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

Spitfire, Hurricanes and Lancasters losing out to Nazi foes in kit toy sales

For decades, toy replicas of British warplanes like the Spitfire, Hurricane and Lancaster have outsold those of their Nazi foes, but now kit sales of Second World War German aircraft have overtaken those of the Allied forces. Sales of German tanks and ships have also outstripped those of the Allies. Analysis by the model maker Airfix has revealed that this year, German kits have made up around 55 per cent of the sales of all kits relating to the conflict. Around 1.4 million Ge

Carl Orff, the composer who lived a monstrous lie

The opening line of Carmina Burana – “O Fortuna!” – could hardly be more apt. Few composers felt themselves more at the mercy of capricious gods and twists of fate than its composer, Carl Orff. He was never a diehard Nazi; indeed, he looked with disdain on their oafish cultural values. Far from espousing the hounding of “inferior races”, he was fascinated by jazz and by what today we would call world music. Yet he rose to become one of the Third Reich’s top musicians. According to o

Myth of 'humane' Nazi Erwin Rommel debunked

Erwin Rommel, probably the best-known German soldier of the Second World War, was considered to be a chivalrous and humane general, even by the Allied forces who fought him.p But a new exhibition in Stuttgart calls into question the true nature of the man known as the"Desert Fox". "The Rommel Myth" strips away the legends that surround the man who faced off against Britain's Desert Rats in North Africa and who committed suicide after being implicated in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler, t

Pinochet stirs controversy from grave as home becomes visitor attraction

On a tree-lined street in a quiet suburb of north-east Santiago, the two-storey house looks like any middle-class family home. Yet 2244 O'Brien Street is one of the Chilean capital's most controversial addresses: the former home of one of South America's most notorious dictators, General Augusto Pinochet. Today, two years after the death of the notorious dictator, the house is opening as a visitor attraction. Displays include an extensive collection of model soldiers, a

Smuggled ancient sculpture returns to Egypt

The Head of Amenhotep III, a pharaoh who died in 1375BC, was stolen 18 years ago by a British smuggler. Jonathan Tokeley-Parry disguised the stone head as a souvenir, coating it in plastic and painting it black to make it appear to be a tacky copy of a historical artefact. The antiques restorer, renowned in the art world for his skill, later removed the plastic with acetone. Now, more than 10 years after Tokeley-Parry was jailed for his activities, the head

The real Rommel: Enduring myth of the decent Nazi is debunked in Stuttgart exhibition

His reputation has endured as a warrior-gentleman. Known as the Desert Fox, Erwin Rommel was said to be feared but respected by the Allied forces who opposed him in the Second World War. However, an exhibition has opened that questions his longstanding reputation. 'The Rommel Myth' in Stuttgart aims to strip away the legends that surround the general who faced off against Britain's Desert Rats in North Africa and who committed suicide after being implicat

Madoff scandal seem like a Broadway play you might have caught? It was.

... I blinked, though, at seeing that Madoff's own sons turned him in. Early last year I sat in the off-Broadway Atlantic Theater in lower Manhattan and watched that same story unfold in "The Voysey Inheritance," a 1914 British play by Harley Granville-Barker as adapted by David Mamet, who with actor William H. Macy founded the Atlantic. It figures. David Mamet and Tom Wolfe are about the only serious writers in our time who see literature in the mechanics of money. Mr. Vo

What Will Change Look Like in White House Décor?

EVER since Mary Todd Lincoln overshot the White House decorating budget by $6,700 (a third of her $20,000 appropriation), infuriating her husband and delighting a press corps that had already turned against her, the redecoration of the president’s house has been a public relations minefield. Some new administrations tiptoe through it unscathed; others are less nimble, and bombs explode. “It’s an old maxim that you can build a billion-dollar highway that’s the biggest pork barrel in

'Three da Vinci sketches' discovered in Louvre

Three sketches very likely to be drawn by Leonardo da Vinci have been discovered on the back of one of the Florentine master's major works, the Louvre museum has announced. The drawings, barely visible to the naked eye, were found on the flip side of Virgin And Child With St Anne (1519) during routine examination of the oil painting in the Louvre laboratory."When taking down the work, an oil on wood, a curator from the paintings department noticed two barely visible sketches on th

Long-unpublished 1905 Twain essay finally printed

NEW YORK -- It only took a 100 years or so, but the world is finally getting a piece of Mark Twain's mind on the subject of free expression and whether it's safer for your words to be expressed after you're dead. "We have charity for what the dead say. We may disapprove of what they say, but we do not insult them, we do not revile them, as knowing they cannot now defend themselves. If they should speak, what revelations there would be!" Twain observed in "The Privileg

'Three da Vinci sketches' discovered in Louvre

The drawings, barely visible to the naked eye, were found on the flip side of Virgin And Child With St Anne (1519) during routine examination of the oil painting in the Louvre laboratory. "When taking down the work, an oil on wood, a curator from the paintings department noticed two barely visible sketches on the back, representing a horse's head and half a skull," the Louvre said. Deeper examination revealed a third sketch, a Baby Jesus and Lamb.

German critics slate Tom Cruise's performance in Valkyrie

Tom Cruise made an excellent sword-swishing American samurai. He even saved the Western world a few times – but he does not quite make the grade as a German war hero. That was the first verdict of German film critics after the New York premiere of Valkyrie, the Hollywood version of one of the country’s most sensitive historical episodes: the unsuccessful military plot to kill Hitler in July 1944. It marks the end of months of nail-biting tension among German cultural

Christmas carol is really a rebel song in celebration of Bonnie Prince Charlie, claims expert

It has been sung at carol services across the country but a centuries-old secret political code has been found in a popular Christmas song. According to one musical expert, O Come All Ye Faithful, also called Adeste Fideles, is actually a birth ode to Jacobite pretender Bonnie Prince Charlie. Born on December 20 1720, Bonnie Prince Charlie was the grandson of England's last Catholic monarch, James II. He was born in exile in Italy and became the focus for C

Tate to re-stage William Blake's 'flop' of an exhibition

Tate Britain is to re-stage an exhibition by eccentric poet and painter William Blake 200 years after the original show was panned. The sole published review described his one-man 1809 show of 16 paintings as a "farrago of nonsense". Now the surviving 11 paintings are worth millions, while Blake - best known for writing Jerusalem - is lauded as the founding father of the Romantic movement. Tate has managed to assemble nine of the fragile paintings

A renovated US history museum retains its boxy essence

Heroic efforts to make the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History a more lovable building have been made, and the building has just as determinedly resisted them. The renovated space that opened on Nov. 21 after an $85 million overhaul is an improvement in many obvious ways. Light flows in. The wings of the building connect with each other and a central core more logically. There will soon be a cafe with windows facing onto Constitution Avenue, linking the bui

World’s oldest portrait in peril

An explosives factory in Australia threatens a rock carving of a human face dating back to beyond the last Ice Age. The world’s oldest depiction of a human face could be threatened if Australian mining companies are permitted to build an explosives factory on the remote Burrup peninsula in the northwest of the country. A bulbous image of indiscernible sex, with huge eyes and sunken cheeks, the 10,000 year-old carving is chipped out of hard rock. Thousands of other carvings, mo

Warren M. Robbins, Collector of African Art, Dies at 85

Warren M. Robbins, whose $15 purchase of a carved-wood figure of a man and woman representing the Yoruba people of Nigeria became the seed of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, died on Dec. 4 in Washington. He was 85 and lived in Washington. His death was confirmed by Kimberly Mayfield, a spokeswoman for the museum. Mr. Robbins was a cultural attaché for the State Department when he bought that statue, but not in Africa. He was wandering the s

The face of Cleopatra: Scientists recreate image of the legendary beauty

From Elizabeth Taylor to Sophia Loren, there have been many faces of Cleopatra. But this might be the most realistic of them all. Egyptologist Sally Ann Ashton believes the computer-generated 3D image is the best likeness of the legendary beauty famed for her ability to beguile. Pieced together from images on ancient artefacts, including a ring dating from Cleopatra's reign 2,000 years ago, it is the culmination of more than a year of painstaking research.

Elizabeth Drew: Frost/Nixon: A Dishonorable Distortion of History

It's not surprising that the movie Frost/Nixon is receiving rave reviews. Like the eponymous smash play it's based on, it tells a dramatic story of a clash of two interesting figures (one of them absolutely riveting), with two richly talented actors, Frank Langella as Richard Nixon and Michael Sheen as David Frost. The film is even more powerful than the play because of the effects of motion-picture techniques - size, penetrating close-ups, film clips, variegated scenery, and simply more action.

Painting of 'black Florence Nightingale' Mary Seacole bought for £130,000

The 1869 painting of Mary Seacole, by art student Albert Challen, was unearthed in 2003 by a local antiques dealer, who accidentally found it behind a framed print at the boot sale in Burford, Oxon. He saw the artist's initials - ACC - on the wooden backing board, which he then found bore the portrait itself. But he did not know the identity of the sitter. Seacole was a Jamaican-born nurse who travelled to Crimea in the 1850s to set up a treatment centre for soldiers.