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

The Satanic Verses: How one book ignited a culture war

The phrase "literary London" is usually employed to nebulous effect but it accurately describes the gathering that took place at the Greek Orthodox church in Bayswater on 14 February, a clear blue St Valentine's Day, in 1989. The occasion was Bruce Chatwin's memorial service, and it was attended by a large contingent of what was and remains an exceptional generation of British or British-based writers. Among them were Martin Amis, Paul Theroux and Salman Rushdie. According

Andrea Palladio: the man who made ancient modern - at the Royal Academy, London

No other architect has lent his name to an ism. There is no Bramanteism, no Gehryism, Wrenism or Corbusianism. There is, though, Palladianism. The Royal Academy in London, like most galleries, rarely accords architects the same headline billing as your Titians and Van Goghs. But it’s proof enough of the enduring renown of the Italian architect Andrea Palladio on his 500th anniversary (well, last year) that he’s awarded a no-holds-barred blockbuster in the capital complete with bric

Telling the Holocaust Like It Wasn’t

Toward the end of the new film about postwar Germany “The Reader,” a Holocaust survivor in New York curtly instructs a visiting German lawyer named Michael Berg that he would do well to remember that the camps were neither a form of therapy nor a university. “Nothing,” she says, “came out of the camps. Nothing.” With Holocaust Memorial Day to be observed on Jan. 27, it’s a timely admonition. It’s not, however, one that either “The Reader” or a host of memoirs or films about the Thir

The soldier at the centre of the Valkyrie coup

[As Valkyrie, a new film about the plot to kill Hitler in 1944, is released, Justin Cartwright looks at the soldier at the centre of the coup and his vision for his country had it succeeded.] In the film Valkyrie, Tom Cruise plays Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, the man who, on 20 July 1944, placed a bomb next to Hitler in his east Prussian headquarters, the Wolf's Lair. The bomb failed to kill Hitler, merely blowing his trousers to ribbons. That night, when the coup was seen to ha

Bielski brothers in Defiance film were heroes, says survivor

Daniel Craig's latest film Defiance tells the powerful story of three Jewish brothers who fled the Nazi occupation of their Polish town, set up a partisans' camp in dense forest and fought back. But the film has provoked controversy over whether the Bielski brothers, who helped more than 1,200 Jews to escape from the ghettoes, were courageous heroes or ruthless killers who, fighting alongside Soviet partisans, committed atrocities against ethnic Poles. Now Jack Kagan, who as a

Remembrance of Liverpool Past (documentary)

IN “Of Time and the City,” a new documentary by Terence Davies, the city is his hometown, Liverpool, and the time, true to form for this most Proustian of filmmakers, is the past. “The golden moments pass and leave no trace,” Mr. Davies, who narrates the film, says at one point, quoting Chekhov. But his backward-glancing movies are proof to the contrary. They consist almost entirely of traces, constellations of hallowed people and places recalled with an intensity that verges on the religious.

Da Vinci art put in cave in WWII

Drawings by Leonardo da Vinci on show at the National Library of Wales were previously stored there during World War II, researchers have found. Among the other masterpieces stored in the library's secret cave were the Saxon Chronicles, the works of Wycliffe and Chaucer and a large collection of charters including the Magna Carta. There was also a wealth of autographs and letters from the kings and queens of England, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake, Francis Baco

Nazis' looted art 'should not automatically be returned

Museums should be allowed to keep art looted by the Nazis according to Sir Norman Rosenthal, the former exhibitions secretary of the Royal Academy. Despite being the child of Jewish refugees, Sir Norman said he thought "history is history" and descendants "distanced by two or more generations" from the works' original owners did not have an "inalienable right" to reclaim their forbearers' property. Writing in The Art Newspaper, Sir Norman s

Intimate diaries and banal letters live on in France's library of secrets

Everyone's life is a novel, which has not yet been written. Or in some cases, it has been written but never published. In a small town in eastern France, there is a library, or archive, of intimate secrets: a collection of 2,500 unpublished – and mostly unpublishable – autobiographies, diaries, scrapbooks, bundles of letters and collections of emails dating from the early 19th century to last month. "There are as many diarists as there are amateur pianists. They ju

Nazis' looted art 'should not automatically be returned'

Despite being the child of Jewish refugees, Sir Norman said he thought "history is history" and descendants "distanced by two or more generations" from the works' original owners did not have an "inalienable right" to reclaim their forbearers' property. Writing in The Art Newspaper, Sir Norman said an agreement reached in Washington, DC, in 1998 - that committed 44 countries to try to return looted art to the owners or their descendants - should be revi

Almost Killing Hitler

The July 20, 1944, attempt was one of perhaps 15 by the German Resistance, which was neither negligible nor contemptible. Impressed by a written report from a colonel, Adolf Hitler exclaimed, "Finally a general staff officer with imagination and intelligence!" The report's author, who had those qualities in quantities commensurate with his courage, would be repeatedly brought to Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia. He was Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg.

A telltale Poe-pourri

He is Baltimore’s sad-eyed genius. He doesn’t want for admirers, and hasn’t for the 160 years since he was found, Oct. 3, 1849, in a tavern, dressed in rags, haggard, incoherent; he was four days away from the end of his life, at age 40. The tavern was not far from where he rests today, in a bricky urban cemetery, softened by birch trees and maples, black-barked and leafless, where a path winds among tombstones bearing the names of generals who fought the English wars, politicians, high-born mer

Defiance - film review

The first five minutes of Edward Zwick’s epic film Defiance map out a story that he has spent the best part of a decade trying to tweak from Nechama Tec’s novel. The love and care is as raw and grainy as the performances by Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, and Jamie Bell as three brothers who assembled a partisan band of Jewish resistance fighters in western Belorussia and decided to fight back against the Nazis. This guerrilla campaign gives the film a heroic value and power that the

Aerial photos develop into snapshot of history along British coast

A rich legacy of archaeological treasures hidden on a stretch of coastline has been uncovered by a painstaking survey of aerial photographs dating back to the 1940s. The haul of discoveries include many unrecorded ruins, shipwrecks and wartime defences on the coast between the Scottish border and Whitby in North Yorkshire. They were all found during an English Heritage survey that examined more than 20,000 aerial photographs. Most of the newly recorded sites relate to t

Smithsonian American History Museum now features a colonial house

The simple, everyday things - that's what he remembers. His grandmother, always in an apron. The luring aroma of her pies. When the leaves tinted orange and red, the way she melted wax to seal garden-fresh carrots into preserve jars. Window cards heralding ice deliveries. Baths in an old stone sink, puzzles, gliding around wood floors in wool socks. For just five years, the Ipswich Colonial was home. But Richard Lynch left a mark there - and it on him.

The story of the photographer behind the most stunning picture of the Vietnam War

Photographer Nick Ut has witnessed some of the most important news events of the past 40 years - from war in his native Vietnam to the trials of troubled Hollywood celebrities. Ut tells how he gets his classic pictures. Nick Ut is best known for his image of a terrified girl, Kim Phuc, seen fleeing her village naked after she was burned in a napalm attack. That picture, taken in 1972, earned Ut a Pulitzer Prize. The photographer was just 21 when he captured that image,

Why Che Guevara's image is still a bestseller

Fidel Castro nowhere to be seen, it was left to the ailing Comandante's brother, Raul, to front last week's celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution. But in Havana's vast Plaza de la Revolucion, another hero of 1959 was more visible than either Castro. His features, frozen in time for more than 40 years, bolted to the forbidding Ministry of the Interior in the form of a gigantic sculpture, must be among the most recognisable in modern history. Ernesto

Madame Tussauds unveils Obama figure

Madame Tussauds is to let American tourists in free of charge to mark the inauguration of Barack Obama as US President. The London attraction will waive its entrance fee, which starts at £12.23, to American citizens on January 20, to celebrate the debut of its wax figure of the president-elect. Visitors can get up close and personal with the world's most powerful man in a recreation of the Oval office. They can stand behind the Resolute desk used by pres

Bruce Lee home to house his museum

A Hong Kong townhouse which was once home to martial arts legend Bruce Lee is to be transformed into a museum in his memory, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The move comes after the building's owner made the surprise decision to donate it to the city where the kung fu icon first shot to fame, and follows a long-running campaign by fans. The two-story 5,700 sq ft (61,354 sq metre) building had been languishing as a downmarket love motel where rooms could be hired by the hour.

The British Museum's new Egyptial gallery

Enter the British Museum's new Egyptian gallery and you will be struck by a line of painted panels of unexpectedly rich colouring and extravagant composition. On one panel, a pair of naked female dancers, their fingers interlaced, glide sinuously before a crowd at a banquet. Beside them, a flute player stares out from the painting, her hair shimmering as if she is swaying to the music. Each figure is distinct, individual and freely drawn, their proportions and detail captured perfectly.