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

Descendant of Louis XIV fails to stop 'disrespectful' exhibition in

A French descendant of Louis XIV has failed in his last-minute attempt to ban an exhibition by pop US artist Jeff Koons in Versailles, which he claimed disrespected his royal ancestors with"pornography". Since September, half a million visitors have flocked to the Sun King's palace to view 17 major works by the"king of kitsch" in its gardens and gilded galleries. These include an inflatable lobster, a porcelain representation of Michael Jackson and his chimp Bubbles, as well a

Study to reveal heads mysteries (Scotland)

Researchers are working to uncover the mysteries of 33 wood carved medallions which would have decorated the Royal Palace at Stirling Castle. Historic Scotland is trying to find out why the works, known as the Stirling Heads and carved between 1530 and 1544, were created and whom they depict. The carvings are thought to feature monarchs such as James V and England's Henry VIII. The research is part of £12m plans to refurbish Stirling's Royal Palace.

Al Capone's house to go on the market

Want to own a notorious piece of Chicago history? The modest, red-brick home once owned by Al Capone is expected to hit the market this spring for an estimated $450,000, marking a new chapter for the infamous South Side landmark that has had just two owners since the death of Capone's mother in 1952. "I think there's some value in the home's history," said Barbara Hogsette, 71, who has lived in the house since 1963 but plans to relocate to California next year

“Christmas Bells” (The Real Verses by Longfellow)

Every song has a history, but some histories are better known than others. The carol “Christmas Bells,” long a standard of the holiday, is a case in point. Written by the renowned poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Christmas Day 1863, a time when it was not yet clear that the North would win the American Civil War, its original verses contain two stanzas that refer directly to that conflict. Longfellow’s son Charles had been grievously wounded in battle, but contrary to Longfellow’s

Von Trapps are reunited, without the singing

When Sam von Trapp, the grandson of Maria, the singing nun made famous by"The Sound of Music," graduated from college, his father offered him a deal: Sam could do whatever he wanted for 10 years before he had to return home here to run the family's ski lodge. His father started calling him to come home after six years. When von Trapp finally returned to take over from his father, Johannes, he had had quite a decade: teaching skiing in Aspen, modeling for Ralph Lauren, surfing i

Is the author of a new Oprah-touted love story the next James Frey?

On February 3, Berkley Books, the mass-market division of the Penguin Group, is slated to publish a Holocaust memoir titled Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love That Survived. The author, Herman Rosenblat, who is a retired television repairman now living in Miami, recounts his experience as a teenage boy during the Holocaust at Schlieben, a sub-division of the infamous Buchenwald concentration camp. In the winter of 1945, Herman meets a nine-year-old girl--herself a Jew masquerading as a

Great Gatsby to get the Moulin Rouge treatment

It was a novel that captured the champagne-fuelled follies of the frivolously wealthy, moments before America's "boom time" bubble burst and Wall Street came crashing down to expose the spiritual vacuum of the times. F Scott Fitzgerald's seminal novel The Great Gatsby may have been describing the iniquities of the Jazz Age just before the country slid into the Great Depression but the award-winning Australian director, Baz Luhrmann, yesterday said Fitzgerald's story resona

Robert Mulligan: Film and television director best known for 'To Kill a Mockingbird', dies aged 83

Robert Mulligan's film version of Harper Lee's moving courtroom drama, To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Film and Best Director. Though Mulligan and the movie lost to David Lean and Lawrence of Arabia, the film has endured as a classic, and his leading man, Gregory Peck, won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the dogged lawyer Atticus Finch, a character named by the American Film Institute as the most loved fictional figure in the history

Russia spies return to Kremlin-funded nationalist film output

The history of patriotic, state-funded Russian film dates back to the likes of Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 classic The Battleship Potemkin, but it's a genre assumed to have been left behind since the fall of the Soviet Union. Yesterday the Kremlin signalled a return to communist-era policies when it announced that it will spend $8m (£5.4m) on the first fully state-funded feature since the halcyon days of Mosfilm. The $8m-budgeted patriotic war film The Brest Fortress will be made by th

The photo of earth from space that changed our view of ourselves

THEY came for the Moon, and for the first three orbits it was to the Moon that the astronauts of Apollo 8 devoted their attention. Only on their fourth time round did they lift their eyes to see their home world, rising silently above the Moon’s desert plains, blue and white and beautiful. When, later on that Christmas Eve in 1968, they read the opening lines of Genesis on live television, they did it with a sense of the heavens and the Earth, of the form and the void, enriched by the wonder the

Harold Pinter dies at 78

Harold Pinter, praised as the most influential British playwright of his generation and a longtime voice of political protest, has died after a long battle with cancer. He was 78. Pinter, whose distinctive contribution to the stage was recognized with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, died on Wednesday, according to his second wife, Lady Antonia Fraser. "Pinter restored theater to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people

Pictures That Were Worth a Thousand Calling Cards

The exhibition, “Neither East Nor West: Asians in Monochrome,” offers a glimpse of a time when globalization was emerging, thanks to developments in communication and transportation, and new diplomatic ties were being formed. “The personalities featured in the exhibition had important connections to Asia and were instrumental in shaping how the West saw Asia,” said Tan Huism, deputy director for curation and collections at the museum. “These were exciting times with an emergence of

Washington Museum Presents One Life: Mask Of Lincoln

Just after Election Day, the National Portrait Gallery presents an exhibition exploring how Abraham Lincoln (Feb. 12, 1809–April 15, 1865), one of America’s most revered presidents, crafted his public persona. His leadership during America’s most divisive crisis, the Civil War, was essential to the abolition of slavery and the preservation of the union. A continuation of the museum’s “One Life” series, “The Mask of Lincoln” is open, in anticipation of the celebration of the 200th an

NYC museum avoids glib parallel between Obama, FDR

Sworn in as president in the midst of a deep economic crisis, Franklin D. Roosevelt turned his first 100 days into a swirl of action as he sought to right the sinking ship of state. At first glance the analogy between Roosevelt in 1933 and President-elect Barack Obama in 2009 seems almost too obvious. But at the New-York Historical Society, a new exhibition titled "A New President Takes Command: FDR's First Hundred Days" avoids overly simplified comparisons be

Thanks to Hollywood, Robert Louis Stevenson is reduced to three works -

Countless versions of those novels reinforce the image of Stevenson as a boys' adventure story writer. Yet he was so much more, with a back catalogue in a career, tragically cut short by illness, which included poetry, children's books, travel writing, historical novels and literary essays. Now, thanks to a grant of £34,500 from the Carnegie Trust, a project led by Napier University hopes to boost the writer's reputation at home and abroad. Work on the website will begi

Book from 1801 outlines Christmas family games such as Hot Cockles

It is a far cry from the tradition of families gathering to play a board game such as Monopoly together on Christmas Day. A book dating back to 1801 shows that a game popular with families at Christmas 200 years ago involved placing your head in someone's lap while guessing who was hitting you from behind. The game, called Hot Cockles, was a variation of the classic Blind Man's Buff, also a well-loved pastime with our Victorian ancestors. The book"Sports and Pastimes", w

‘Valkyrie’ lacks the Reich stuff

Cruise is just one of many problems with this unengaging Nazi escapade. It is admittedly difficult, although not altogether impossible, to make a movie about a historical event where everyone already knows the ending. Still, “All the President’s Men” and “Apollo 13” both generate substantial suspense even though almost everyone who saw either film had a pretty good idea of the outcome. Telling that kind of story when things end up less happily is even trickier, but still doabl

Why do we love movie Nazis?

Because Hollywood can take anything and make it attractive, that’s why. Only at the movies (and in old “Hogan’s Heroes” reruns) is it ever permissible to enjoy the company of a Nazi. To be sure, the real Nazis were horrifying death merchants responsible for igniting World War II. But at the movies they become complex psychological portraits or loony B-movie villains or, weirder still, comic relief. You can talk to psychologists all day about that last one and why we need harml

Lynching: The Disciples of Hatred, in Their Own Words and Images

Nazi hunters have made an art of exposing war criminals through photographs taken in the death camp era. This strategy would have worked well against Southern lynch-mob killers who posed for the camera while murdering African-Americans in a campaign of terror that persisted into the mid-20th century. Black American lives were viewed as expendable in the pre-civil rights South. The murderers who hanged, dismembered or burned black victims alive — before crowds of cheering onlookers —

Looted ancient treasures recovered in Basra 'sting'

Ancient treasures stolen from museums in the anarchic aftermath of the United States-led invasion of Iraq five years ago have been found in Basra, in one of the biggest recoveries of the loot, The Independent can reveal. The priceless artefacts, about 230 of them, were saved as they were about to be smuggled abroad in a "sting" operation organised by investigators. Seven members of the gang, which is said to have specialised in trafficking the country's stolen antiquities,