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

London's new Jewish Museum gears up for grand opening in March

The Jewish Museum in London is gearing up for its public opening on March 16 and staff are working behind the scenes to get the ambitious £10 million project finished. The original museum has tripled in size by expanding into a 19th century piano factory at the rear of the building, allowing the museum to showcase its collections in a state of the art space packed with displays and interactives. Visitors will enter the Museum through the Welcome Gallery where images of

Lifting Hazy Veils From Centuries of Vietnamese Art

Art brings out unresolved enigmas with a directness that no historian can hope to match. The “Arts of Ancient Viet Nam” show at Asia Society, and the book written by Nancy Tingley who spent the better part of the last two decades putting it together, lay bare some of the avatars that led to the formation of the country now called Vietnam.... Some pieces, like the molds for casting ax heads that came to light on a site called Dong Dau and may date from as early as about

'Photogenic' Khrushchev reassessed in Moscow exhibition

Nikita Khrushchev and His Time, which opened last week in Moscow's Manezh exhibition hall, is one of the largest exhibitions on the colourful Communist leader to be mounted in Russia since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. Bald, stocky and famed for his peasant earthiness, Khrushchev is pictured in diverse settings ranging from Cold War summits with US president John Kennedy to casual days at home with his family. "He was certainly photogenic," said Viktor

Matt Damon To Star In New RFK Biopic

In this tough marketplace, if you want to make another movie about a complex historical figure like Robert F Kennedy, you'd better bring to the table an actor with chops and bankability to excite a financier. Matt Damon does both those things. I've just heard that a deal closed at New Regency for an RFK film that has Damon attached, with Gary Ross directing and Steven Knight scripting. Damon will wait to see the script before we know whether or not the project will really happen. The film will b

"Formosa Betrayed" a haunting history lesson

Illuminating another dark chapter in recent political history and U.S. foreign policy, "Formosa Betrayed" is a straightforward, workmanlike procedural "inspired by actual events" during the communism-obsessed Reagan era. James Van Der Beek leads the film's efficient, fuss-free performances, playing an FBI agent awakened to the reality behind the official story when a murder investigation takes him to Taiwan, a.k.a Formosa. Given the island's economic

Art deco ocean liner exhibition opens in New York

"The Normandie was the most magnificent of all the ocean liners," said Bill Miller, curator of the "Decodence" exhibit running until January next year at the South Street Seaport Museum in lower Manhattan. The ship was the largest and fastest of what were known as "floating palaces" at a time when airliners could not yet make transatlantic trip and ships were not just a mode of transport, but islands of fantasy. The exhibition shows off t

JFK Miniseries isn't really character assassination

[ For the past week, liberals everywhere have been up in arms over the horrifying prospect of a new History Channel miniseries about John F. Kennedy hatched from the brain of Joel Surnow, a creator of Fox's hit TV series "24" and an ardent political conservative who smokes cigars with Rush Limbaugh and whose political point of view is best expressed by his favorite bumper sticker, which reads "Except for Ending Slavery, Fascism, Nazism and Communism, War Has Never Sol

Alexandre Dumas to be played by Gerard Depardieu in new film

Alexandre Dumas played by a white actor? That’s the controversial role the ubiquitous French actor Gerard Depardieu has taken on in a new film called The Other Dumas. Dumas, author of such famous novels as “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “The Three Musketeers,” was the grandson of a freed Haitian slave and a French nobleman, but that hasn’t stopped Depardieu, France’s busiest actor, from playing Dumas. The blue-eyed blond actor darkened his skin and donned a curly-hair wig for his s

Paul Gauguin: The Breakthrough into Modernity Opens at the Van Gogh Museum

From 19 February to 6 June 2010 Paul Gauguin: The breakthrough into modernity will be on view in the Van Gogh Museum. This exhibition is the first to devote attention to the Volpini suite: a series of prints that Gauguin (1848-1903) exhibited in monsieur Volpini's Café des Arts during the Paris Exposition of 1889. The 11 zincographs offer a fascinating overview of the key themes in the artist's work: from the exotic landscapes of Martinique to scenes of Brittany and Arles. The exhibition will al

Landmark Exhibition Reveals Deep Artistic Dialogue Among Early Impressionists (US)

The Dallas Museum of Art presents a landmark exhibition exploring the influential and profound relationship between photographers and painters who lived and worked along the Normandy coast in France during the mid-19th century. The Lens of Impressionism: Photography and Painting Along the Normandy Coast, 1850-1874 reveals how the convergence of social, technological and commercial forces within the region affected artistic production and dramatically transformed the course of photography, impres

East Germany Makes a Comeback at the Berlinale

Screening the best films from around the world. That was the lofty goal the Berlin International Film Festival set for itself from its very inception in 1951. But even then, it was clear that the festival would fall short. Indeed, the Berlin blockade was still a fresh memory and the Cold War was just entering its most frigid years. Initially, in fact, the Berlinale, as the festival is known, wasn't even able to screen the best films from the city's surroundings. Just a few kilometer

Eric Felten: Abbey Road and the Day Studio Music Died

Rumors abound that money-hemorrhaging music behemoth EMI may sell Abbey Road Studios, the sanctum sanctorum where the Beatles recorded most of their albums. Britain's National Trust is entertaining the idea of bidding on it, aiming to add the famed recording studio to its stable of historic castles and country houses. If that happens, will Abbey Road still function as a recording studio, or will it become a rope-lined destination for tourists to traipse through in their stations of Beatles vener

History Lesson in Abstraction, Cutting Across the Americas

Art museums are in the business of sorting out history. And it often falls to our smaller institutions to tackle the initial, broad-stroke cuts. Over the years the Newark Museum has taken on this path-clearing role with relish, particularly when the histories are transcultural in scope. It does so again in “Constructive Spirit: Abstract Art in South and North America, 1920s-50s,” the capstone exhibition of the museum’s centennial. In this case, a chunk of the history is in Newark’s

Theater Review: "Black Angels over Tuskegee"

“Black Angels Over Tuskegee,” Layon Gray’s sturdy drama about trailblazing African-American fighter pilots entering the European theater in World War II, gets by on the charm of the cast and a commitment to the rules of the uplifting inspirational melodrama. The leisurely 2-hour-20-minute play is full of good intentions, decent talent and not an ounce of daring. Mr. Gray, who stages his own work, steers his underdog story so cautiously, moving in the straightest of lines, that you d

Protests from Holocaust Institute; Berlinale Resists Call to Pull Romanian Film

The Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania has protested against the inclusion of a Romanian film about anti-communist partisans in the Berlinale festival program. They say the main character was fascist and anti-Semitic. The Berlin International Film Festival is no stranger to controversy and, as it celebrates its 60th anniversary, another scandal may be brewing. The Romanian film "Portrait of the Young Man as a Fighter," whi

Museum Marks Presidents Day with Release of Amateur Footage

Gary Mack, Curator at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, is calling it "the best home movie known to exist of the Kennedy arrival in Dallas on November 22, 1963" that he has ever seen. For the first time, color film and new glimpses of President and Mrs. Kennedy arriving on Air Force One on that fateful day is being released for public viewing. On November 22, 1963, local television stations were broadcasting live coverage of the Kennedy arrival at Dallas Love Field

Kennedy Miniseries Stirs Controversy

A new mini-series about John F. Kennedy’s presidency that is being prepared by the History channel does not yet have a cast or a premiere date. Not a frame of footage has been shot. It does, however, have prominent critics who want it brought to a halt. The critics, including Theodore C. Sorensen, a former Kennedy adviser, say they have read the scripts for the project and that those contain errors of fact and emphasis. But like a similar controversy over a 2003 television film abou

Xie Zhiliu's Traces and Originality in Art

Copying is bad; originality is good. That’s what we learn from toddlerdom on. In art as in life, be yourself. Don’t pretend. Nobody likes phonies, fakes or frauds. Forgery is illegal. Authenticity is holy. But wait. Copying and imitating have been the rule for most of the history of human civilization. In the West artists from Raphael to Picasso have profited from copying the works of others. In art there is no such thing as pure originality. Which brings us to a philos

Counting Down to the 2010 Winter Olympic Games

As we count down the hours until the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, we thought we’d take a look at past Olympics games to mark the occasion.... The oldest Olympic stamp in the collection is a 2 cent stamp from the 1932 Winter Games held in Lake Placid, New York. This piece of postage pictures a ski jumper flying over the mountains, was criticized for the skier’s unnatural position, according to the exhibit. (Funky form usually costs you some seriou

North Carolina as It Was, Split and Seething: "Blood Done Sign My Name"

Whether or not North Carolinians are more inclined than other Americans to follow Thomas Wolfe’s injunction to “look homeward,” some past the age of 50 have personal reasons to cast a retrospective glance on the state of their youth. It was a time when a century of Jim Crow laws and segregation were being challenged by the advocates of civil rights in a struggle that was often more bitter and bloody than popular history likes to admit. For Robert K. Steel, the re-evaluation of his p