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

Hitler the painter - don't give up the day-job!

New sides to Adolf Hitler's character have been found by Russian artists Irina Valdron and Vladimir Salnikov. Hitler was a dictator and a second-rate painter. There is little of aesthetic value in this series, but there is definitely much food for thought in this study which concentrates on the Fuhrer's art work. Irina Valdron discovered copies of the Fuhrer’s early drawings in the British Library in London and created projects called “The Ladies with the Dogs”.

X-rays uncover 'hidden portrait' of Shakespeare benefactor

A rare portrait, believed to be of Shakespeare's only known patron, has been discovered using X-ray technology. Art historians from Bristol University have found what they believe is a picture of Henry Wriothesley which was painted over in the 16th Century. To the naked eye, it is a portrait of his wife Elizabeth Vernon, dressed in black and wearing ruby ear-rings. The hidden picture was uncovered when the work was X-rayed in preparation for an exhibition in Some

In Australia, From Apology, a Hit Song Grows

A song about racial reconciliation with the Aboriginal minority has become the fourth-biggest-selling recording in Australia, even though it is available only as a download from the Web. The song, “From Little Things Big Things Grow,” begins with a recording of the words of Australia’s prime minister, Kevin Rudd, from his February apology for the country’s history of mistreatment of its indigenous peoples. “As prime minister, I am sorry,” Mr. Rudd says on the recording. “On behalf o

Painting Found in N.C. Gift Shop Could Be Worth Millions

Experts are taking a closer look at a painting that not long ago was hanging in a North Carolina gift shop. The oil painting of Queen Elizabeth I may be more valuable than anyone realized. The Virginian-Pilot newspaper reports that the portrait is believed to have been painted in 1592, when Elizabeth would have been about 60 years old. It is one of the few portraits of the queen in her declining years. If it's authentic, it could be worth millions.

Laurence Fishburne is Thurgood Marshall (NYC/One-Act Play)

LAURENCE FISHBURNE first read the one-man play “Thurgood” while flying last year from New York to Boston, where he was being honored as the Harvard Foundation’s artist of the year. After checking into his hotel, he walked down a hall lined with portraits of Harvard alumni and paused in front of one of them: Charles Hamilton Houston, a Harvard Law graduate who was Thurgood Marshall’s mentor. “I thought to myself, well, I really don’t have a choice about whether I should do this play or not,” he s

The Spirit of ’68 (Remembered in film)

AT least according to legend, the “events of May” — the strikes and disturbances that convulsed France in the spring of 1968 — began at the movies. On Feb. 9 Henri Langlois, president of the National Cinémathèque Française in Paris and a shambling, revered godfather of the French New Wave, was removed from his post by André Malraux, the minister of culture in Charles de Gaulle’s government. Young cinephiles reacted with outrage, and their angry protests flowed into a tide of political and social

Errol Morris's Iraq-era documentaries are the worst of two worlds: pretentious cinema and bad journalism

Accepting his Oscar for The Fog of War at the 2003 Academy Awards, Errol Morris made one of the night's memorable speeches. "Forty years ago, this country went down a rabbit hole in Vietnam and millions died. I fear we're going down a rabbit hole once again," he told a national TV audience. That antiwar peroration may have been de rigueur for the Oscars, but from Morris, who was hardly known for his agitprop tendencies, it was something of a surprise. Then again, so was The Fog of War.

Iraq war thwarts loans to Louvre

Security issues have thwarted attempts by the Louvre to borrow objects from Iraq for its major “Babylon” exhibition which opened last month (until 2 June) and which will travel to Berlin and London later this year. Curator Béatrice André-Salvini initially put up a proposal in December 2002, three months before the Coalition invasion. She then asked for 20 loans from Iraq, including a 2300 BC bronze head of King Sargon and a ceramic-brick relief of a bull from the Ishtar Gate. Discus

From Nazi Bunker to Artistic Haven

At first it stood as a defense against Allied bombs. In the 1950s it was used to store imported fruit from Cuba, and in the 1990s it became the location for the hottest techno-parties around. On Thursday an old Berlin bunker revealed its latest transformation: It now houses a private collection of contemporary art. Walking through the massive five-storey concrete bunker that houses the Boros Collection on Reinhardstrasse in Berlin, you wouldn't guess that it had a far more sinister

Florida Senate approves Old Folks as state song

- After updating its lyrics to eliminate offensive words like "darkies," the Florida Senate on Thursday voted to make "Old Folks At Home" the official state song and adopted a more modern tune written by a Broward music teacher as the state anthem. The proposed anthem, "Florida, Where the Sawgrass Meets the Sky," was the winner of a statewide contest sponsored by the Florida Music Educators Association last year to find a replacement to the 1851 tune wr

Philadelphia Raises Enough Money to Retain a Masterpiece by Eakins

It’s taken a citywide fund-raising effort and the sale of two paintings and two drawings by Thomas Eakins, but the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts have now managed to raise the entire $68 million needed to keep an Eakins masterpiece, “The Gross Clinic,” in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Museum announced on Wednesday that it had sold the Eakins painting “Cowboy Singing” to the Denver Art Museum and the Anschutz Collection, also in Denver. The

Mark Burnett of "Survivor" fame to produce series about Dr. Livingston

If we can presume that David Livingstone — he of the 19th-century expedition to find the source of the Nile — was the original survivor of popular imagination, then why shouldn’t Mark Burnett — he of the television phenomenon “Survivor” — find common ground with him? In an intriguing new example of unscripted television, Mr. Burnett will recreate the expedition of Henry Morton Stanley to find the missing Dr. Livingstone in a series he will produce for the History Channel.

Grateful Dead archives going to UC Santa Cruz

The archives of the Bay Area rock band the Grateful Dead - a treasure trove of more than 30 years of memorabilia that includes the band's first recording contract, life-size skeletons of band members and artwork hand-made by its fans - are headed to UC Santa Cruz, where they will be displayed at McHenry Library. Few bands are more associated with San Francisco, and the images connected with many of the archive items are instantly recognizable to millions of fans around the world. Th

Asian history inspires new online games

After exhausting just about every elf, dragon and knight featured in Western cultures, makers of popular online games are turning to ancient Asian history and war heroes for new inspiration. Chief among their sources is "Romance of the Three Kingdoms," an epic Chinese novel whose plots and characters are familiar to most Asians. "Romance," which long existed in oral form before it was put together in writing in the 14th century, covers a chaotic two-

"Secrets of the Dead": Going for the Grisly Gives TV Show Staying Power

The discovery of a grisly twist in the relationship between the Aztecs and the conquistadors; a largely unknown story of two Jewish men who escaped from Auschwitz; the true tale of the illegal drugs given to East German athletes. Without high-tech graphics or extravagant claims, the PBS series “Secrets of the Dead” has thrived for seven seasons (a dowager in TV years) by blending history, science, archaeology and other disciplines with old-fashioned detective work. The series, produ

The Nazi Plot That's Haunting Tom Cruise and United Artists

When United Artists said this month that it would again delay the release of “Valkyrie,” in which Tom Cruise plays a German officer who tries to kill Hitler, the Web went into obituary mode. One Hollywood Internet site, thehotblog.com, flatly declared, “Valkyrie is dead.” Another, defamer.com, said that the revival of United Artists had effectively died with it. Meanwhile, Roger Friedman, a widely read Web reporter with a column on foxnews.com, had some career advice fo

Harvard Acquires Papers of Norman Mailer's Mistress

Norman Mailer, Harvard Class of 1943, shut his alma mater out of the contest for his literary remains. The Mailer papers went to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, which opened them to the public in January. But Harvard just made its own score in the Mailer-memorabilia market. The university has spent an undisclosed sum to acquire the papers of Carole Mallory, the writer’s mistress from 1983 until the early 1990s, according to a report in The New York Obse

'Basic Instinct' Director Paul Verhoeven: Jesus Was Son of Mary and Roman Rapist

In his upcoming biography of Jesus, "Basic Instinct" director Paul Verhoeven will make the shocking claim that Christ probably was the son of Mary and a Roman soldier who raped her during the Jewish uprising in Galilee. An Amsterdam publishing house said Wednesday it will publish the Dutch filmmaker's biography of Jesus, "Jesus of Nazareth: A Realistic Portrait," in September. It will be translated into English in 2009, Marianna Sterk of the publishi

Elvis's secret visit to London revealed, 50 years on

Rock'n'Roll legend Elvis Presley did in fact visit Britain, it was revealed on Tuesday, with a secret visit to London accompanied by another rocker. For more than half a century it was generally accepted the "King" only made a fleeting transit visit to Scotland in 1960 -- much to the disappointment of his legion of UK fans. But theatre producer Bill Kenwright has revealed in a radio interview that Presley, then 23, managed to go sightseeing in London with Cock

John Patrick Diggins on the Final Hour of 'John Adams'

[John Patrick Diggins, author of John Adams: The American Presidents Series, Steven Waldman, author of Founding Faith, and Kirk Ellis, writer and co-executive producer of the HBO miniseries "John Adams," are discussing the show on TNR.com. Alan Taylor, author of Writing Early American History, has joined the discussion. This is the fifteenth entry in their conversation.] Dear Steve and Kirk, "There is no vocabulary/for love within a family," wrote T.