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

The theft of Scoptland's Stone of Destiny is now a movie

It was, Ian Hamilton calmly acknowledges, the moment of no return. ''You sort of know that when you take a crowbar to a side door of Westminster Abbey and jemmy the lock that there isn't really any going back, don't you?'' he says philosophically. ''Not when you know that the next thing you are going to do is steal one of the ancient relics inside.'' Hamilton is lost in reverie for a moment. A wry smile crosses his face and then a thought strikes him. ''Not,'' he says urgently, ''th

The Simple Job That Morphed Into ‘Valkyrie’

TWO Christmases ago the director Bryan Singer was looking for a modestly scaled movie to make, something he could slide in quickly between behemoths. He had just come off three consecutive comic-book adaptations (“X-Men” in 2000, its sequel in 2003 and “Superman Returns” in 2006), he had helped to create the hit Fox series “House,” and he was now in the market for something different. When he read “Valkyrie,” a script co-written by Christopher McQuarrie, who had been a friend since

Waltz with Bashir (2008)

EARLY in the film “Waltz With Bashir,” Ari Folman, the filmmaker and main character, looks at a photograph of himself as an Israeli soldier in the 1982 Lebanon war and cannot recognize his younger incarnation. The boy in the uniform may as well be a stranger. Last month, sitting in his studio in Jaffa, south of Tel Aviv, discussing the movie — an animated documentary that has drawn praise in Israel and Europe and opens Dec. 26 in New York — Mr. Folman, 45, said things had changed. “

Che rides again in Hollywood

"Che" film gets thumbs up in Cuba," ran the headline from CNN's Havana Bureau on Dec. 8. Benicio Del Toro, who stars as Che, was in the Cuban capital at the Havana Film Festival this week-end presenting the movie he co-produced. "Che the movie met Che the myth in Cuba this weekend," starts the CNN report, "and the lengthy biopic of the Argentinean revolutionary won acclaim from among those who know his story best. " Indeed, but the acclaim came bec

Sir Paul McCartney has claimed it was he, and not John Lennon, who

In an interview with the intellectual journal Prospect, Sir Paul said that he persuaded Lennon to oppose the war in Vietnam. He claimed the group's politicisation began after he met the philosopher Bertrand Russell in London in the mid-1960s. But Sir Paul's critics see his comments as a further attempt to revise the history of the Beatles, casting himself in a better light. "We sort of stumbled into things," Sir Paul told Prospect magazine. "For instance, Vietnam. Just w

FDR's New Deal Blueprint For Obama (CBS Sunday Morning)

The economic crisis of late has some people looking back to a set of old initials ... WPA. And they're thinking perhaps that New Deal program will serve as a model for our times. Our Cover Story is reported by Chip Reid: Anxiety and fear surround workers this holiday season. Last month, half a million people lost their jobs … more than 2 million have since last December. "We need action, and action now," said President-elect Barack Obama. "That is why I have a

'Television and the Presidency': The Bush and Clinton Years (Fox News documentary)

FOX News airs the fourth in its five-part series on how television shaped the most powerful office in the world, and in turn changed the course of history. "Television and the Presidency" airs Sunday at 3 p.m. EST. ### "If the other guy is coming at you with a negative, you have to be ready for it," said Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, explaining the role of television ads in the 1988 election. "And if you don't, you're going

The invisible man rescuing stolen art

There are about 100 of us packed into a restaurant in Upper Holmesburg, Philadelphia - art experts and curators, museum security chiefs, and a phalanx of FBI agents with 9mm Glocks concealed under their G-man suits. We have gathered to say farewell to a man few people have heard of and even fewer could recognise or describe. That is the way Special Agent Robert "Bob" Wittman prefers it. For nearly two decades, usually masquerading as a crooked art

Taking another pass at Easter Island's story

Down at the end of a dead-end street here, there's an exhibition hall where a famous and politically correct notion about one of the world's real mysteries is getting a rough ride. In an era of lowered expectations, the exposition about Easter Island is worth a look. It comes for free, certainly the right price these days, and in a low-toned, less than riveting way goes after what it says is a myth about man's irrepressible self-destructiveness - a parable forced on what's ra

Titian's masterpiece Diana and Actaeon is saved

Titian's masterpiece Diana and Actaeon is set to be saved for the nation after a series of pledges put the fundraising campaign on track to achieve the £50m asking price. The Scottish government will this week announce that it will donate about £10m, while the National Gallery in London will pledge about £12m and the National Galleries of Scotland a further £2m. Money will also come from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Until now, £11m had been publicly pl

The Empire raises its flag in London

Britain's conquest of a quarter of the world has long been a near-taboo subject for public discussion. Now a museum is to confront visitors to the capital with the darkest moments as well as the high points of the imperial past. The British Empire & Commonwealth Museum, currently housed in Bristol, is the favourite to win a contest for a new cultural institution to be built on a three-acre site on the south bank of the Thames opposite the Tower of London. The proj

Sir Paul McCartney: I was the anti-war Beatle

Sir Paul McCartney claims that it was he – and not John Lennon – who politicised the Beatles. He has shunned music magazines to give an interview to an intellectual journal in which he describes how he introduced the group to the “very bad” Vietnam war. It paints a picture at odds with the conventional view of the Beatles, that McCartney was writing pop ditties such as Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da while Lennon was composing overtly political songs such as Revolution. McCartney

Gerhard Richter's JFK trilogy to be shown together for first time

The three paintings - one of Jacqueline Kennedy being consoled by President Johnson, another of her clutching an umbrella and looking shocked, and a third of assassin Lee Harvey Oswald - have never been shown together before. The first, to which Richter gave an explanatory title, has never been exhibited in public at all. Curator Paul Moorhouse thought it was a private "working proof" that Richter - widely regarded alongside Lucian Freud as one of the world's

Pinochet museum aims to improve former Chile dictator's image

Visitors to the four-room museum in the Chilean capital, Santiago, will be able to see the general’s uniform, sabres, books and knives – even his collection of toy soldiers. Guided visits for groups of 12 will start on Monday and more than 150 people have already registered to visit. Gen Pinochet’s widow, Lucia Hiriart, said the inauguration showed that “little by little justice is being done” for her husband. Gen Pinochet led a military junta that overt

Charge: Smithsonian Honors Racist Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger — On Your Dime

In October 2008, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery opened its “Women of Our Time: Twentieth Century Photographs” exhibit. The collection includes a broad range of history-making women, including First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln and runner Marion Jones. Journalist, author, former ambassador and congresswoman Clare Booth Luce is one of the few conservatives to make the cut. The exhibit is intended to honor women who are or were “significant figures in t

Does Irish museum contain looted Jewish art?

AN INTERNATIONAL Jewish human rights organisation has called for a new investigation into whether parts of the Hunt Museum collection in Limerick may have been looted by the Nazis. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which has headquarters in Los Angeles, first raised questions about the provenance of some of the museum's collection in a letter to President Mary McAleese in 2004. An expert group subsequently set up by the Royal Irish Academy to examine the issue reported that

50s pin-up queen Bettie Page dies

Bettie Page, one of the most famous US pin-up models of the 1950s, has died in Los Angeles, aged 85. Her provocative poses - often in bikinis - made her a cult figure and she was one of the first models to appear in Playboy magazine. Bettie Page was credited with helping to pave the way for the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

Barack Obama makes history, and museums chronicle it

The Old State Capitol in Springfield has a Barack Obama speech and the pen he used to sign it. The DuSable Museum of African American History will be getting paintings that adorned his Senate office. And the Chicago History Museum has questions. The curators and archivists at Illinois museums have been excited to find themselves in the middle of history in the making, and they have searched out ways to document the moment for future generations.

Lincoln in Word, Image and History

Here are some of the exhibitions, Web sites and books devoted to Abraham Lincoln: Smithsonian Institution, Washington AMERICAN ART MUSEUM, Eighth and F Streets, NW. Through Jan. 18, 2010, “The Honor of Your Company Is Requested: President Lincoln’s Inaugural Ball,” with artifacts including an invitation and menu. AMERICAN HISTORY MUSEUM, 14th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW. Through Jan. 4, “Gettysburg Address,” a rarely exhibited copy, hand written by L

The Most Dangerous Man in Publishing (Grove's Barney Rosset)

On a nondescript block south of New York's Union Square, up a dreary staircase and through a black-barred gate, there is a long, narrow room that might be mistaken for a very small museum of literary counterculture. On one wall hangs two rows of iconic posters: Paul Davis's print of Che Guevara's proud head; a photograph of the authors Jean Genet, William S. Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg marching at the 1968 Democratic National Convention; a portrait of Bobby Kennedy. Loose-leaf binders of corre