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

Plunder Goes on Tour

LONDON’S Royal Academy of Arts is drawing excited crowds with its exhibition “From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings 1870-1925 From Moscow and St. Petersburg.” These 120 Impressionist and Modernist masterpieces couldn’t be shown, however, until Britain acceded to a very unusual condition: that Parliament enact special legislation providing complete immunity to Russia from anyone claiming ownership of these paintings, some of which were seized by the Communists during the Bolshevik Revo

Anne Frank given musical makeover

A controversial new musical telling the life story of Anne Frank opens in Madrid later this month. The producers call it an educational and sensitive portrayal of Anne's two years in hiding from the Nazis during World War II. But her only living relative says showbusiness is profiting from the Holocaust. Anne's cousin Buddy Elias, now 82, has called her a "fun-loving girl with a tremendous imagination". Watching Anne Frank: A Song to

Will Smith wins libel pay out after Hitler slur

Hollywood actor Will Smith won a public apology and damages in London's High Court Friday over a false allegation that he had described the former Nazi leader Adolf Hitler as a "good person". His lawyer Rachel Atkins told judge David Eady the "deeply distressing" libellous allegation by World Entertainment News Network Limited (WENN) had caused her client "acute embarrassment". The claim arose after London-based WENN, which provides enterta

Stolen Art on Display in a Search for Owners

Jerusalem | In a remarkable feat of cooperation between France and Israel, requiring intensive negotiations and the passage of a law by the Israeli Parliament, the Israel Museum here has opened an exhibition of important art looted by the Nazis from France and then returned after the war. Some of it was never reclaimed, presumably because the owners were killed in the Holocaust. Running parallel to the show of French-held art is a companion exhibition: looted art, with no known owne

August Wilson’s 1900s to Be a Cycle Onstage

Cal Hoffman will be spending his vacation at the theater. Mr. Hoffman, who lives in New York, plans to visit Washington for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ presentation of August Wilson’s 20th Century, a full month of staged readings of Wilson’s 10-play cycle chronicling the lives of African-Americans in the last century, a play for each decade. “The stories are so specific, you can’t help but get emotionally involved within the first 5 to 10 minutes

At Folger, England Emerges From the Myths of Time

In 1588, the Spanish Armada that threatened Elizabethan England was undone by a storm. Seventeen years later, the infamous Gunpowder Plot, an effort by angry Catholics to blow up Parliament, failed when the conspirators panicked and were captured. These close calls with fate were rapidly put to good propaganda use by the rulers of England, and there emerged a persistent new theme in early 17th-century politics: Providence was looking out for Britain. A new exhibition at the Folger S

Upton Sinclair, Lost in the Hollywood jungle

[Ernest Freeberg, history professor at the University of Tennessee, is the author of "Democracy's Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent," to be published by Harvard University Press this spring. This piece was first published in the Los Angeles Times.] Moviemakers have not been kind to novelist Upton Sinclair, and "There Will Be Blood" is no exception. In the early 20th century, Sinclair was one of the first serious write

University of Chicago will present an exhibit: Catastrophe! The Looting and Destruction of Iraq’s Past

The Oriental Institute Museum of the University of Chicago will present an exhibit Catastrophe! The Looting and Destruction of Iraq’s Past in Chicago from April 10 to December 31, 2008. The opening date, April 10, marks the fifth anniversary of the looting of the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad. The looting of the Iraq Museum was widely publicized in the international press. However, it is less well known that ongoing looting of archaeological sites poses an even greater threat to t

Art Looted by Nazis During World War II to Go on Display in Jerusalem

Israel's national museum opened two new exhibits Monday of paintings with a tragic history: They were stolen from museums and salons by the Nazis and never reclaimed because many of the rightful owners perished during World War II. The exhibits, which include paintings by masters like Henri Matisse, Claude Monet and Georges Seurat, are meant to bring to life the dramatic stories behind the art — and perhaps reunite the works with the owners or heirs. Visitors who recognize a paintin

Author of biography of cartoonist Bill Mauldin interviewed

Visitors to the site may remember my late January used bookstore discovery of Bill Mauldin’s 1944 World War II book, Up Front. That discovery ultimately led me to contact Todd DePastino, regarding both his latest work, a biography of Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front (which is to be released by W. W. Norton on February 25) and Mauldin’s Willie & Joe: The WWII Years (edited by DePastino and set to be released on March 24 by Fantagraphics). I can honestly say I enjoy every interview I do for this

History mystery | S.C. black regiment to be featured on PBS

As the Great War raged in Europe in 1917, a group of African-American draftees and their white officers — all from South Carolina — mustered into the newly built Camp Jackson in Columbia to train for the trenches. But before they could be sent to fight in World War I, the institutional racism of the day kicked in. They would not be allowed to serve alongside all-white U.S. units. The solution? They would fight for France, a U.S. ally. “Some had never seen a

The Other Hollywood sign

There's the Hollywood sign everyone knows -- white letters 50 feet high, recognized the world over as the landmark of Tinseltown. And then there's the other Hollywood sign, the hidden one, whose red neon letters were once as familiar as the larger sign just across the canyon. The sign that read "Outpost" in neon letters 30 feet high was, like the original "Hollywoodland" sign, raised up to publicize a new housing development, Hillside Homes of Happin

Costumes star in The Other Boleyn Girl

The first thing you notice is the frocks. They glow and shimmer most desirably, as the ladies swirl and pose in furs, filigrees, embroideries and jewel-bright satins. Not just on the red carpet, but also in the film: The Other Boleyn Girl, which had its world premiere in Berlin last night. It's the tale of two sisters at the court of the Tudor king: the clever, scheming, brunette Anne and her younger sibling, the quieter, more unworldly blonde Mary. Played, respectively, by Natalie

"Katyn"--New movie tells taboo tale of Polish massacre

Until now, no one has managed to force open the darkest corners of Poland's "sealed memory." Andrzej Wajda's new World War II drama, "Katyn," succeeds. It tells the long-taboo tale of the roughly 14,500 Polish military officers murdered by the Soviet army in 1940. When "Katyn" opened in Poland last fall, a nation remembered its dead. Polish students were obliged to see it, and a candlelit vigil was held at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw.

HBO Inaugurates 'John Adams' in March

The long-awaited "John Adams" miniseries has a premiere date at HBO. The seven-part miniseries will debut Sunday, March 16, a week after the series finale of "The Wire." Parts one and two will air back-to-back, with subsequent installments debuting on each of the next five Sundays. Based on David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, the miniseries stars Paul Giamatti ("Sideways," "Cinderella Man") as the second president

Exhibition in Venice rehabilitates Vandals, Goths and Huns

HISTORY has been unkind to the Barbarians. Some 1,600 years have passed since they began to redraw the boundaries of Europe, yet their names are best remembered for the anti-social and savage behaviour always associated with Vandals, Goths and Huns. Now an exhibition in Venice seeks to help rehabilitate them. The Vandals? They took Carthage when the locals were watching a circus. Huns? Attila was not always as bad as he is painted; he forbore, after all, to sack Rome. As for the Goths, they were

Where Lincoln Sought Refuge in His Dark Hours (NYT museum review of Lincoln's summer cottage))

If you look out the windows of President Lincoln’s Cottage at the Soldiers’ Home — the idiosyncratic and intriguing museum that is opening to the public on Tuesday after a ceremonial event on Monday — you have to imagine what Abraham Lincoln might have seen during those summer evenings when he stood here. The cottage is on a hilltop, the third highest in the area. And when Lincoln first came here, seeking a respite from the summer heat, the swampy air and the incessant bustle of the White House

James Conlon's mission: Revive operas banned by Hitler

In a city that often shows scant regard for history, the Los Angeles Opera is undertaking an extraordinary project of reclamation. Under the banner "Recovered Voices," James Conlon, in his second season as the company's music director, is reviving operas suppressed by the Nazis. Next Sunday Conlon, 57, is to conduct the project's first fully staged production, a double bill of "Der Zwerg" ("The Dwarf") by Alexander Zemlinsky and "Der Zerbrochene Kr

Reed College Howls With Landmark Recording by Beat Poet

Reed College’s archives have turned up a true gem of 20th-century poetry history, a high-quality recording of Allen Ginsberg reading his epochal long poem, “Howl,” that was taped a few months before it was published and became the subject of a landmark obscenity trial. The recording was made on reel-to-reel tape in front of a group of students in a Reed dormitory lounge in February 1956, during Ginsberg’s visit to the college on a hitchhiking trip with a fellow poet, Gary Snyder, a

Doris Lessing: Obama 'would be killed'

The Nobel Prize-winning novelist Doris Lessing says she believes Barack Obama would be assassinated if he were elected president. Asked if she supported Hillary Clinton or Mr Obama, Lessing told the Stockholm daily Dagens Nyheter "it doesn't matter," but suggested the two should join forces in the election. "It would be best if they ran together. Hillary is a very sharp lady. It might be calmer if she wins and not Obama," Lessing was quoted as saying