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

Wolfe sparks battle in the art world

It's not the first time Gen. James Wolfe has been at the centre of an international tug of war. But now it's the fate of a rare 18th-century painting of the famed British commander - not the future of Canada - that's on the line. The British government has blocked the planned export of a landmark portrait of the Canadian history icon - created within months of Wolfe's death at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759 - after an unidentified Canadian or American collector purchase

Ancient music wins new fans

One of the world's oldest styles of religious music is attracting a host of new enthusiasts. Gregorian chant is usually associated with monks in monasteries, but it's being heard more often now in regular services. Its growing popularity brought 70 representatives of choirs from Northern Ireland to a chanting workshop in the Dominican Convent in west Belfast. The college chapel became a study for a day as experts passed on advice on how best to perform the

Wild West: The Prequel

The western genre and the Hollywood mythmaking machine match up so nicely that it’s hard to imagine one without the other. But the hunger — and the market — for a reassuring romantic national creation story as a pop-culture staple did not wait for the movies to be invented. In the late 19th century, even while the frontier was still a place and not a memory, “Wild West” shows traversed the United States and even Europe, drawing millions of spectators who paid to witness the western idea acted ou

American Assassin, the first in-depth documentary about Oswald's years in Minsk

[American Assassin is] a joint production of Denver filmmaker Robert Bayne and Minsk Channel 8 in Belarus, the only independent broadcast TV station in that former Soviet republic. Three years in the making, the 2006 documentary is the first to delve deeply into the 2½ years Oswald spent in Minsk, Byelorussia, at the height of the Cold War. He was not yet 20 years old when he defected to the Soviet Union in September 1959, and not quite 23 when he returned to the United States, bitterly disappoi

Oswald’s Ghost, a new documentary by filmmaker Robert Stone, debuts on American Experience

The 2007-08 season of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE opens with Oswald’s Ghost, a new documentary by filmmaker Robert Stone. It purports to chronicle “America’s forty-year obsession with the pivotal event of a generation,” the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on 22 November 1963. Oswald’s Ghost is not another “whodunit” film about the assassination. Rather, it is billed as close to a “definitive account” of what the assassination did to America. “This is a film,” in the words of

The forgotten battle of Passchendaele (Movie)

A new movie may finally illuminate the `black hole' in our memory of this World War I battle in which feared Canadian `storm troopers' wrested a tiny Belgian town from the Germans. It's about time. *** Paul Gross's $20 million epic film Passchendaele will be the largest homegrown Canadian war movie ever made, and he makes no apologies for that. "We're woefully ignorant of our military history," Gross says. "For me it's an issue. How do you kn

Norman Mailer, Towering Writer With a Matching Ego, Dies at 84

Norman Mailer, the combative, controversial and often outspoken novelist who loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation, died early yesterday in Manhattan. He was 84. The cause was acute renal failure, his family said. Mr. Mailer burst on the scene in 1948 with “The Naked and the Dead,” a partly autobiographical novel about World War II, and for six decades he was rarely far from center stage. He published more than 30 books,

Enthusiast finds history in antique records (78 rpm et al.)

After cranking up his Edison Diamond Disc Phonograph by hand, Timothy Brooks gingerly drops a needle onto the black plastic disc, bringing forth a boisterous jazz tune. Along the walls of his Glenville home, Brooks has more than 10,000 other antique records, representing almost a half century of collecting 78 rpm records at rummage sales, auctions and through the Internet. While showing off several of the ancient phonographs, Brooks explained how the primitive state o

At Billy Graham Library, Man and Message Are One and the Same

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — When the Billy Graham Library opened here last spring, its 88-year-old namesake, who had preached the Gospel to more than 210 million people on six continents, who had prayed in the Oval Office with 11 consecutive presidents and who had brought evangelical Christianity into the heart of American political life, had one main complaint: “It was too much Billy Graham.” He had envisioned the $27 million library, with its 40,000-square-foot exhibition space, as an exten

From home front to battlefield, new exhibit tells story of World War II (PA)

ALLENTOWN, Pennsylvania: Fresh-faced soldier Paul Yoder dashed off a letter to his mother on Feb. 10, 1945, acknowledging receipt of a package from home and discussing the snowy weather on the German front. "Things look a little better," he wrote in hurried, barely legible script. "Maybe one of these days the war will be over. We keep praying that it will." Yoder was killed in action a day later. He was 19. His mother likely did not see the letter un

An exhibition of pictures by Pyotr Otsup features defining shots of Lenin and Stalin

Pyotr Otsup's name may not ring any bells, but his images are familiar to anyone who has studied modern history. His photographs of Josef Stalin, Vladimir Lenin and Mikhail Kalinin were repeatedly reprinted during the Soviet era, and appeared on posters, stamps and in textbooks. An exhibition of his photographs at the Zurab Gallery, "The Space of Revolution: Russia. 1917-1941," opened on Thursday, the 90th anniversary of the October Revolution. Recordings of folk tunes su

Leonardo painting has coded 'soundtrack'

It's a new Da Vinci code, but this time it could be for real. An Italian musician and computer technician claims to have uncovered musical notes encoded in Leonardo Da Vinci's "Last Supper," raising the possibility that the Renaissance genius might have left behind a somber composition to accompany the scene depicted in the 15th-century wall painting. "It sounds like a requiem," Giovanni Maria Pala said. "It's like a soundtrack that emphasizes the passion of

When Barnum Took Manhattan

SINCE 1766 St. Paul’s Chapel at Broadway and Vesey Street has been one of the best-known and most revered landmarks in Lower Manhattan, associated with events from George Washington’s inauguration in 1789 to the destruction of the World Trade Center just behind it in 2001. For almost a quarter of a century in the 1800s it shared the intersection with another extremely popular, and not altogether welcome, landmark. Opposite the church, in more ways than one, was P. T. Barnum’s Americ

Giving Up the Memorabilia, but Not the Belief: Elvis Lives

WRIGHT CITY, Mo., Nov. 6 — The 16-foot-tall likeness of Elvis Presley that stands sentry here at the Elvis Is Alive Museum, a fading outpost of Americana, has seen better days. White paint is peeling from the plywood cutout. The wood at Elvis’s left hip is starting to rot, and many faded blue and yellow poker chips that once formed his bejeweled belt have vanished in the dust of 18-wheelers passing through this town 45 miles west of St. Louis. For 17 years, Bill Beeny —

Poster relates Che's dark side

One of the most famous faces of communism is getting a makeover this week, with a new poster designed to teach students the whole story about Cuban revolutionary icon Ernesto "Che" Guevara. "The Victims of Che Guevera" poster, produced by the Young America's Foundation, centers on a collage that uses tiny photos of those killed by Cuba's communist regime to compose the face of the Marxist guerrilla, who has become a popular T-shirt icon. "Che

Tarzan lawyers battle to trademark cry

Lawyers attempting to trademark Tarzan’s distinctive battle cry have vowed to continue their fight in the bureaucratic jungle of the EU after one bid to register the sound fell flat. The rousing call might have scared off Lord Greystoke’s beastly enemies, but it fell on deaf ears at the Union’s Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM) (Trade Marks and Designs). The estate of Tarzan author Edgar Rice Burroughs wants to trademark the yell believing millions

Wilfred Owen: The soldiers' poet

For me, he is the greatest of all the war poets. But there is nothing original in my enthusiasm. I don't suppose there's a thoughtful student in the land who is unaware of Wilfred Owen's best-known poem, "Dulce et Decorum Est". Indeed, it tells us something about our pervading cynicism that Horace's words are now taken more readily as sarcasm than at face value. It is often assumed – as a student, I made the mistake myself – that the poem's author

Kremlin wives brought to life in new Moscow exhibition

From a sumptuous gown of the last Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna to a peasant-style smock worn by Lenin's wife Nadezhda Krupskaya, a new exhibition on the wives of Kremlin leaders illuminates a turbulent century. The exhibition,"Russian First Ladies in the 20th Century" -- just opened at Moscow's Museum of Contemporary History -- displays clothes, jewelry, photographs and furniture relating to these women who stood, mostly silently, by their husbands, but also symbolised their time

Germany’s Black Years Seen From the Inside (Art Exhibit/Paris)

It can be argued that Impressionism killed off historical painting, and with it the tradition of portraying military victories on canvas. Yet the genre was not quite dead. Early in the 20th century history painting made another appearance in art, and this time, stripped of glory and heroism, war was finally shown in all its ugliness. In a sense it could not be otherwise. Before World War I, most major conflicts had been wars of movement, climaxing in set-piece battles resolved in a

Irish firm pays €246,000 for iconic Grace Kelly dresses

An Irish company has just forked out $355,000 (€246,000) at a New York auction for two dresses worn by Hollywood icon Grace Kelly. Newbridge Silverware, more renowned for its classic tableware and jewellery products, has just added another two items to its own special collection in its museum of style icons, which opened earlier this year. One of the outfits bought by the Co Kildare company for $135,000 is a vivid green Givenchy-designed sleeveless dress with matching f