It’s Rolling Stones week:  their latest greatest-hits package “GRRR!” is available today.  It contains 50 tracks, ranging from their ’63 debut single “Come On” to “Doom and Gloom” and “One More Shot,” two new songs recorded in August in Paris, where the Stones played a club set last month.

And on Thursday, Brett Morgen’s documentary “Crossfire Hurricane” has its premiere on HBO.  It shines a light on the history of the Stones while not quite revealing, at least not explicitly, how they remained great despite the kind of turmoil that now seems a perverse form of wish fulfillment.

As Keith Richards points out early in the documentary, at the urging of their first manager Andrew Loog Oldham, the Stones sought to be the anti-Beatles – the guys in the black hats, to paraphrase Keith Richards.  Violence broke out at their early ‘60s shows, and a young Mick Jagger suggests it was a natural reaction by socially dissatisfied youth rather than the result of a provocative marketing ploy.  Unbridled hedonism and drug busts ensued, and original member Brian Jones, fired from the band, succumbed to “death by misadventure” – Jagger says, “He was the author of his own misfortune.”  The band moved on to often-excellent second and third acts in its five decades....

...In 2010 History checked in with the 12-hour “America: The Story of Us,” and on Tuesday night it applies the formulas used in that mini-series to the even more all-encompassing “Mankind: The Story of All of Us.” That preposterously grandiose title really needed to be strung out a bit to give an accurate picture of the program. Something like, “Mankind: The Story of All of Us, Delivered Somewhat Superficially by People You Know and Love, Because We Don’t Want to Bore You.”

The series, at least judging from the first two hours, feels as if its broadcast incarnation is a secondary concern. What it is really aiming for is the high school market. It’s a quick survey of our species’ high points — walking upright, cultivating seeds, learning more efficient ways to kill one another — delivered in student-friendly fashion with a stay-awake soundtrack and a narrator (Josh Brolin) who intones the important points in imposing, write-this-down fashion....

It is something of a paradox that American movies — a great democratic art form, if ever there was one — have not done a very good job of representing American democracy. Make-believe movie presidents are usually square-jawed action heroes, stoical Solons or ineffectual eggheads, blander and more generically appealing than their complicated real-life counterparts, who tend to be treated deferentially or ignored entirely unless they are named Richard Nixon.

The legislative process — the linchpin of our system of checks and balances — is often treated with lofty contempt masquerading as populist indignation, an attitude typified by the aw-shucks antipolitics of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Hollywood dreams of consensus, of happy endings and box office unity, but democratic government can present an interminable tale of gridlock, compromise and division. The squalor and vigor, the glory and corruption of the Republic in action have all too rarely made it onto the big screen.

There are exceptions, of course, and one of them is Steven Spielberg’s splendid “Lincoln,” which is, strictly speaking, about a president trying to scare up votes to get a bill passed in Congress. It is of course about a lot more than that, but let’s stick to the basics for now. To say that this is among the finest films ever made about American politics may be to congratulate it for clearing a fairly low bar. Some of the movie’s virtues are, at first glance, modest ones, like those of its hero, who is pleased to present himself as a simple backwoods lawyer, even as his folksy mannerisms mask a formidable and cunning political mind....

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HNN Hot Topics: "Lincoln": The Movie

PORTOLA VALLEY, Calif. — A tank museum anywhere is a strange spectacle. It documents humanity’s ingenuity and ambition, and also its desire to demolish whatever is in its path with terrifying finality.

A tank museum tucked into the tranquil hills here is stranger still. A tiny town west of Stanford University, Portola Valley is the sort of place where breezes tinged with the scent of old money and horse manure waft through picturesque woodlands, and leaf blowers that don’t even reach the noise level of a moderately crowded Manhattan singles bar are officially prohibited.

Yet Portola Valley is where you’ll find the Military Vehicle Technology Foundation, one of the nation’s most intriguing museums. On the right day, you might find Tom Sator there, too....

Simon Schama is a professor of history and art history at Columbia University. He is a contributing editors of the Financial Times, and regular broadcaster and documentary film maker for the BBC.

Fleming was not the only writer who used spy literature to explore the many shades of British impotence. In the early ’60s, when the Bond movies were launched, John le Carré, who knew whereof he wrote, created the dark, treacherous, authentically chronicled world of the Cold War MI6. But there was also the underappreciated and brilliant Len Deighton, whose “insubordinate” agent (called “Harry Palmer,” and played by Michael Caine, in the movies) perfected a street-smart insolence that couldn’t have been more different from Bond. Palmer seduced as much with his Gauloise-smoking cockney attitude as he did with his cooking. (Deighton wrote excellent cookbooks meant to persuade men their virility was not under threat from knowing how to dice an onion or make a cheese soufflé puff and rise.)...

It took three weeks, but "Argo" finally found its way to the top of the box office.

The Warner Bros. thriller from director and star Ben Affleck, inspired by the real-life rescue of six U.S. embassy workers during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, made nearly $12.4 million this weekend, according to Sunday studio estimates. "Argo" had been in second place the past two weeks and has now made about $60.8 million total...

National Geographic Society has chronicled scientific expeditions, explorations, archaeology, wildlife and world cultures for more than 100 years, amassing a collection of 11.5 million photos and original illustrations.

A small selection of that massive archive - 240 pieces spanning from the late 1800s to the present - will be sold at Christie's in December at an auction expected to bring about $3 million, the first time any of the institution's collection has been sold.

Among the items are some of National Geographic's most indelible photographs, including that of an Afghan girl during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a portrait of Admiral Robert Peary at his 1908 expedition to the North Pole, a roaring lion in South Africa and the face of a Papua New Guinea aborigine.

Paintings and illustrations include N.C. Wyeth's historical scene of sword-fighting pirates, Charles Bittinger's view of Earth as seen from the moon, and Charles Knight's depictions of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals...,