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

Robert Novack on "September Dawn" -- movie about Mountain Meadows Massacre

Opening Friday, a motion picture called "September Dawn" depicts a brutal American massacre that has been forgotten. On Sept. 11, 1857, in Utah Territory, Mormons slaughtered more than 120 California-bound settlers from Arkansas. Retelling at this time the Sept. 11 carnage of 150 years ago does not help Mormon Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. The basic facts of the Mountain Meadows Massacre are not in dispute. Mormons mobilized Paiute Indians, accompanied by Mormons di

Brad Pitt's 'Jesse James' comes under fire

Every great western has a duel, and there's a showdown at the center of Brad Pitt's new movie about gunslinger Jesse James. The struggle hinged on the film's tone and length — at one point its running time was more than three hours — according to several people close to the production. But running time wasn't the main issue. The thornier challenge was to come up with a cut of "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" that satisfied audiences and Warner B

History Channel show explores the cultural roots of Star Wars

We are pleased to be working on a new special from the History Channel, Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed ! Premiering May 28th at 9 PM EST, the show examines not only the cultural impact of the Star Wars films but also reveals parallels to their historic connections. The show will feature interviews with some famous Star Wars fans as well other important voices in today’s culture. Here is some info on the show: The special makes the argument that Star Wars’ intensely compelling

New NOVA Documentary: Pocahontas Revealed

For centuries, Americans have celebrated her as a romantic fairy-tale heroine, but who was the real Pocahontas? As the US marks the 400th anniversary of its first successful colony at Jamestown, VA, NOVA investigates the Pocahontas story and reveals an entirely new version of the epic events that helped found our nation. At the center of this dramatic reevaluation is the discovery of Werowocomoco, the site of Pocahontas’ village, 17 miles from Jamestown. Long sought by archaeologis

Alexander Hamilton documentary (PBS)

One of the most controversial men of his age, Alexander Hamilton was a gifted statesman brought down by the fatal flaws of stubbornness, extreme candor, and arrogance. His life and career were marked by a stunning rise to power, scandal, and tragedy. He had one of the most notorious love affairs of any public figure in American history, and met his death in a startling act of political violence - the famous duel with Aaron Burr. But his contributions as a statesman survive. As first

"From 12/7 to 9/11: Lessons on the Japanese American Internment"

On Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized his secretary of war to establish military areas in which certain people were not allowed. Issued in the wake of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the order mentioned no ethnic groups, but its execution focused exclusively on individuals of Japanese ancestry."From 12/7 to 9/11: Lessons on the Japanese American Internment," on view at UCLA's Charles E. Young Research Library

Alfred Hitchcock’s America

... If there is an overriding theme in Hitchcock’s America, it is not that there are dangerous paranoids among us, though that is the case; it is that paranoia is sometimes a reasonable response to events in a world of menace and violence, with threats to safety and complacency close at hand, sometimes in the most intimate of places or from the most trusted of friends or relations. As the homicidal Bruno remarks to the traveler who shares his train compartment in Strangers on a Train, “Everybod

"The Mormons"--Modern-Day Look at History of the Latter-Day Saints (Documentary/PBS)

A proposition: If your beliefs are any good, you needn’t be afraid to bring them out into the light. The proof: “The Mormons,” a thoughtful two-part series tonight and tomorrow on PBS. The tenets of the Mormon church may not be to everyone’s tastes, but the church members and leaders who speak in this program are admirably forthright about their religion’s history, strengths and challenges. It’s great to hear people who believe in something and can articulate it without sounding crazy or defensi

Hollywood tackles Hitler's Leni

Oscar-winning actress Jodie Foster will play the leading role of Riefenstahl in a work that is bound to generate immense argument, as it examines the beautiful woman who became Adolf Hitler's favourite director and whose slick propaganda helped the Nazi war machine. The on-again, off-again project has been in the works for at least seven years, but now a script is being written - by British writer Rupert Walters - and a director is being negotiated. People involved in the movie say

Montreal museum to display native artifacts collected by French colonizers

MONTREAL -- They were created by North American aboriginals, ended up in the collections of kings and aristocrats in France, and are now returning to this side of the Atlantic to be put on display at Montreal's Pointe-a-Calliere museum. Horned headdresses, painted bags with porcupine quill fringes, shell necklaces and fish-skin quivers are among the items in "First Nations, French Royal Collections." The exhibition, which runs June 5 to Oct. 14, features 85 ar

Frank Langella to reprise role as Nixon

Actor Frank Langella reportedly is close to signing a contract in Los Angeles to play Richard Nixon in the upcoming film version of "Frost-Nixon." Imagine films originally was in negotiations with Warren Beatty, but now Langella is about to sign for the adaptation of the Peter Morgan play, The Daily Variety reported. Director Ron Howard is set to direct the film, which likely will feature Michael Sheen as David Frost, and will begin shooting in August.

Snatched from the Holocaust (BBC documentary)

Aged just six, Suzanne Rappoport saw both her parents arrested and taken away from her to be sent to Nazi concentration camps. She was rescued by a neighbour and is one of many Jewish children who were hidden from the Nazis and survived the war.... Suzanne Rappoport is one of four people whose stories are told in Timewatch: Hidden Children, made by Screenhouse Productions. You can watch it at 2100 BST on Friday 27 April on BBC Two.

The Medium, the Message, the Drama of TV’s Q & A (New Nixon Play/NYC)

The conversations between David Frost and Richard Nixon that are the basis of Peter Morgan’s “Frost/Nixon,” newly on Broadway, took place over 28 hours 45 minutes during 12 days in March 1977. Distilled into four 90-minute segments and broadcast later that year, the interviews were shot in California, near Nixon’s San Clemente estate, in a rental house whose appointments seemed a threat to whatever dignity the former president might have hoped to reconstruct. The journalist and his

The new David Frost/Richard Nixon play (NYT review)

Television mows down a titan in “Frost/Nixon,” the briskly entertaining new play by Peter Morgan about the 1977 face-off between its title characters, the British talk show host (as in David) and the former American president (as in Richard M.). But let it be proclaimed, with drums and fanfare, that theater decisively trumps television in the production that opened last night at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater. Most of the credit for this victory belongs to a truly titanic performance

Exhibit explores Ellis Island's medical history

The crowded hospital is overflowing with hundreds of patients every day, as a small, harried staff copes with pregnancies, critically ill patients, mentally ill people and children in varying states of distress. They come from all corners of the world, and the trick is to treat them quickly -- to make way for the next arrivals. "It is by no means unusual to receive 100 cases or more at this hospital in one day," writes one journalist, astonished by the scene. "The ta

In Search of the Man Who May Have Created Jazz (Documentaries)

NO one is really sure what this city’s first “cornet king,” Charles (Buddy) Bolden, sounded like 100 years ago, much less what made him tick. The lore says a single wax recording of Bolden’s namesake ensemble was demolished with the old shed in which it was stored in the early 1960s. What is probably the most reliable rendering of his trademark tune, “Buddy Bolden’s Blues,” came from Jelly Roll Morton, who had heard it performed and put it on a record years after the master’s death. But even the

Bloated Henry VIII transformed into a slim, young ladykiller

American television has transformed Henry VIII from the popular image of an ageing, bearded and bloated monarch into a “sexy and vital” young blade with a washboard stomach. Henry’s clash with the Roman Catholic Church and his desperate pursuit of a male heir inspired cinematic triumphs for Charles Laughton and Richard Burton. But The Tudors shows a very different Henry from the king immortalised in Hans Holbein’s portraits. The 16th-century soap opera p

How Europeans looked to Indians and vice versa (London/Exhibit)

... A wide variety of early modern European reportage survives about the indigenous peoples of the Americas. But how they viewed successive European invaders, with their sailing ships, goblets of red wine, metal coins and weaponry, and their worship of a wooden cross, is very hard and usually impossible to recover. Native Americans did not write in ink on paper. Nor did they possess secure means of preserving their own carved records and drawings. And, anyway, most of these people were wiped out

Historian: 'The Tudors' omits Welsh aspect

"The Tudors," a British television drama about the royal dynasty, has been accused of rewriting history because it wasn't Welsh enough. The BBC show, shot in Ireland with a cast of predominantly Irish and English actors, has raised concern among historians that it may have marginalized Wales' contribution to British history, the Western Mail reported Friday. The drama was shot around Dublin and Wicklow, and casts Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry V

Seeking the Nixon Behind the Caricature (Play/Broadway)

IN a quiet corner of the bar at the Hotel Plaza Athénée in New York, Frank Langella raised his hands in victory signs, furrowed his brow and shook his jowls violently: the International Symbol for Richard Nixon. Mr. Langella, one of the most celebrated stage actors of his generation, has tackled both Dracula and Sherlock Holmes; he knows what it means to step into a role that is already cemented in myth. But there may be no caricature as permanently etched in the American imaginatio