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

Museum exhibit focuses on pirate history

You won't find Captain Jack Sparrow, but Blackbeard has a starring role in a new pirate exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of History. The almost yearlong exhibit "Knights of the Black Flag" traces the sweet trade from ancient Egypt and Greece to today's pirates who prowl the waters off Somalia. "People have an image of pirates, but what is the reality?" asked museum curator Jeanne Marie Warzeski. To that end, the exhibit opens with pa

U.C.L.A. Gets Huxley Archive

In an honor that’s nearly as estimable as achieving Alpha-Plus status, the literary archive of Aldous Huxley, the writer and “Brave New World” novelist, has been acquired by the U.C.L.A. Library, the library announced. Among the materials in the collection are manuscripts and working papers for 12 of his books, as well as 35 essays, articles and speeches; recordings of Huxley reading from his lectures and his 1944 novel, “Time Must Have a Stop”; and love letters he exchanged with his wife Laura,

A rich history lesson in exhibit of early American art at SAM (Seattle Art Museum)

A sweeping exhibition of early American art from the Yale University Art Gallery visits Seattle Art Museum, bringing stories of glory, shame and shared ideals. "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: American Art from the Yale University Art Gallery" is on view through May 25. What comes to mind when you conjure up pictures of the early history of the United States? Washington crossing the Delaware River? Maybe some scenes from "Schoolhouse Rock" with upstar

Works of naive American art featured at the National Gallery of Art

As told by most museums the history of American painting before modernism is usually a fairly dull tale. The narrative is dominated by artists with academic training who emulated European models. And all too often their work is dispensed in homogenous chunks, sorted according to big names or schools, periods and subjects. You know the drill: it reaches from John Singleton Copley and colonial portraitists to the Ashcan School. In between come Hudson River, Luminist, genre and trompe

Jewish resistance film sparks Polish anger

A film starring Daniel Craig about a Jewish underground resistance movement that took on the Nazis has prompted a storm of protest in Poland. Defiance, directed by Edward Zwick, which recently opened in Poland under the title Opor (resistance), has been booed at cinemas across the country and banned from others because of a local perception that it is a rewriting of history and anti-Polish. Opponents say in its telling of the true story of the four Bielski brothers who fled the Nazi

Documentary on Clinton Tests Campaign Finance Law

It has been about a decade since the Supreme Court considered a case arising from the tangle of lawsuits and investigations that once threatened to engulf the administration of President Bill Clinton. The nation may have moved on, but the court has not. Next month, as Hillary Rodham Clinton settles in as secretary of state, the court will have a look at “Hillary: The Movie,” a scathingly hostile look at Mrs. Clinton in the tradition of Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

Slumdog Courage: What is Written?

[Alison Downie is a PhD candidate in Systematic Theology at Duquesne University. Her area of specialization is Feminist Theology.] Just as the unlikely Jamal Malik won twenty million rupees, his very “foreign” (and therefore unlikely) movie recently took home an armful of Oscars. Both the events of Slumdog Millionaire and the event of the film itself trigger theological reflection in a time when the daily national news is full of the loss and the meaning of money, Ponzi scheme exp

A Nazi Zelig: Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones

Jonathan Littell's novel The Kindly Ones took France by storm in the fall of 2006, when it won the Prix Goncourt--the nation's most prestigious literary prize--and sold many hundreds of thousands of copies. Commercial success fed the heat of scandal, which followed the book to Germany in 2008, vaulting it to the top of the bestseller list. The furor revolved around nothing less than the governing conceit of Littell's thousand-page roman-fleuve: the novel pretends to be the memoir of a Nazi SS of

Zhang Yimou to direct film celebrating the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China

Zhang Yimou, the acclaimed director of Hero and House of Flying Daggers, is to make a film celebrating the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China. The news, announced yesterday on China Central Television, completes what many regard as the last step in a curious rehabilitation for the one-time dissident film-maker. According to the director's assistant, Pang Liwei, Zhang is currently deliberating between three or four state-sanctioned screenplays. "The script must m

Exhibition to mark the 30th anniversary of Iran's Islamic revolution

Jinoos Taghizadeh wanted to come up with a distinctive and thought-provoking work to mark the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution. But rather than celebrating the event, the Iranian artist chose to illustrate the yawning gap between hopes and reality. Taking contemporary Persian-language newspaper accounts of the overthrow of the shah and the rise to power of Ayatollah Khomeini, Taghizadeh embedded images from western works of art – the nightmare world of Hieronymous Bosch, P

IBM's "Antique Attic" gallery

You can—and should—lose hours digging through IBM's "Antique Attic", an online catalog of the actual old machines they hold on hand for posterity's sake.

Constable's parents captured on canvas

Anne Lyles, Tate curator and authority on the work of Constable, and writer and critic Martin Gayford, have confirmed that a portrait of Ann Constable, Constable's mother, is by the artist. They have also provisionally re-identified a portrait of Constable's father, Golding Constable that was previously thought to depict his schoolmaster. The portraits, now thought to make a pair, have been in the collection at Colchester and Ipswich Museum service since 1926.

Thomas Gainsborough portraits to go on show for first time in the UK

Gainsborough's previously unseen works, which could be worth around £500,000 if ever sold, will be displayed at Dunster Castle in Somerset. The portraits were painted for members of a family which were related by marriage to the aristocratic owners of the castle and have been in the family ever since. The pictures show the Honourable George Somerville and his daughter Ann on the day of her wedding to Reverend Thomas Fownes in 1764. She is wearing a white si

Beatles and Rolling Stones photographs: New shots of John Lennon and Mick Jagger found

These are just a few of the never before seen private snaps of the world's two biggest bands coping with growing fame as they toured America in the 1960s. The behind-the-scenes, intimate and unguarded shots, have been unearthed after spending 45 years in a duffel bag of The Beatles and Rolling Stone's former tour manager. The collection of more than 50 pictures, which are being revealed to the public for the first time are part of 3,500 taken by Bob Bonis, the US tour m

Vermont residents vote to save 19th-century church

The residents of Stowe, Vt., have spoken: A decrepit 19th-century church will live to see another year. Voters at Town Meeting day Tuesday rejected a proposal that the ski town "sell, respectfully salvage or otherwise dispose of the so-called 'Rotary Barn.'" The building was constructed in 1839 and has since served as a Christian church, gymnasium, classroom and storage space.

$60K for vintage films depicting the life of blacks in Oklahoma in the 1920s

A historian has netted $60,000 from the auction of vintage films depicting the life of blacks in Oklahoma in the 1920s. Currie Ballard, the assistant secretary to the state Senate, first sold a copy of the films to the Oklahoma Historical Society, then had his collection of 29 film reels auctioned at the Swann Auction Galleries in New York. Ballard says the buyer wanted to remain anonymous but that the films were purchased by an Ivy League university.

Chinese art buyer won't pay, saying artifacts were looted from China

Admire the gumption: After bidding $40.4 million for two bronze sculptures at Yves Saint Laurent's estate auction, Chinese collector Cai Mingchao has refused to pay up, saying that the sculptures were looted from China. The refusal to pay for political purpose is, according to art experts, a first, and tarnishes Saint Laurent's record $476 million estate sale. According to The Wall Street Journal, "Mr. Cai joins a months-long dispute between Christie's and China over the fate of the bronzes

Darwin’s Wake Splashed Artists, Too

NEW HAVEN | The artist stands in the distance, gazing up at the striated chalk cliffs on the coast of Kent, England. His family is gathering shells in the shallow tidal pools of Pegwell Bay that, with the receding waters, have a look of barren desolation. The sky is an unearthly yellow from the glowering late light of an autumn sun. Above, Donati’s Comet leaves a trail that would not be seen for another two millenniums. This painting, by William Dyce, “Pegwell Bay, Kent — A Recollec

Dr. Seus on the couch

Philip Nel has made a career of showing that complexities abound within the pages of children’s books. A professor of English at Kansas State University and director of the graduate program in children’s literature, Nel used a NEH Summer Stipend to write Dr. Seuss: American Icon, one of the first scholarly explorations of Theodor Geisel’s work. He has also written about J. K. Rowling and coedited, with Julia Mickenberg, Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children’s Literature. Nel

George Washington posed here

George Washington hated posing. A practical man little given to indulgence, he would have preferred riding out to inspect his vast farmland at Mount Vernon, in Virginia, or conducting business or legislative work, or just about anything else, for that matter, than to strike a pose for a painter. But Martha wanted a canvas of her husband to add to her collection of family portraits. So in May 1772, Washington stood immobile for the better part of two days for the painter Charles Will