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

Don't Touch 'A Moveable Feast'

[A. E. Hotchner is the author of the memoirs “Papa Hemingway” and “King of the Hill.”] BOOKSTORES are getting shipments of a significantly changed edition of Ernest Hemingway’s masterpiece, “A Moveable Feast,” first published posthumously by Scribner in 1964. This new edition, also published by Scribner, has been extensively reworked by a grandson who doesn’t like what the original said about his grandmother, Hemingway’s second wife. The grandson has removed several sections

Amazon accused of 'Big-Brother behaviour' after deleting 1984

From Thursday, customers on Amazon's web forums said copies of the British author's dystopian classics "Animal Farm" and "Nineteen Eighty-Four" were mysteriously wiped from their Kindle devices. The online retailer later told CNET the books were uploaded by a publisher who did not have reproduction rights and so they were deleted. "We removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers," a spokesm

Memorabilia from Cabinet War Rooms to go on display on 70th anniversary of opening of Churchill's nerve centre

In September 1940, Patrick Duff barely survived an ordeal more terrifying than any of his experiences over a wartime year as permanent secretary at the Office of Works. His shaken letter, hours after a blistering encounter with the prime minister, will go on display for the first time next month in a new exhibition at the Cabinet War Rooms. The warren of underground rooms and offices in London, where Winston Churchill and up to 500 other people worked for six years, was the cause of

ZKM Presents Part 2 of Exhibition Dedicated to the History of German Video Art

“RECORD > AGAIN! – 40yearsvideoart.de – Part 2” is dedicated to the history of German video art from its beginnings in the 1960s and 1970s through to the early twenty-first century. Shown will be numerous discoveries, unavailable for viewing for decades. Many tapes had to be laboriously restored in the ZKM Laboratory for Antiquated Video Systems in order to make them at all playable. Another special feature will be the presentation of the material on screens from each video’s original era.

Scholarly Detective Work Recovers Lost Burlington House Commodes (UK)

The Burlington House Commodes are the only known surviving pieces of furniture from the early history of Burlington House in Piccadilly, once one of the grandest private houses in London and home to the Royal Academy of Arts since 1866. Their provenance, lost for fifty years, has recently been pieced together by Joseph Friedman, an independent fine art agent and consultant. As a result, their present owner is generously allowing them to return to their former home, a building from which all such

"Comrades" film is reissued to mark 175th anniversary of Tolpddle Martyrs' trial

A massive surge of trade union militancy; fears about the state of the economy; a government under pressure from employers; harsh sentences delivered using archaic legislation in an effort to intimidate workers. This may sound like the 1970s, but it also applies to a period of revolt and repression that occurred long before, in 1834, when six agricultural labourers, three of whom were Methodist lay preachers, were sentenced to transportation to Australia. Every year th

Amazon Erases Orwell Books From Kindle

In George Orwell’s “1984,” government censors erase all traces of news articles embarrassing to Big Brother by sending them down an incineration chute called the “memory hole.” On Friday, it was “1984” and another Orwell book, “Animal Farm,” that were dropped down the memory hole — by Amazon.com. In a move that angered customers and generated waves of online pique, Amazon remotely deleted some digital editions of the books from the Kindle devices of readers who had boug

Had enough of Michael Jackson's afterlife?

Had enough of Michael Jackson's afterlife here on earth? I sure have, and I tuned out 99% of it. But some 31 million people watched his memorial service on 19 channels, and Chris Hedges explains why that's scary in a brilliantly written column at Truthdig. Yet Hedges' accounting falls a bit short in a way that's as dangerous as the choreographed swooning he so rightly condemns: "In celebrity culture we destr

An exhibition of totalitarian art creates sensation in Bulgaria

Totalitarian art commonly associated with the Communists and Nazi Germany, has its roots in early modernist avant-garde (around 1920-40). The National Gallery of Fine Arts in Sofia presents a very interesting exhibition that displays 45 paintings and 21 sculptures created by Bulgarian artists before the collapse of the communist regime in the country in 1989. Al artworks depict or praise Bulgarian and Soviet communist leaders. You can visit the show until September 6, 2009. The exhi

Movie to mark life of Korean dictator

His birth was marked by a double rainbow and a new star, he hit 11 holes-in-one in his first game of golf, finishing 38 under par, and throughout his life he has performed heroic feats impossible for mere mortals. When he shouts, "huge storms happen". The life of North Korea's ailing leader, Kim Jong-il, has long been extravagantly window-dressed by the state's diligent chroniclers, but now it is about to get the full regal treatment with a new movie chronicling his exp

The Fortieth Anniversary of the First Moon Landing: review

‘Fine and powdery,” was how Neil Armstrong described the lunar landscape when he became the first man to walk through it. “Magnificent desolation,” said Buzz Aldrin, who has never recovered from being only the second man on the moon. Meanwhile, orbiting the spooky grey-white sphere in the command module overhead, lonely Michael Collins would gaze down at a “withered, sun-seared peach pit”. While Armstrong and Aldrin were setting up the experiments listed on their spacesuit gloves and struggling

Did the Apollo Moon Landing Put a Dagger in the Heart of Science Fiction?

Forty years ago this week, science fiction writers were media celebrities—at least for a few hours. When Neil Armstrong stepped on to the surface of the moon on July 21, 1969, his “giant leap for mankind” was not just a fulfillment of President Kennedy’s promise of a lunar expedition before decade’s end. It also validated the starry-eyed dreams of a legion of pulp fiction writers. Long before NASA was founded, the A

North-West Passage: An Arctic Obsession, National Maritime Museum, London

Sound sets the scene. When you pass through the doors, you are assailed by the bone-chilling noise of howling winds, and the crepitation of ice. Welcome to an exhibition about the fabled North-West Passage, a source of endless, greed-driven fascination, and often fruitless and tragic endeavour, for centuries. Was it somehow possible to travel by sea from the North Atlantic to the North Pacific, passing through the ice-bound waters of Alaska? Many tried. Many perished. John Cabot, sailing in 1497

Saddam Hussein's palaces in pictures

There is, as yet, no instructed estate agent, but should one come along, their marketing pitch will for once need no over-egging. ‘For sale/rent: 80 presidential palaces, average unit living space half-a-million square feet. Attached gardens featuring disused swimming pools, personal zoos/nuclear bunkers etc. Rooms fitted with thrones and gold lavatories, en suite torture chamber optional. Some bomb damage. Suit megalomaniac or similar.’ Welcome to what its previous owner would no

Novelist Kathryn Stockett examines slavery and racism in America's Deep South

As a child in America’s Deep South in the 1970s, Kathryn Stockett was not really aware of the racial divides around her. Now she has written a novel about the community in 1960s Mississippi from the point of view of the black servants. The British cover to Kathryn Stockett’s novel The Help – about the experiences of black maids in Mississippi in the early 1960s – is a period photograph of a little white girl in a pushchair flanked by two black women in starched white uniforms – the

German police investigate 'Nazi' gnome

German prosecutors have launched an inquiry into whether a garden gnome with its right arm raised in a Hitler salute in a Nuremberg art gallery breaks the law. Salutes and Nazi symbols have been illegal in Germany since the Second World War but investigators may decide the figure is in fact ridiculing the Third Reich.

Vatican reconciles with Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde, whose flamboyant homosexuality shocked Britain in the 19th century, won an unlikely endorsement from the Vatican on Thursday. In a surprise act of reconciliation with the playwright, the Holy See's official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, praised the poet as a "lucid analyst of the modern world". Wilde, who was sent to prison for acts of gross indecency with Lord Alfred Douglas and later converted to Catholicism, has been regarded by the Roman

New footage changes the way we see 'Metropolis,' says film restorer

'Metropolis' is legendary because of the footage that was missing for so many years A half hour of additional footage of the 1927 film "Metropolis" by Fritz Lang has arrived in Germany for restoration. DW spoke with chief film restorer Anke Wilkening about the significance of the new scenes. Deutsche Welle: A complete version of Fritz Lang's film "Metropolis" was discovered last year in Argentina. Now you'll be working on restoring the film in digital form

British Museum announces Italian Renaissance drawings exhibition

The British Museum's collection of Italian Renaissance drawings is so fragile that its masterpieces are exhibited only once in a generation. Next summer a chance to see these delicate objects will finally come around, as the museum launches an exhibition, in partnership with the Uffizi in Florence, of works on paper by artists from Fra Angelico to Leonardo. The 100 or so works will span the period 1400-1510 and artists including Jacopo and Gentile Bellini, Botticelli, F

Tate Liverpool exhibition to celebrate political Picasso

Picasso's cold war career as a highly political painter, peace campaigner and tireless fundraiser for leftwing causes will be revealed in an exhibition at Tate Liverpool next spring that will include letters from world leaders, including Nelson Mandela and Ho Chi Minh, as well as a telegram from Fidel Castro congratulating the artist on being awarded the Soviet Union's international peace prize. Christoph Grunenberg, the gallery's director, said the exhibition would explode the myth