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

Lincoln: Prelude to the Presidency (TV Documentary)

Riding through prairie grass on trails just barely wide enough for his horse, Abraham Lincoln traveled more than 500 miles each spring and fall as a lawyer on Illinois’ Eighth Judicial Circuit. WILL-TV’s "Lincoln: Prelude to the Presidency" tells the story of his experiences from 1837 to 1860 that shaped the views and honed the skills that guided him when he became president. Reenactments filmed in central Illinois help viewers envision Lincoln riding the dusty circuit, te

Greece to help Iraq restore damaged archaeological sites and museums

Greece pledged Tuesday to provide financial and technical aid to help Iraq restore and conserve its damaged archaeological sites and museums. Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis said Greece and Iraq have also agreed to build a monument honoring the Greek warrior-king Alexander the Great at an ancient battlefield in southern Iraq. She was speaking after talks in Athens with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.

Museums cutting jobs of scholars

Arts advocates have been outraged this week by Brandeis University’s plan to sell all of the art in its museum as a way to raise money for the university. It turns out Brandeis isn’t the only university where critics are questioning the university’s commitment to important values for academic museums — although many may be relieved to know this other controversy does not involve a university selling off a collection. (Update on Brandeis: Its president on Wednesday indicated he might go along wit

Washington Post's Book World Goes Out of Print as a

The Washington Post has decided to shutter the print version of its Sunday stand-alone book review section and shift reviews to space inside two other sections of the paper.

Shah Abbas exhibition at the British Museum

Reclining on a terrace overlooking the world's second biggest public square, watching the sun set over the domes of blue-tiled mosques and columned palaces as merchants and their customers bustle in and out of the bazaar below, a scene that has changed little in 300 years, seems like the perfect place to start searching for an understanding of the enigma that is modern Iran, where they are preparing to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. On February 1, 1979, t

BBC One plans remake of Jane Austen's Emma

The four-part serial will be the last Austen remake for some time on the BBC, as the corporation recently announced plans to move beyond conventional 'bonnet dramas'. "We don't just want to do 19th century book adaptations. Emma will be our last Austen for a few years," said Kate Harwood, the BBC's controller of series and serials. The Emma remake will be a "fresh, humorous and perceptive" take on the classic story, originally published in 1815. It

50 years after Holly, Richardson and Valens were killed, Iowa recalls the day the music died

It's been 50 years since a single-engine plane crashed into a snow-covered Iowa field, instantly killing three men whose names would become enshrined in the history of rock 'n' roll. The passing decades haven't diminished fascination with that night on Feb. 2, 1959, when 22-year-old Buddy Holly, 28-year-old J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson and 17-year-old Ritchie Valens performed in Clear Lake and then boarded the plane for a planned 300-mile flight that lasted only minute

New Smithsonian chief formally takes job

Chief Justice John Roberts didn't have to worry about stumbling over an oath of office for the new Smithsonian chief Monday — all he had to do this time was hand over a key. Roberts got the words a little off during President Barack Obama's oath of office last week, so he was perhaps relieved that tradition called for something simpler to formally install Wayne Clough as the 12th secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. "I don't know who was responsible for that

Kubrick's lost movie: Now we can see it...

You probably haven't heard of Johanna ter Steege, even if the legendary American film-maker Stanley Kubrick once called her the best actress he knew. Ter Steege, who was born in 1961, has had a reasonably successful career, appearing in such films as George Sluizer's The Vanishing (1988), Istvan Szabo's Sweet Emma, Dear Boebe (1992), and Bruce Beresford's Paradise Road (1997) but she is hardly a household name, even in her native Holland. It could all have been so very, very differe

Glasgow's Salvador Dali painting of Christ's crucifixtion at centre of copyright battle

While the sombre work of art, entitled of Christ of St John of the Cross, is now valued at more than £60 million, the council believes it could be worth more still in uncollected licensing fees and royalties. Its lawyers are said to have drawn up a list of 50 companies including ashtray manufacturers, poster makers and artists that have apparently copied it without permission. Warnings have already been issued to 25 firms and individuals internationally to "cease

'Goya masterpiece' was painted by his student

El Coloso, a painting of a giant striding through clouds above a valley of people and their animals fleeing in terror, was in fact most likely executed by Goya's chief apprentice Asensio Julia, the museum disclosed on Monday. Experts at the museum revealed their findings after an exhaustive study of the work that began last summer amid criticism that the painting was of a lesser standard than Goya's other works. After a close analysis of the style, techniques and compos

Gold rush: The battle over sunken treasure

Shipwrecks! Treasure! Gold, gold, gold! The hallmarks of treasure-hunting are the stuff of adventure stories, more than fun enough to make archaeologists, who are mounting increasing complaints against the pillaging of sunken ships, seem like wet blankets. But more is at stake than just a few loose doubloons, they say. "The big picture is that a fair amount of humanity's past we don't know, and it's important we don't let it become lost forever," says maritime archaeologis

Tapestry of Picasso's Guernica to be displayed in Britain

The full-size replica of the painting, which depicts the 1937 bombing of the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War, is to be loaned to the London gallery and shown from April 5. It currently hangs at the entrance to the Security Council room at the UN headquarters in New York. The UN was criticised in February 2003 after it covered the tapestry with a blue curtain when Colin Powell, then the US Secretary of State, addressed the council on Iraq, a month before the US-led invasion

Nashville library features a collector's political memorabilia (video)

For one collector, the arc of the history of U.S. politics can be best examined through the memorabilia of campaigns past. Michelle Miller reports. [The collector has more than 30,000 pieces.]

One Israeli soldier’s nightmarish experiences in embattled Beirut in 1982

From TomDispatch this Saturday, a unique project in the history of this site -- the exclusive release of the first of two long excerpts, the initial 25 pages from the graphic memoir, Waltz with Bashir, developed in tandem with the Golden Globe winning, Oscar-nominated film of the same name about one Israeli soldier’s nightmarish experiences in embattled Beirut in 1982. It couldn’t be more gripping or relevant to our moment: “Waltz with Bashir, Part 1.” (Part 2 will appear next Saturday.)

War Against the Weak: The Movie

War Against the Weak is to be released on January 24 at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, the film based on investigate reporter Edwin Black’s opus on the origins of the eugenics movement in the United States, and its connections with Nazism. Hollywood luminaries Clint Eastwood, Kate Winslet and Mickey Rourke will be attending the festival and receiving awards at the prestigious event being held at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in Santa Barbara, California. War Again

The photographer who loves watching presidents

Randall Pinkston profiles the career of legendary photographer Harry Benson, who has captured intimate and surprising moments with many U.S. presidents such as L.B.J., Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

When the News Was New (Exhibit/NYC)

The good lady Opinion sits perched in a tree, wearing the weighty towers of the town as her hat, which blinds her eyes. On one of her hands a chameleon sits, doubtless changing its spots to accommodate the surroundings. Held in her other hand is a wand used to shake the tree’s branches, from which leaves fall: leaves of books and papers, which offer not knowledge but libel and foolishness, which “in everie streete, on everie stall you find.” Such is the cynical vision of the news b

Did Bob Dylan unfairly ridicule William Zantzinger?

In February of 1963, twenty-four-year-old William Zantzinger, armed with a toy carnival cane and wrecked on whiskey, made a spectacle of himself at the Spinsters’ Ball at the Emerson Hotel in Baltimore. He was a drunken country mouse in the big city, at a time when the notion of racial equality had barely shown itself in the neighborhood of his father’s tobacco farm. When the hotel’s black waitstaff was slow to serve Zantzinger another drink, he yelled racial epithets at Hattie Carroll, a barmai

American Researchers Dispute Claims of 'Polite' Titanic Victims

American researchers are firing back at a Swiss university researcher's report that “politeness” led to the deaths of 225 British passengers aboard the Titanic. Professor Bruno Frey of the University of Zurich claims that the British passengers on the doomed cruise liner perished in the 1912 disaster because they were polite and willing to stand in line while American passengers pushed their way to the front and were placed in lifeboats. While “women and children first”