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

'The Stone' - a play in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Federal Republic of Germany (UK)

Three families; three generations; one house; one stone. To mark the anniversary of the foundation of the Federal Republic in 1949, Marius von Mayenburg’s latest play, The Stone, currently on show at the Royal Court Theatre, explores sixty years of German history through the story of the changing ownership of a house in Dresden. The play retraces the lives of three different families over three generations, from 1935 to 1993, providing glimpses of key episodes of German history, including the Na

Abraham Lincoln: An Extraordinary Life (Smithsonian Exhibit)

As part of the Smithsonian-wide celebration of the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, the Museum will bring together—for the first time—its unique and unparalleled Lincoln collection. Through a focused selection of nationally important Lincoln artifacts, visitors will explore the life and times of this extraordinary figure. Each highlighted object will be augmented with personal stories told by Lincoln and the people who knew him best. The exhibition will showcase more than 60 histori

German court gives seized poster collection back to son of Jewish collector

A German court ruled Tuesday that a Jewish man from Florida is the rightful owner of a rare poster the Gestapo seized from his father in 1938. The ruling set the stage for the return of the entire collection of thousands of posters taken by the Nazis, which are now worth at least €4.5 million, or $5.9 million. The Berlin administrative court ruled that Hans Sachs never gave up ownership of the collection of 12,500 posters taken from his home on the orders of the Nazi pr

Austria's Nazi loot on show

Filled with photographs, a set of children's playing cards and tiny wooden doll's house furniture, it was prepared by a Viennese Jewish couple, Franz and Anna Bial, to send to their daughter Lilly. Lilly had escaped to Britain in 1939 on a "Kindertransport", a scheme to rescue Jewish children from Nazi persecution. Mr and Mrs Bial were deported to Maly Trostinec, a Nazi death camp near Minsk, in 1942, where they were murdered. It was not until

Colonel's secret recipe in new, safer vault at KFC

Colonel Sanders' handwritten recipe for fried chicken was back in its Kentucky home Tuesday after five months in hiding while KFC upgraded security around its top corporate secret. Nothing went afoul when the recipe was returned from an undisclosed location to KFC's headquarters late Monday in a lockbox handcuffed to the wrist of a security consultant. KFC President Roger Eaton was visibly relieved when the door to a new electronic safe was shut with the single sheet of

Van Gogh and the Colours of the Night, review (Amsterdam)

Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night is one of the first pictures the visitor sees in New York's Museum of Modern Art, its placement proclaiming its status as a forerunner of both the Fauve and Expressionist movements in 20th-century art. The exact opposite is the case in Van Gogh and the Colours of the Night, the show about Vincent's twilight and nocturnal scenes that opens at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam on Friday. Hung at the end wall of the last gallery, Starry Nig

£5.4million Turner masterpiece lost to the British nation

The painting, entitled Pope's Villa at Twickenham, had been on display at Sudeley Castle, the Gloucestershire home of Lady Ashcombe, for more than 160 years but was sold last year for £5.4 million at Sotheby's to an anonymous American buyer. Lady Ashcombe, whose son Henry Dent-Brocklehurst, is a film producer, and a friend of Elizabeth Hurley, decided to sell the painting to maintain the castle. The Government initially barred its export for three months, in an attemp

Critic: "Don't Give an Oscar to The Reader"

If I hadn't used the locution so recently, I would be certain to call The Reader "The Worst Holocaust Film Ever Made." Somebody has to say it. I haven't seen others do so in print. And if I'm not the perfect person to do so, I do have some expertise. And so I will: This is a film whose essential metaphorical thrust is to exculpate Nazi-era Germans from knowing complicity in the Final Solution. The fact that it was recently nominated for a best picture Oscar of

Artist Sues The A.P. Over Obama Image

In a pre-emptive strike, the street artist Shepard Fairey filed a lawsuit on Monday against The Associated Press, asking a federal judge to declare that he is protected from copyright infringement claims in his use of a news photograph as the basis for a now ubiquitous campaign poster image of President Obama. The suit was filed in federal court in Manhattan after The Associated Press said it had determined that it owned the image, which Mr. Fairey used for posters and stickers dist

Col. Jack Brennan On The Real Story Behind Frost/Nixon

Movie About China's Schindler Tells Story of Unlikely German Hero

John Rabe was a member of the Nazi party and the German electronics giant Siemens' man in China during the build-up to WWII. But he also helped save about 250,000 Chinese from the clutches of Japan's military machine."Ten years ago it was not possible to conceive that there was such thing as a good Nazi," said Ulrich Tukur, who plays Rabe in a film about his life that had its world premiere at this year's Berlin Film Festival. "The Third Reich is indeed typical of the depths that humans c

The unexpected face of Lincoln (Exhibit)

A new exhibit at Washington's National Portrait Gallery celebrates Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday. As Thalia Assuras reports, the exhibit shows an unexpected side of Lincoln.

Fragments of 'butchered' Renaissance masterpiece reunited for first time

Only three pieces from Paolo Veronese's 16th century masterpiece the Petrobelli Altarpiece were thought to have survived. The 18ft-high canvas was cut up in 1788 to be "sold just like meat in a butcher's shop", as one contemporary art dealer put it. But in a 'Eureka!' moment Xavier Salomon, curator of the Dulwich Picture Gallery in south London, identified the fourth part after visiting the Blanton Museum of Art in Texas. When he starting work on

James Whitmore, Character Actor Skilled in One-Man Shows, Dies at 87

James Whitmore, a leading character actor whose craggy face became a familiar one to film, television and stage audiences for decades and who won wide acclaim for a pair of one-man performances, as the humorist Will Rogers and a vinegary Harry S. Truman, died Friday at his home in Malibu, Calif. He was 87. The cause was lung cancer, his son Steve told The Associated Press. He said his father had received the cancer diagnosis a week before Thanksgiving. Mr. Whitmore foun

Ford's Theater reopens next week after 18 months of work

Could any assassination have been more overtly theatrical? It’s where Alfred Hitchcock must have gotten some of his ideas. But stand inside Ford’s Theater, which is reopening here next week after 18 months of renovation, as part of the first stage in the creation of an extensive museum devoted to Lincoln, and the reality becomes even more extraordinary. Barely 12 feet above the stage’s floor is the balustrade on which Lincoln collapsed after John Wilkes Booth shot a bullet from a .4

NYT review of Will Ferrell's You’re Welcome America. A Final Night With George W Bush

The 43rd president of the United States, who is known for his gift for instant nicknames, is generously sharing his talent these days with audiences at the Cort Theater, home to “You’re Welcome America. A Final Night With George W Bush.” Toward the end of this largely unsurprising, uh, celebration of one man’s life and accomplishments, Mr. Bush, reincarnated by the comedian and movie star Will Ferrell, asks theatergoers to tell him their occupations, so he can give them the gift of his own pet n

Lithuania and the Collapse of the USSR (Documentary review)

A number of years ago, the critic Amy Taubin, in a hilarious review of a misbegotten movie from Abel Ferrara, wrote that it “inspires the ontological question ‘What are films, and why is this not one of them?’ ” The same question buzzed through my mind while watching the weirdly compelling if almost unclassifiable “Lithuania and the Collapse of the USSR,” the latest work from the filmmaker, poet, archivist and cinematic avenging angel Jonas Mekas. “Lithuania,” I hasten to add, is certainly not m

Backtracking Brandeis President: ‘I Screwed Up’

President Obama has given college presidents a management strategy for controversy: admit it when you screw up. Jehuda Reinharz, president of Brandeis University, sent out an e-mail message to his campus Thursday that partially pulled back from the university’s plans to sell its art collection and shut down its art museum. “I take full responsibility for causing pain and embarrassment in both of these matters. To quote President Obama, ‘I screwed up,’ ” Reinharz’s e-mail message sai

A new look at Maggie on the BBC

Lindsay Duncan's screen persona, which could be summarised as "posh totty ice maiden" – sexy in a forbidding, patrician kind of way – does nothing to prepare me for the warm, down-to-earth actress who greets me over a platter of iced fairy cakes. "I had better not at this point," she says when offered the gateau. "Too much sugar and too much coffee and you start talking absolute bollocks." She is slighter than I imagined, and somehow translucent in the

After two centuries, St Michael restored to Veronese's altarpiece

He was part of an elite artistic triumvirate alongside Titian and Tintoretto, and his imposing altarpieces featuring saints, celestial creatures and supplicating patrons were the most admired in Renaissance Italy. Then one of the 16th-century painter Paolo Veronese's largest works, an altarpiece, was cut up and sold off to different buyers across the world. Until now, the face of St Michael from the Petrobelli Altarpiece, which was regarded as the work's crowning glory,