Roundup: Pop Culture & the Arts ...
Movies, Documentaries and Museum Exhibits
This page features links to reviews of movies, documentaries and exhibits with a historical theme. Listings are in reverse chronological order. Descriptions are taken directly from the linked publication. If you have articles you think should be listed on the Pop Culture page, please send them to the editor editor@historynewsnetwork.org.
SOURCE: NYT (8-3-07)
Until his death from tuberculosis in 1857, at the age of 44, William Ranney was among the liveliest and most beloved suppliers of homespun imagery of the hazards and romance of the American West. But after the Civil War he fell out of sight as tastes changed and that kind of work was no longer fashionable.
Now he has returned, as the focus of an unabashedly nostalgic but visually delightful retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, on tour from the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyo. Few of the 60 paintings and dozen drawings gathered here have been shown together since his last retrospective in the mid-1960s, so this Ranney showcase has the effect of a minor revelation.
Though Ranney was best known for his frontier scenes, they constitute less than a third of his meager output of about 150 works. A virtue of this exhibition is that it fills in the career blanks, with several bays of terrific hunting and sporting pictures, historical and rural...
Now he has returned, as the focus of an unabashedly nostalgic but visually delightful retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, on tour from the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyo. Few of the 60 paintings and dozen drawings gathered here have been shown together since his last retrospective in the mid-1960s, so this Ranney showcase has the effect of a minor revelation.
Though Ranney was best known for his frontier scenes, they constitute less than a third of his meager output of about 150 works. A virtue of this exhibition is that it fills in the career blanks, with several bays of terrific hunting and sporting pictures, historical and rural...
Friday, August 3, 2007 - 13:33
Comments
SOURCE: Andrew O'Hehir at Salon.com (8-2-07)
Didn't John Adams and Thomas Jefferson die on the same day
too? The parallel is pretty distant, but I suppose in their own field they
were just as important. When I was writing my obituary essay about Ingmar
Bergman on Monday, I at first included a parenthesis to say that
Michelangelo Antonioni and Jean-Luc Godard were now the last surviving
big-name directors of 1960s art-house cinema. Late in the day I had to
take that sentence out, marveling at the strangeness of fate; word came
over the Associated Press wires that Antonioni had died in Rome, at age
94.
I don't want to get dragged into some facile compare-and-contrast, or the sort of wonky taxonomy that reveals film snobbery at its most unpleasant. You can't imagine contemporary cinema without both Bergman and Antonioni any more than you can imagine the history of the American republic without both Adams and Jefferson. (Unlike the second and third presidents, the two filmmakers liked and respected one another.) As different as...
Thursday, August 2, 2007 - 13:18
SOURCE: USA Today (8-1-07)
Faced with two competing theatrical releases about the CIA and winnowing Robert Littell's best-selling novel about the spy business into a $100-million-plus, 21/2-hour movie, filmmaker Ridley Scott decided The Company would make a better miniseries.
"I loved Ken Nolan's script," Scott says. "But we discovered Bobby De Niro had started on The Good Shepherd," and Warner Bros. had another spy project. "All three were similar takes on the CIA."
Now a $40 million, six-hour miniseries adapted by Nolan (Black Hawk Down) and directed by Mikael Salomon, The Company premieres on cable's TNT Sunday (8 ET/PT) in a format that enables "one to tell and flush out history in grander form," says Scott, who was to direct the theatrical release but was an executive producer on the TV project. "It's almost better as a giant miniseries."
The Company spans the post-World War II start of the CIA through five decades of Cold War...
"I loved Ken Nolan's script," Scott says. "But we discovered Bobby De Niro had started on The Good Shepherd," and Warner Bros. had another spy project. "All three were similar takes on the CIA."
Now a $40 million, six-hour miniseries adapted by Nolan (Black Hawk Down) and directed by Mikael Salomon, The Company premieres on cable's TNT Sunday (8 ET/PT) in a format that enables "one to tell and flush out history in grander form," says Scott, who was to direct the theatrical release but was an executive producer on the TV project. "It's almost better as a giant miniseries."
The Company spans the post-World War II start of the CIA through five decades of Cold War...
Thursday, August 2, 2007 - 11:38
SOURCE: NYT (8-1-07)
One day in the early 1960s, a young man who worked as driver and baggage handler for a group called Johnny Jenkins and the Pinetoppers lugged its instruments into the studios of Stax Records in Memphis, where the band was scheduled for a recording session. As it happened, the young man sang too — in a husky tenor — and spent his idle hours that afternoon begging people to hand him a mike.
By the end of the day, no one had given him a shot, and the label’s founder Jim Stewart felt guilty. Mr. Stewart was simply that kind of guy. The task of hearing out the eager aspirant fell begrudgingly to Steve Cropper, guitarist for Booker T. & the MGs, one of the label’s popular bands. As Mr. Cropper tells it in “Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story,” a “Great Performances” documentary tonight on PBS: “He started singing ‘These Arms of Mine,’ and I know my hair lifted out about three inches. I couldn’t believe this guy’s voice.” It belonged to Otis Redding.
By the end of the day, no one had given him a shot, and the label’s founder Jim Stewart felt guilty. Mr. Stewart was simply that kind of guy. The task of hearing out the eager aspirant fell begrudgingly to Steve Cropper, guitarist for Booker T. & the MGs, one of the label’s popular bands. As Mr. Cropper tells it in “Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story,” a “Great Performances” documentary tonight on PBS: “He started singing ‘These Arms of Mine,’ and I know my hair lifted out about three inches. I couldn’t believe this guy’s voice.” It belonged to Otis Redding.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007 - 21:43
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