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

Giving John Ford the Major American Artist Treatment

“Ford at Fox,” a gargantuan set that assembles 24 of the 50-some films John Ford made for the studio that was his most consistent home, may be just the nudge the old paradigm [of nostalgia collections] needs. Other studios, notably Warner Brothers with Stanley Kubrick and Universal with Alfred Hitchcock, have produced collections devoted to single directors, but no previous effort has matched what Fox has put into this impressive undertaking. Reviving some extremely rare works in fu

About TV: A Farm Boy (Farnsworth) and a Mogul (Sarnoff), and How They Changed the World

With billionaire parents now producing bar mitzvah celebrations and sweet-16 parties as if they were major motion pictures, it’s only a matter of time before this spare-no-expense approach is applied to their kids’ school projects. Imagine that Mr. Hedge Fund, with money to burn and many favors to call in, imports a crack combination of writer, director and actors to put across Junior’s oral report with envy-making, A-worthy flair. The resulting effort might well be something like “

Did impressionists just have bad eyesight?

For Claude Monet, 1912-22 was a watershed decade. He was perhaps the most successful artist of his time, and his genius had already assured him a place in history. But as he aged, his painting noticeably lost subtlety. Brush strokes became bolder, and colors strikingly blue, orange or brown. His images lost detail and flowed into one another. His days as an avant-garde rebel had long passed, but some critics would later wonder whether the Impressionist was suddenly trying to become

Oldest surviving Rolls-Royce sets two new records

The world's oldest surviving Rolls-Royce revved up two new records on Monday when a private British collector paid 3.5 million pounds ($7.22 million) for it at auction. The price makes the veteran vehicle not only the most ever paid for a pre-1905 car but also the most for a Rolls-Royce. "They opened the bidding at one million and it soared from there. In the end it came down to a battle between two telephone bidders," a spokeswoman for auction house Bonhams s

Oswald's Ghost (2007)

The documentary “Oswald’s Ghost” initially plays as yet another primer on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the vilification of Lee Harvey Oswald, the normalization of conspiracy theory and the collective aftershocks of a murder many Americans still consider unsolved. Because the movie covers well-worn territory — and interviews the usual boldface names, including the assassination theorists Mark Lane and Edward Jay Epstein, the former CBS beat reporter Dan Rather and Norman Mai

The stories pictures tell

A smile is the strangest thing. In the right context it can illuminate the world, suggest kindness or joy, invite us into intimacy. But in the wrong setting, or on the wrong faces, it seems creepy, malevolent, even disgusting: a sign of moral corruption. These thoughts were prompted by a visit, in October, to the four interconnected Spanish Civil War shows at the International Center of Photography in New York City (on view through January 6) and by a series of photographs that the New Yo

Da Vinci author Dan Brown to unveil Washington's Masonic past

A sequel to the blockbuster thriller "The Da Vinci Code" is set to lift the veil on mysterious Freemason symbols carved into the very fabric of the historic streets and buildings of the US capital. Novelist Dan Brown has set the new adventures of his hero, scholar-adventurer Robert Langdon, right in the heart of Washington, which could reveal some astonishing facts for history buffs. Brown "had a contact with us but then cut it short. We are all sitting a

Film of the Year: Hungary 1956 Our Revolution

The History Today Film of the Year award has been awarded to the 60-minute documentary Hungary 1956: Our Revolution, written, directed and produced by Mark Kidel and first broadcast on BBC 4 in October 2006, though recently repeated. Witnesses recall the rising against Soviet rule day by day, with the help of remarkable archive footage and still photographs, in a moving and vivid account of hopes of freedom first raised and then dashed by the brutal response of the Soviet tanks. Highly commended

Gauguin’s teeth found in well

. An archaeological dig on the remote Marquesan island of Hiva Oa has uncovered the secrets of the water well used by Paul Gauguin. The buried objects range from a New Zealand beer bottle to four human teeth. Gauguin lived in the village of Atuona from 1901 until his death two years later. He built his own Maori-style hut, “la Maison du Jouir” (house of pleasure), and dug a well just outside. The Marquesans did not use wells, but springs, and after Gauguin died it was filled with ru

Movie to be made about U-boat discovery

Richie Kohler wanted to become an astronaut and explore outer space after seeing man land on the moon. Instead, he became a diver, exploring inner space and helping to uncover a mystery dating back to World War II. Kohler, a Brick resident, recounted to an audience of about 80 people at Ocean County Library's Lacey branch the experience of helping to identify the German submarine U-869. The boat was thought to have been sunk near Morocco in 1945, but was located in 1991

Polka: A rural dance tradition in twilight

It was a Sunday afternoon at the South Omaha Eagles Hall, a Czech stronghold in an increasingly Hispanic neighborhood here. Under a low ceiling and fluorescent lights, Lila Dvorak, 74, danced a two-step polka to the music of a three-piece combo. Dvorak is Czech-American, and a child of the Great Depression, like almost all of the 150 or so people present. She is a regular at the dances and wore a fancy magenta dress for the occasion. "Polka people are happier people," she

Kipling birthplace to be transformed

The cottage where Rudyard Kipling was born in India is to become an art museum. The stone and timber bungalow in the city of Mumbai is housed in the JJ School of Art campus; Kipling was born there in December 1865. The state government hopes to complete the scheme by 2009 and the museum will include cotemporary paintings as well as Kipling artefacts.

Scholars use art to study climate change

The vivid sunsets painted by J.M.W. Turner are revered for their use of color and light and for their influence on the Impressionists. But could they also help global warming experts track climate change? A group of scientists has studied the colors in more than 500 paintings of sunsets, including many of Turner's 19th-century watercolors and oils, in hopes of gaining insights into the cooling effects caused by major volcanic eruptions. By better understanding past cha

"There are poor adaptations of great works of the past--and then there is the latest film version of 'Beowulf.' "

To solicit from a medievalist a review of Robert Zemeckis's Beowulf is to pick a quarrel unlikely to be evaded. The eminent Cambridge classicist Richard Bentley famously put down Alexander Pope's translation of Greek epic with a single sentence: "It is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer." "Pretty" is not the first adjective I would choose to describe Zemeckis's Beowulf. Fantastic, amazing, preposterous, corny from springing leaf to ripening ear, technical

A Song That Helped Define the Depression, and Can Still Be Sung Today

He crouched by a corner newsstand on the Upper West Side, a pathetic figure with his hand out. You’ve seen him a thousand times, him or countless other street people like him. You’ve also heard his cry: “Can you spare any change?” Nobody is likely to write a song about that man, certainly not those rappers who say they are social commentators yet seem obsessed with the baubles they wear and the women they bed. Seventy-five years ago, though, a couple of tunesmiths heard

"True Grit" -- the great, unsung novel of the American frontier -- celebrates its 40th anniversary

The 40th anniversary reissue of Charles Portis' "True Grit" is the third go-around for the novel since its publication and simultaneous serialization in the Saturday Evening Post. In a saner world, it wouldn't have to be reissued, it would have always remained in print. Why it hasn't is one of the unsolved mysteries of modern American literature. Conventional wisdom blames the hugely successful 1969 film with John Wayne (for which he won his only Oscar). Potential readers,

In hit Iranian TV drama, Holocaust no 'myth'

For seven months, millions of Iranians have turned on their television sets Monday at 10 p.m. to watch a World War II drama that challenges stereotypes about Iran and Judaism. The story line could not be less likely in the Islamic Republic, whose president calls the Holocaust a "myth": An Iranian-Palestinian student in France helps save his love – a French Jew – and her family from the Nazis and from becoming victims of the Holocaust. This week the 30-part love story come

Günter Grass: Nobel Laureate Sues Publisher

Günter Grass, the Nobel Prize-winning author, has sued Random House over a claim in a new biography that he volunteered to serve in the Nazis’ Waffen SS unit, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday, citing the online edition of the German magazine Der Spiegel. Mr. Grass, right, is seeking an injunction against the publishing house over a phrase in a biography by Michael Jürgs, which reads: “Günter Grass admitted ... that as a 17-year-old he willingly joined the Waffen SS.” Mr. Grass wrote last

Detroit’s Latest Model: A Retooled Museum

The Detroit Institute of Arts, one of the country’s small but classic encyclopedic museums, could be on an open prairie rather than in the center of a city, so faint is the urban buzz around it. Little commercial energy warms the nearby streets. Residential neighborhoods are at a distance. Traffic on the broad thoroughfare running past the museum is sparse, even as this institution, closed for the last six months, celebrates a reopening on Nov. 23 that is being advertised as a resurrection.

War through the eyes of a PoW in Japan (Exhibit)

Sketches by a Second World War Serviceman, tracing his experiences from RAF bases to a Japanese prisoner of war camp, are to be exhibited for the first time. Fred Goodwin began the war servicing aircraft. After the Battle of Britain he was sent to the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) with 605 Squadron. They were to try to halt the Japanese advance, but were under-prepared. Mr Goodwin was captured. As a prisoner he witnessed unspeakable horrors. However, th