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

A Sculptural Showcase in Siena

Jacopo della Quercia was unique among Siena’s artists of his time in achieving fame throughout Italy and beyond. And, as a 19th-century French art historian observed: “Jacopo had only one pupil, and for him there was a century to wait: he was Michelangelo.” The sculptor was born here in around 1374 and died in his native city in 1438. A succession of his lyrical statues and reliefs in marble and wood, which combine grace and vigor to an extraordinary degree, open “From Jacopo della

'Stonewall Uprising': Turning Point in Gay Rights History

“The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. He is not interested in, nor capable of, a lasting relationship like that of a heterosexual marriage.” So declared Mike Wallace in authoritative voice-of-God tones in “The Homosexuals,” a tawdry, sensationalist 1966 “CBS Reports,” excerpted in Kate Davis and David Heilbroner’s valuable film, “Stonewall Uprising.” Funny how yesterday’s conventional wisdom can become today’s embarrassment. The most thorough docume

Tim Rutten: Bloomsday and James Joyce

[Tim Rutten is a columnist for the LA Times.] "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." Wednesday, people around the world will gather in libraries and theaters, pubs and restaurants, streets and squares to commemorate a precise set of events that included the preceding snatch of conversation and that occurred between daybreak and midnight in a provincial European city on June 16, 1904 — events they know full well never happened. T

Jill Fields on why the cone bra is pops with pop stars

We have entered a new era of boom and bust. The busts are those of dueling pop stars Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, each of whom recently unveiled her own dangerous reinterpretation of the legendary Jean Paul Gaultier cone bra worn by Madonna back in the day. And the booms are literal and frightening, spraying bullets and spewing whipped cream all over the top of the Billboard charts.... Whatever you think of the two pieces of music on display in these videos, one thing is b

What lies beneath: the fakes, mistakes and discoveries at the National Gallery

Scientists working at the National Gallery found that Woman at a Window, a painting of a girl with neat dark hair and a steady gaze, contained a secret. Hidden under layers of varnish and paint was the original painting of the same woman, only this time she has a suggestive sideways glance and was dressed in a more revealing bodice. The painting is featured in a new exhibition, Close Examination: Fakes, Mistakes & Discoveries, which reveals the stories behind more t

'Rude Britannia' spotlights artists' comic view of British politics, culture

Some countries overthrow their politicians. Some endure them. In Britain, they just laugh at them. The renowned British sense of humor is on display in a new London exhibition that charts 300 years of the anarchic artistic spirit that produced the political satire of William Hogarth and "Spitting Image" -- as well as the sheer silliness of Benny Hill. "Rude Britannia," which opened Wednesday at the Tate Britain gallery, is a feast of irreverence and

Will Last Century’s Styles Open Today’s Wallets?

For some clothing brands, the summer of 2010 looks a lot like the summer of 1910, and 1949, and 1957 — basically, any time but now. Eddie Bauer is reintroducing jackets that the company supplied to World War II pilots and 1950s mountaineers. Jantzen’s ruffled halter bikini is modeled on a pin-up-girl style it sold in the 1940s. Sperry Top-Siders is selling white buck shoes based on archival pieces. And L. L. Bean has revised a hunting shoe that a 1914 catalog sold with the warning “

"Robin Hood – The Movie" exhibition at Nottingham Castle

Much has been written about Ridley Scott’s new Robin Hood: Andrew O’Hagan says it “has little going for it” (London Evening Standard); Tom Huddleston believes the $130m blockbuster to be an “overblown disaster” (Time Out); and Joe Morgenstern points out that the 140-minute film is an “absence of fun” (Wall Street Journal). “When you call a movie ‘Robin Hood,’ you set up expectations,” Kenneth Turan, the Los Angeles Times film critic, writes. Indeed, the same could be said for its showpiece exhib

Bringing New Art to Old Havana: A Q&A with Dealer Concha Fontenla

— In Old Havana, where bright-hued colonial balustrades are a more common sight than white-cube galleries, the nonprofit Factoría Habana art space is something of an anomaly. Opened last December in a majestic warehouse on a back street far removed from the neighborhood's main tourist corridor, the gallery is the project of founding director Concha Fontenla, a native of Galicia, Spain, who curates a diverse program alternating foreign contemporary art with work by local artists like Lázaro Saave

PBS' History Detectives Puts a Question to the Nation: Is Andy Warhol's Art on the Moon?

PORTLAND, Ore., June 7 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, PBS enlists HISTORY DETECTIVES fans across the nation to solve a 40-year-old mystery: "Who is John F.?" — and did he really help send Andy Warhol's art to the moon? HISTORY DETECTIVES has posted "Moon Museum" online today, two weeks before the segment airs in the June 21 broadcast premiere. The producers of the PBS series, a summertime favorite, are releasing the story prior to the season launch in the hopes that online

Shogun 2: Total War to be released in 2011

SEGA has announced that Shogun 2: Total War, will be released in 2011, ten years after the release of the original Shogun: Total War. This marks the sixth instalment from the multi award-winning Total War strategy franchise on PC, which includes the highly popular Medieval: Total War games. Shogun 2 is set in the middle of the 16th Century Japan. The country, once ruled by a unified government, is now split into many warring clans. Players take on the role of one Daimyo, the clan le

Bill Clinton film stars clash over Lewinsky scene

Stars of “The Special Relationship”, a HBO movie focusing on the relationship between Bill Clinton and then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, have come to blows about the deletion of the quarrel scene centered on the Monica Lewinsky controversy. The quarrel scene though included in the preview version of the movie was edited out in the final review. Dennis Quaid, who plays Bill Clinton, felt that scene should have remained in the final cut. His co-star Hope Davis, who

Jesse Walker: The Id and the Odyssey of Dennis Hopper

[Managing Editor Jesse Walker is the author of Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America] For the general public, Dennis Hopper was identified to the end with the '60s counterculture, thanks to his career-making role as a hippie biker in Easy Rider. So when he died this past weekend, you're forgiven if you were surprised to read that he spent the last few decades of his life as a Republican. Unlike many famous figures who moved from one end of the spectrum to the

Ashley Sayeau: "Sex and the City" and Women's Consumption

[Ashley Sayeau, formerly Nelson, has written on women and politics for a variety of anthologies and publications, including The Nation, Salon and Dissent.] Ever since Sex and the City 2 hit theaters last Thursday, reviewers have been battling over the cleverest way to call four grown women spoiled, shameless and self-absorbed. While critics have found fault with everything from the women's continued interest in men to their gossipy natures, the thickest venom has been reserved for,

“Picasso: Peace and Freedom” opens at Tate Liverpool (UK)

Exhibitions are dependent upon the loans available to galleries at the time. And Tate Liverpool is no different. Yet one omission from its summer blockbuster, Picasso: Peace and Freedom, renders what was a hugely anticipated show a huge anticlimax. This is not to say that the exhibition does not bring together important paintings and sculptures or a large number of posters and documents, though. Indeed without the generosity and support of a large number of lenders – including those

The Founders of Cubism, Ardent Fans of Film

Arne Glimcher’s discursive documentary, “Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies,” argues that films, from the earliest days of Thomas Edison and the Lumière Brothers, were a crucial formative influence on Modern painting, especially Cubism. Using prolific visual comparisons, it tries to show how Cubism, founded by Picasso and Braque in 1907, supposedly translated the movies’ revolutionary portrayal of time, space and motion into fine art. Photography had already captured moments that m

"To Kill a Mockingbird" celebrates its 50th this year

...All summer “To Kill a Mockingbird” will be relived through at least 50 events around the country, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the publication of a book that became a cultural touchstone and an enduring staple of high-school reading programs. Its publisher, HarperCollins, is trying to tap into what appears to be a near-endless reserve of affection for the book by helping to organize parties, movie screenings, readings and scholarly discussions. The publisher has recruited

Black Fashion Museum collection finds a fine home with Smithsonian

The velvet opera coat was stretched out on a bed of archival paper and tucked into a person-size box that resembled a humble coffin. A clutch of Smithsonian curators and restoration experts gently lifted it -- like scholarly pallbearers with white gloved hands and keen eyes for precision -- onto an examination table for loving inspection. The coat, estimated to be from the early 1900s and possibly more than 100 years old, was exquisitely crafted of sapphire blue velvet with what loo

Lindy in the Sky With Amelia, Orville and Wilbur

The obsessive urge to get airborne unites the singing dreamers in “Take Flight,” an ambitious concept musical about the pioneering spirits of American aviation making its United States premiere at the McCarter Theater Center here. On a windy Southern beach Orville and Wilbur Wright pore over physics statistics to a disjointed melody, their progress confounded by problems of equilibrium. Anxious to be the first to cross the Atlantic, Charles Lindbergh fights off an array of competi

Film review: The Ghost Writer

When Robert Harris’s book, The Ghost, was published in 2007 it startled many members of the British intelligentsia, not least because New Labourite Harris appeared to have turned on his Leftist comrades. In it a biographer is hired to ghostwrite the memoirs of a former Prime Minister, Adam Lang, who soon becomes indicted for war crimes thanks to a resentful ex-colleague he fired as Foreign Secretary. In the nature of the war, the alleged crimes, Lang’s ancestry, personality, ideolo