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

Vermont residents vote to save 19th-century church

The residents of Stowe, Vt., have spoken: A decrepit 19th-century church will live to see another year. Voters at Town Meeting day Tuesday rejected a proposal that the ski town "sell, respectfully salvage or otherwise dispose of the so-called 'Rotary Barn.'" The building was constructed in 1839 and has since served as a Christian church, gymnasium, classroom and storage space.

Munich's Nazi Past Gets a Future Home

Munich is where Hitler and the Nazis got their start. But the city has long neglected its past as the "Capital of the Movement." Now, Hitler's former home has decided on a design for a new documentation center to be built on the site of former Nazi party headquarters. As anyone who has visited Berlin will tell you, it's hard to walk more than a few blocks through the city center without happening across yet another monument to the terrible events of World War II and the Ho

George Washington posed here

George Washington hated posing. A practical man little given to indulgence, he would have preferred riding out to inspect his vast farmland at Mount Vernon, in Virginia, or conducting business or legislative work, or just about anything else, for that matter, than to strike a pose for a painter. But Martha wanted a canvas of her husband to add to her collection of family portraits. So in May 1772, Washington stood immobile for the better part of two days for the painter Charles Will

Sexy, Career-Minded Barbie Turns 50 (5 Questions for Author & Barbie Expert M.G. Lord)

M. G. Lord, author of Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll, also wrote Britannica’s entry on Barbie. She kindly agreed to the following interview on the occasion of Barbie’s 50th birthday today. Since 1995 Lord has been a regular contributor to The New York Times Book Review and The New York Times Arts & Leisure section. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Discover, Travel + Leisure, ARTNews, Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, The Los An

A Funeral Museum at Death’s Door

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — A week or so ago, Duane Marsh noticed an elderly couple from Iowa standing hesitantly at the door of the Museum of Funeral Customs, a shrine here to embalming tools, coffins and other artifacts of the rites of death. “This is his idea, not mine,” Mr. Marsh recalled the woman saying, as she pointed at her husband. “I’m not sure I want to go in.” Mr. Marsh, the executive director of the Illinois Funeral Directors Association, which operates the museum,

Shakespeare's lost theatre uncovered on site of new London playhouse

What are thought to be the long-lost remains of William Shakespeare's first theatre, in which plays such as Romeo and Juliet were first performed, have been uncovered by archaeologists. By coincidence, it was work to build a new playhouse at the site in Shoreditch, east London, which uncovered the foundations of what was known simply as The Theatre, the direct forerunner of the Globe. The Young William Shakespeare trod the boards there as an actor in the Chamberlain's M

The Bard? Portrait said to be Shakespeare unveiled

Scholars studying the life and times of William Shakespeare unveiled a portrait Monday believed to be the only authentic image of the Bard painted during his lifetime. Experts at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust believe the painting was used as the basis for the enduring engraving of Shakespeare that graces the cover of the First Folio collection of his plays. Paul Edmondson, the group's director of learning, said it was also used as a basis for the famous portrait of t

Don't look back: Walter Sickert's Venice

Walter Sickert was already 35 years old when, in 1895, he painted the first of the many pictures of Venetian scenes that you can see in this exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. Although long resident in the capital, he'd spent much of his life outside England – in Paris, for example, where he had struck up a close friendship with the irascible Edgar Degas. The greatest influence upon his young life to date had been that of James McNeill Whistler, the American expat

Birdsong: An epic in the making

This is the story of a blockbuster movie that hasn't been made (yet); a film that, if it lives up to its potential, should carry us all away with its sweeping historical narrative and tragic romantic undertow. Imagine a British Dr Zhivago – an intimate epic about love and war, about coming of age and disillusionment, about sexual rapture and the squalor of mass slaughter. It's a film that the millions of readers who savoured the novel on which it is based can already picture vividly in their min

Dunaway mows down new Bonnie and Clyde

WHEN Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway learnt that a Hollywood studio was planning a 21st-century remake of Bonnie and Clyde, the legendary 1967 film that earned both of them global acclaim, they each responded with the same question: “Why?” The answer, according to the author of yet another new book on America’s most notorious outlaw couple, is that romance and crime never go out of fashion, and that a new age of economic depression may be just the time to revive national interest in

Jewish resistance film sparks Polish anger

A film starring Daniel Craig about a Jewish underground resistance movement that took on the Nazis has prompted a storm of protest in Poland. Defiance, directed by Edward Zwick, which recently opened in Poland under the title Opor (resistance), has been booed at cinemas across the country and banned from others because of a local perception that it is a rewriting of history and anti-Polish. Opponents say in its telling of the true story of the four Bielski brothers who fled the Nazi

Renoir and Pissarro paintings found by Dutch police 22 years after theft

The works, dating from the 17th and 19th centuries, were located when they were offered for sale. Some of the works – which disappeared from the Noortman gallery in the southern city of Maastricht in 1987 – were damaged after being folded. "The suspects were apparently trying to sell the art works to the insurance company that had paid out €2.27 million [£2 million] after they went missing," said a spokesman for the Dutch National Prosecutor's Office. "An expert will

NY Times omitted David Bossie's controversial past in article discussing his group's anti-Clinton film

Discussing the Citizens United-produced film, Hillary: The Movie, The New York Times identified the group's president, David Bossie, only as "a former Congressional aide and a longtime foe of the Clintons." The Times did not mention that Bossie was reportedly fired as a congressional staffer in 1998 for his role in releasing misleadingly edited transcripts that gave the false impression then-first lady Hillary Clinton had been implicated in wrongdoing.

Final weeks of Bobby Sands (Docudrama)

“HUNGER,” the first feature film by the British artist Steve McQueen, recounts the final weeks of Bobby Sands, the imprisoned Irish nationalist who died in 1981, 66 days into a hunger strike. But the movie, which does not examine the arc of Sands’s life or the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, is far from a conventional docudrama or issue movie. Instead it is something starker and more precise, with a single-mindedness to match that of its subject, a man who decides to starve himself

Robert E. A. Lee, Who Made ‘A Time for Burning,’ Dies at 87

Robert E. A. Lee, a longtime head of communications for the Lutheran Church, who helped bring to the screen two highly regarded but controversial films — “A Time for Burning,” a landmark documentary about American race relations, and “Martin Luther,” a biography of the father of Protestantism that was banned in several places — died on Feb. 27 at his home in Baldwin, N.Y. He was 87. The cause was cancer, his family said. From 1954 until 1988, Mr. Lee was the executive s

Museum exhibit focuses on pirate history

You won't find Captain Jack Sparrow, but Blackbeard has a starring role in a new pirate exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of History. The almost yearlong exhibit "Knights of the Black Flag" traces the sweet trade from ancient Egypt and Greece to today's pirates who prowl the waters off Somalia. "People have an image of pirates, but what is the reality?" asked museum curator Jeanne Marie Warzeski. To that end, the exhibit opens with pa

U.C.L.A. Gets Huxley Archive

In an honor that’s nearly as estimable as achieving Alpha-Plus status, the literary archive of Aldous Huxley, the writer and “Brave New World” novelist, has been acquired by the U.C.L.A. Library, the library announced. Among the materials in the collection are manuscripts and working papers for 12 of his books, as well as 35 essays, articles and speeches; recordings of Huxley reading from his lectures and his 1944 novel, “Time Must Have a Stop”; and love letters he exchanged with his wife Laura,

Zhang Yimou to direct film celebrating the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China

Zhang Yimou, the acclaimed director of Hero and House of Flying Daggers, is to make a film celebrating the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China. The news, announced yesterday on China Central Television, completes what many regard as the last step in a curious rehabilitation for the one-time dissident film-maker. According to the director's assistant, Pang Liwei, Zhang is currently deliberating between three or four state-sanctioned screenplays. "The script must m

Exhibition to mark the 30th anniversary of Iran's Islamic revolution

Jinoos Taghizadeh wanted to come up with a distinctive and thought-provoking work to mark the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution. But rather than celebrating the event, the Iranian artist chose to illustrate the yawning gap between hopes and reality. Taking contemporary Persian-language newspaper accounts of the overthrow of the shah and the rise to power of Ayatollah Khomeini, Taghizadeh embedded images from western works of art – the nightmare world of Hieronymous Bosch, P

A rich history lesson in exhibit of early American art at SAM (Seattle Art Museum)

A sweeping exhibition of early American art from the Yale University Art Gallery visits Seattle Art Museum, bringing stories of glory, shame and shared ideals. "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: American Art from the Yale University Art Gallery" is on view through May 25. What comes to mind when you conjure up pictures of the early history of the United States? Washington crossing the Delaware River? Maybe some scenes from "Schoolhouse Rock" with upstar