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

That Old Master? It’s at the Pawnshop

Last fall, Annie Leibovitz, the photographer, borrowed $5 million from a company called Art Capital Group. In December, she borrowed $10.5 million more from the same firm. As collateral, among other items, she used town houses she owns in Greenwich Village, a country house, and something else: the rights to all of her photographs. In other words, according to loan documents filed with the city, one of the world’s most successful photographers essentially pawned every snap of the shu

A. O. Scott reviews William Wyler's epic, 50 years after it won the Academy Award for best picture.

NYT video. Click on the SOURCE link.

Triumph, Disaster and Decay, Liverpool

No city, with the possible exception of Jericho, has suffered such a dramatic collapse as Liverpool. Within 100 years, it has gone from being one of the wealthiest in the world to one of the poorest in Europe. The Second World War, the decline of its port trade and the rise of containerisation all figured in its economic perdition, to say nothing of its wildcat politicians and other wilful saboteurs – even in 1935, the Communist Party were calling the place “an organiser’s graveyard”.

Baghdad antiquities museum reopens six years after looters struck

Iraq’s National Museum, the resting place of antiquities from the dawn of civilisation, reopened yesterday for the first time since it was denuded by looters six years ago under the eyes of US troops. About 6,000 of the 15,000 artefacts stolen during the anarchy after the fall of Baghdad have been recovered and were back on display yesterday after a $14 million (£10 million) refurbishment. The opening almost did not happen because of feuding between the ministries of Tourism and Cu

Fans given chance to investigate Agatha Christie’s rural retreat

Artefacts used by Agatha Christie to embellish some of her most gruesome murder mystery stories will go on public view for the first time this weekend as the National Trust opens the author’s rural home. Visitors to Greenway, the Devonshire house where Christie entertained guests by reading them extracts from her latest manuscripts, will be able to see objects such as a brass-studded trunk that, in fiction, concealed the body of a murder victim. Hercule Poirot, Christie’s Belgian d

Matisse sells for record 32m euros at Yves Saint Laurent 'sale of the century' at Christie's

Bids for Les coucous, tapis bleu et rose (Cuckoos on a blue and pink carpet) smashed the pre-sale estimate by Christie's of 18 million euros. The price was slightly larger than the $33 million paid for Matisse's L'Odalisque, harmonie bleue, in 2007. Bids for the collection hit 206 million euros (£180 million) on Monday, making it the most expensive private art collection ever auctioned, with two days still left to run. Six world record bids for works by ma

Juan Cole on The Oscar Winner

Directors Danny Boyle's and Loveleen Tandan's "Slumdog Millionaire" swept the Oscars this year, in a remarkable sign of globalization. The creative team behind the film was largely British (Tandan began as a casting director and the screenplay was by Simon Beaufoy). But it was based on an Indian novel (Vikas Swarup's Q A), set in India with Indian actors, and deployed the cinematic techniques of Bollywood, the massive Indian film industry based in Bombay (a city that Indian television

Portrait of Leonardo da Vinci discovered in Basilicata

What may be a hitherto unknown portrait of Leonardo da Vinci in middle age shows that the Renaissance genius had piercing blue eyes, a long nose and long greying hair with a droopy moustache. The damaged oil-on-panel portrait was discovered by Nicola Barbatelli, a medieval historian, while he was researching the archive and picture collection of an aristocratic family at Acerenza (population 3,000), an ancient village perched on a rock above the river Bradano near Potenza in the so

Review: Picasso exhibition (UK)

But Picasso: Challenging the Past, the most hotly-anticipated show of 2009, which opens at the National Gallery on Wednesday, is less thundering and confrontational than the early publicity might have had us believe. The hype around this exhibition of Picasso's relationship with art's old masters had been about the way the iconoclastic Spaniard tackled the likes of Velázquez, Delacroix and Goya head-on, proclaiming: 'Any work they could do, I can do better.' Some of t

Oscars 2009: Holocaust survivor defends Kate Winslet film

The film's producers wheeled out Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel to combat a growing campaign in Hollywood designed to deny Ms Winslet her first golden statuette as best actress. As The Sunday Telegraph revealed in mid February, a covert campaign to rubbish the film began after prominent experts on Nazi Germany denounced the film for portraying Ms Winslet's character, an illiterate and unrepentant concentration camp guard, as too sympathetic. Ron Rosen

BBC shows when Margaret Thatcher had nowhere left to turn

A few yards closer and that could have been me on Strictly Come Dancing. As Margaret Thatcher came down the steps of the British ambassador's residence on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in November 1990, I was standing just behind John Sergeant as he jostled with her press secretary, Bernard Ingham. The Daily Telegraph was providing the "pool" press reporter in case Mrs T decided to say something following the news from Westminster that she would have to face a second b

Historian's Critique of The Reader: "A Pernicious Book and Movie"

Let's get this out of the way at the outset: Kate Winslet gives a great performance in The Reader and the book is a decent but airy read [if you ignore the premise]. Now let's get on to substance. The basic premise of the book and the movie are deeply troubling. Note that the Nazi camp guard is portrayed as the poor, simple, caring woman. Are we supposed to feel sorry for her because she could not read and had "no choice" but to be a guard? She could have bee

British Library buys Futurists' metal manifesto

It is known as The Tin Book and was co-authored by a fascist-sympathising Italian artist who, 100 years ago today, said all libraries should be destroyed. With wonderful irony, the British Library announced yesterday that it had bought an edition of the book, an artefact that is at once rare, unusual and significant. The library has spent £83,000 on this pivotal work in the development of the Italian Futurist art movement. Entitled Parole in Libertá Futuriste Olfattive Tattili Term

Back to futurism?

Exactly one hundred years ago, 20 February 1909 to be precise, the Italian dilettante and litterateur FT Marinetti splurged across the front page of Le Figaro his vision of a new art, politics and life. "Let us give ourselves to the Unknown, not in desperation, but to replenish the deep wells of the Absurd!" he proclaimed in launching his Futurist Manifesto. The article, published in Italian, includes the 11 points of the manifesto, plus accompanying narrative of how it c

Can Egypt bring Cleopatra's palace back to life?

Some of the world's most exciting sunken treasures could soon be on view after Egypt confirmed plans to build a giant underwater museum in the Mediterranean. But as preparation begins on the site of Cleopatra's Palace in Alexandria, funding and technical problems are proving as divisive and controversial as the famed queen herself. Ancient Alexandria was one of the world's great centres of civilisation, and since excavations in the eastern harbour began in 1994, divers

National Gallery and Tate end row over 1900

Defining any period of history is a tricky business, but when it comes to art history, fixing the dates of movements and styles can be especially contentious – with important financial ramifications for museums and galleries. Next week, the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square opens an exhibition devoted to the work of the Spanish titan of 20th-century art, Picasso. The show is likely to be the hottest ticket in the art world this spring, bringing in substantial revenue for the mus

Ford's Theater reopens (video)

Che: Part Two, review

Che: Part One, in which Steven Soderbergh documented the revolutionary medic's struggle to overthrow Cuba's Batista government, offered an upward trajectory: through pain and setbacks to success and the establishment of Fidel Castro as the island's new leader. Che: Part Two goes in the opposite direction, tracking the slow and bloody decline in his fortunes as he tries to export his insurrectionary politics to Bolivia. It is, if one counts Walter Salles's The Motorcyc

Kamran Adl’s photos of 1960’s Iran to go on display in capital

A collection of 130 photos taken in various regions of Baluchestan, Fars, Golpayegan, Zanjan, Neyshabur, and Kordestan will go on display at the exhibit that opens on Friday at the Shirin gallery. Many of these photos make one feel nostalgic about the old days in an Iran that no longer exists, the Persian service of ISNA reported on Wednesday. Adl in his memoir of photography in Iran wrote, “When I returned home from Paris 40 years ago, I did not know what the future

Meresamun exhibition at the Oriental Institute Museum, Chicago

The exhibition ‘The Life of Meresamun’ opened last week at the Oriental Institute Museum of the University of Chicago. Meresamun is believed to have been a singer priestess in 800BC at a temple in Thebes. Her remains are preserved in an unopened casket bearing an inscription of her name that was bought in Egypt in 1920 by the founder of the Oriental Institute, James Henry Breasted. In preparation for the exhibition, the casket was recently examined by CT scans to reveal its contents and over the