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

Modernist development at British Museum will destroy key period details, say critics

A plan by the British Museum to build a £130 million exhibition centre in its northwest corner has provoked anger from heritage groups that claim it will destroy some of the 19th-century building’s most beautiful period details and vistas. The ambitious scheme for the rear of the building in Bloomsbury, Central London, would provide 17,000 square metres (183,000 sq ft) for shows and conservation. The museum has become the country’s most popular cultural attraction drawi

Oliver Stone's movie about George W. Teaser Trailer

Are you ready for this? George W. Bush that drinks and gambles? The first teaser trailer for Oliver Stone's W. biopic has just hit and it's not that bad! I'm not sure it will be any good either, but I'm going to leave that judgment up to you. I'm amazed to see that they're showing him in such a revealing light throughout all of this trailer. He looks like a troublemaker and the trailer poses an interesting question - how did he get into the White House?! W. tells the life story of our 43rd Presi

Kerouac Got an A

AFTER lunch one summer with my grandmother, years ago at her Connecticut farmhouse, she asked me to retrieve an inconsequential item from a closet in my grandfather’s study, and something else caught my eye. At first it didn’t look like much: a set of three slim ledgers with marbleized covers, perhaps a journal of expenses or a record of household bills. But in it were pages and pages of names, methodically scribed in pen and ink. I had found a roster of my grandfather’s students ov

Saving Pompeii From the Ravages of Time and Tourists

Citing threats to public security and to the site itself, the Italian government has for the first time declared a yearlong state of emergency for the ancient city of Pompeii. Nearly 2,000 years after Mount Vesuvius buried Pompeii under pumice and steaming volcanic ash, some 2.6 million tourists tramp annually through this archaeological site, which is on Unesco’s World Heritage list. Frescoes in the ancient Roman city, one of Italy’s most popular attractions, fade unde

Acropolis now ... Athens's new museum is spectacular, even without its star exhibits

Walking through bright sunshine and crowds of tourists in an Athenian street, I glanced down and read the publicity blurb in my hand. The story was there, contained in just a few words: "Museum mission: to house all the surviving antiquities from the Acropolis within a single museum of international stature." Actually the entire story is distilled into one word: ALL. But they might have added that it has been a 207-year mission to return the so-called Elgin Marbles - the first being cu

Maria von Trapp returns to home that inspired The Sound of Music

"I'm back home again," said Maria von Trapp in Salzburg, after spending several nights in her childhood home, which has been transformed into a hotel. Located in an upmarket district of Salzburg, the "Villa Trapp" once belonged to the von Trapps, who gained global fame in the 1965 blockbuster starring Julie Andrews, which tells the story of a trainee nun who captures the heart of a lonely widower after introducing his seven children to the joy of music.

Maria von Trapp returns to home that inspired The Sound of Music

"I'm back home again," said Maria von Trapp in Salzburg, after spending several nights in her childhood home, which has been transformed into a hotel. Located in an upmarket district of Salzburg, the "Villa Trapp" once belonged to the von Trapps, who gained global fame in the 1965 blockbuster starring Julie Andrews, which tells the story of a trainee nun who captures the heart of a lonely widower after introducing his seven children to the joy of music.

Queen Patricia And The Abdication Crisis Of 1936

The Constitutional Crisis of 1936, when King Edward VIII abdicated to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson, has been in discussion again. A revived play about it, called Crown Matrimonial, by Royce Ryton completes its first run this weekend. Queen Mary, who was King Edward's bolt upright mother is played by Patricia Routledge and she magnetises us into her drawing room, where the family discuss and witness the inevitable end of one king's reign and the start of another, by the you

Ford Model T reaches 100

It was available in "any colour you want as long as it is black," according to Henry Ford, although in fact, the very first Model T Ford, which was launched 100 years ago, came in a choice of colours. It was only when Ford shifted production of his iconoclastic car to a moving production line in 1914, that he restricted customers to having their cars finished in black japan enamel paint, because it was the only colour that dried fast enough to keep up with the production l

Atlanta Cyclorama gets some competition from Gettysburg

The Atlanta Cyclorama, a mammoth, in-the-round depiction of the July 22, 1864, Battle of Atlanta, is billed as the largest oil painting in the world. But now there is a new kid on the block. The newly renovated Gettysburg Cyclorama, which will open to the public at the historic Pennsylvania battlefield in September, has been restored to its original 42 feet in height and 377 feet in circumference. That trumps the Atlanta painting by about 798 square feet. Atlanta's cyclorama wa

She Says It’s True, Her Memoir of Forging

“The Letters of Noël Coward,” a critically acclaimed book published by Alfred A. Knopf last year, includes a short, gossipy note from Coward on the subject of Julie Andrews. “She is a bright, talented actress,” Coward writes. “And quite attractive since she dealt with her monstrous English overbite." But the letter, and another much like it, were actually written by Lee Israel, a biographer and editor in New York who spent two years writing forgeries from her studi

Berliners Get a Crash Course in Glittery Celebrity Culture (Exhibit)

BERLIN — Aside from Romy Schneider hanging out naked on the Riviera and an aged Marlene Dietrich hiding her face from a nosy photographer on an airplane, the most prominent German in a hugely diverting paparazzi show at the Helmut Newton Foundation here through mid-November is Albert Einstein. He’s now surrounded by the Sean Penns and Brigitte Bardots of the world, looking as out of place as he must have felt when he arrived in New Jersey in 1933. In a picture from three years earli

Would 'Rathergate' Make a Good Movie? Hollywood Insiders Working on Screen Adaptation

The Media Mob has learned that a team of Hollywood insiders is currently working on a screen adaptation of Truth And Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power—the 2005 book by former CBS News producer Mary Mapes, in which she defends the 60 Minutes II story by Dan Rather about President George W. Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard, which ran on CBS in September 2004 and eventually led to her ouster from the network. Who would want to turn "Rathergate&q

Iran donates stamps commemorating Iranian martyrs to Belarus museum

The Cultural Center of Khorramshahr Sacred Defense recently donated a dozen stamps to the Brest Fortress Defense Museum, Belarus. Head of the center, Nader Daryaban, said that the stamps bear the images of Iranian martyrs and aim to transfer the concept and values of Iran’s Sacred Defense era (Iran-Iraq 1980-1988 war), the Persian service of IRNA reported. “The stamps bear images of the commanders including Mohammad-Ali Jahan-Ara, Abdorreza Musavi, Behruz Moradi, Ahma

Jerome Holtzman: Hall of Fame former Tribune reporter was game's official historian and a true original (obit.)

Jerome Holtzman, who went from copy boy to Hall of Famer in a distinguished career as a Chicago sportswriter, died Saturday after a long illness. He was 81 and was affectionately known to colleagues as "the Dean," a term reflecting his stature as a baseball-writing "lifer" and his numerous accomplishments over four decades. "It's a sad day for everybody in baseball," Commissioner Bud Selig said. "Jerome was a Hall of Famer in everything he did, in

New documentary tells the story of Ellis Island hospital

The final chapter in the Ellis Island story has at last been told. Lorie Conway's film and companion book, Forgotten Ellis Island, are the first to examine the extraordinary immigrant hospital on Ellis Island. As immigrants from Germany and other countries in Europe came to America's shores a century ago, they underwent a medical examination that determined whether they would be allowed to stay. Those judged to be too ill or infirm to enter were sent to the Ellis Island hospital. In

Hadrian's soldiers writing home

The hulking great highlight of the Hadrian exhibition opening this week at the British Museum is a mammoth head of the emperor. Excavated in Turkey last year, it has never been shown to the public before. You can make out not only his beard - he was the first Roman emperor to sport this Hellenistic look - but also his creased earlobes, a curious genetic giveaway to the heart condition that killed him at the age of 62, in 138AD. The real highlight, though, will be some

Global touring takes its toll on Picasso picture

Curators at the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid are conducting x-ray, infrared and other hi-tech studies of Picasso's famed anti-war masterpiece Guernica, which has revealed severe wear and tear from its journeys around the word. A team of 30 technicians have identified 129 changes to the painting, named after the small Basque town bombed by German fighter planes backing General Francisco Franco during the Spanish civil war. The painting is now in a "serious but stabl

The BM’s Hadrian show couldn’t be more timely. His political problems were just like ours

The British Museum has always been a fabulous resource. Look what it owns. Not even the line-up of seven dwarfs who preceded St Neil MacGregor in the director’s chair could seriously damage the clout and width of this magnificent hoard of global treasures. Yes, much of it was stolen or inveigled from its rightful owners. (But when it comes to the acquisition of great art nobody, ever, has been entirely innocent.) Yet for all the splendour of its ill-gotten gains, the BM has had considerable diff

Rediscovering treasures of Bamiyan

A tour of Afghan caves housing the world's oldest oil paintings When the Buddhas of Bamiyan were carved out of the mountainside, the Roman Empire still held sway. They towered over a rich valley in what is now central Afghanistan, where caravans of traders would stop and rest on the Silk Road as they transported goods between east and west. For centuries the two huge statues stood guard over Bamiyan. But in 2001, just months before they were forced from power, the