots’ death. Mulgrew summoned the writer Liz Lochhead and a few like-minded individuals. Before the fried rice had arrived he announced: “I want to do a Mary, Queen of Scots show.”

Vatican plots battle with Dan Brown over Da Vinci Code sequel

It was described as a “phantasmagorical cocktail of inventions”, a “masonic plot” and a “pot pourri of lies”. Now a nervous Vatican is braced for the sequel to The Da Vinci Code and the return of its nemesis, Dan Brown. Angels & Demonsis the latest Brown thriller to be turned into a film, and already the Catholic Church is agonising over how best to respond: to urge the faithful to boycott the film, or to ignore it? The Vatican and the Italian Catholic Church condemned The Da V

'Great Escape' PoWs remember comrades... and boo 'silly' Steve McQueen

It was film night in Stalag Luft III and the dwindling band of surviving PoWs was marking the 65th anniversary of the daring breakout by watching The Great Escape. Even though this is Hollywood’s celebration of their story and ensured their enduring fame, it wasn’t the Nazis they booed — it was Steve McQueen and his motorbike. “We were not impressed when that film came out,” said Reginald Cleaver, 86, a flight engineer who had been shot down over the Netherlands and who helped to m

Top Gun Heroes 'Based On Brit Flying Aces' says Historian

The 1986 film told the story of Maverick, Iceman and Goose, a group of macho and unmistakably American trainee fighter pilots. Set at the Miramar airbase in California, it was, in every sense, a patriotic feel-good film. But according to a new book by military historian Rowland White, the instructors who taught the pilots in real life were from Scotland. "I was very surprised to discover the British influence," White told Sky News Online.

Mark Twain rises again

The centenary of his death takes place next year but he is in the news again with the publication of a "new" short story, The Undertaker's Tale in The Strand magazine. This in turn heralds a new whole new collection of fiction and non-fiction, Who is Mark Twain?, to be published next month. Thirteen years ago, Twain made the headlines (and a special feature in the New Yorker) when a new "comprehensive" edition of Huckleberry Finn was published, inc

First, Frost/Nixon. Now, Lewinsky/Clinton?

Frost/Nixon playwright Peter Morgan has turned his attention to another POTUS. This summer he will be making his directorial debut with his own screenplay Special Relationship, telling the story of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. British playwright Peter Morgan has written a third script —in this case a screenplay— to complete his “Tony Blair trilogy” that began with the TV movie The Deal. The second installment was the Oscar-winner The Queen. And now there is —drumroll please— Sp

British Museum's Medieval Europe Gallery: a golden compass to a dark age

The first thing you see as you walk into the magnificent new medieval gallery at the British Museum is a vast hoard of gold coins. Displayed in a deep, haphazard pile glinting in the spotlights, they are so striking that you have to fight the urge to sink your hands in and feel the sensation of ancient gold running through your fingers. The coins, 1,273 of them, are from the Fishpool hoard, discovered along with various items of jewellery in 1966 during building works in the village

Superheroes rise in tough times

America faces an economic calamity. Trouble brews in faraway lands. Sound familiar? More than 70 years ago, the very first superheroes debuted in the dire times of the Great Depression and the early years of World War II. Their names became legend -- Superman, Batman (or, as he was then known, the Bat-Man), Wonder Woman, Captain America -- and they're still with us today. A new exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles celebrates these icons

British Museum finds relics of 39 saints after 100 years

The new medieval gallery at the British Museum is full of beautiful images of saints in ivory, stone, gold and wood - but invisible to visitors, it also holds the bones of 39 real saints, whose discovery came as a shock to their curator. The relics, packed in tiny bundles of cloth including one scrap of fabric over 1,000 years old, were found when a 12th-century German portable altar was opened for the first time since it came into the British Museum collection in 1902.

Picasso's 'Guernica' returns to London

A full-size replica of Pablo Picasso's anti-war painting, Guernica, was unveiled in London yesterday. The tapestry version on display at the Whitechapel Art Gallery has hung for 24 years just outside the UN Security Council chamber in New York. Picasso completed his original in 1937 in protest at the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica by Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War. It was shown at the Whitechapel Gallery two years later. In the 1950s, the Spanis

Portrait of Harold Pinter playing cricket to be sold at auction

The body weight is transferred, the head perfectly still, as the batsman attempts a textbook cover drive. A portrait displaying Harold Pinter's love of cricket, which hung above his desk, is to be auctioned before a celebratory game at Lord's. For Pinter, the battle between bat and ball was “God's greatest creation”, which he observed during glorious summer days from his box at Lord's. He introduced cricket scenes into his most famous works and turned uncommonly shy when introduced

Orwell's letters up for auction

They document the time in the early 1930s when Orwell was staying with his parents in Southwold, Suffolk, after he returned from Burma. The letters are to his friends in the town, Eleanor Jacques and Dennis Collings, and one subject he discusses is the writing of his first two books. They are being auctioned later by Bonhams Auctioneers in London. Alongside the letters, copies of Orwell's books inscribed to the Collings family are also to be auctioned.

A 19th-century 'warrior' at the Royal Academy, London

World art; we all celebrate it now. Benin bronzes, Aztec turquoise skulls, Mughal miniatures, Chinese scroll landscapes, Aboriginal dot paintings... we don't call them primitive any more. They're all deeply sophisticated art-forms. They're all great, and equally great. But there are distinctions. When it comes to it, there's only one kind of non-Western art that we, Western arties, feel is fully in conversation with our stuff: the Japanese woodblock print. Ukiyo-e, the "art of

Stalker who loved Dickens

CHARLES DICKENS was greeted like a modern-day rock star when he toured the United States in 1867-8: not only did he perform his work to excitable crowds and earn a fortune in the process, but according to a contemporary diarist he was also stalked by an obsessive fan. For a brief period Jane Bigelow, a 39-year-old socialite from Baltimore, regarded the novelist as her personal property, threatening other women who expressed interest in him. She even knocked out an elderly widow who

William Shakespeare portrait could be 16th century courtier

The Jacobean painting from the family collection of art restorer Alec Cobbe was thought to be the bard because it closely resembled the engraving in Shakespeare's First Folio. It is also noticeably similar to another painting believed to be the playwright owned by the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. But now experts believe the elaborate lace collar and gold embroided doublet are too grand for the playwright. Dr Tarnya Cooper, the sixteenth-

China plans a Karl Marx musical

The plot will revolve around a group of office employees who find out they are being exploited by their boss. China's communist leaders still praise Karl Marx, although they now shy away from his economic theories. But those involved in the production say that Marx is still relevant today, particularly in a world gripped by an economic crisis. Good timing There will be singing and dancing in this stage version of the classic communist treat

Getty Ex-Curator Testifies in Rome Antiquities Trial

ROME — In a court appearance on Friday, Marion True, the former curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, defended herself against accusations that she knowingly bought antiquities that had been illegally excavated. “If ever there was an indication of proof of an object coming from a certain place,” or an illegal excavation, “we would deaccession it and return the object, regardless of the statute of limitations,” Ms. True said. “And we have shown that we wo

Missing Centuries-Old Statue Found in North Carolina Home

A 350-year-old statue of a saint and former pope, taken from an Italian church nearly two decades ago, has been found in the home of a North Carolina couple who had no idea it was stolen, authorities said. The intricately carved bust of St. Innocent will be returned to the church in Naples, Italy, U.S. Immigration and Customs and Enforcement agents said. The statue was one of 17 similar busts and two oil paintings taken from the church in November 1990. Authorities told