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 (10-31-07)
Paintings by van Gogh, Picasso, Renoir, Monet and Gauguin are among an estimated $5 billion worth of Western art locked in a basement beneath the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, The Guardian of London reported. Acquired in the 1970s, the collection includes “Mural on a Red Indian Ground,” one of the most valuable Jackson Pollock paintings, as well as Andy Warhol portraits. There are no plans to display them. All paintings the museum does exhibit are by Iranian artists. Habibollah Sadeghi, director of the museum, expressed his opposition to the “cultural socialism” of Western globalization, saying, “We are opposed to an aggressive, dominant culture.” But he attributed the failure to display the Western art to a lack of space, not politics. However, his predecessor, Alireza Samir-Azar, said the museum was accommodating an anti-Western political climate and suggested including the Western art in shows with themes like Impressionism or Expressionism.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007 - 18:45
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SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (10-31-07)
Katharine Hepburn was as strong-willed and prickly as the characters she played, previously unreleased diaries and private letters have revealed.
The papers, covering her theatre career and donated by the trustees of her estate to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, show the late actress as the sort of woman prepared to call a policeman a "moron" to his face and to fight for the right to utter expletives on stage.
The 22 boxes of papers, which include scripts, photographs, letters and scrapbooks, also show that Hepburn was insecure about her acting, especially on stage. She made pages of notes on intonation, cadence and pitch for a voice that Tallulah Bankhead once compared to "nickels dropping in a slot machine".
Hepburn, who died in 2003, threw away very little, providing much for acting scholars and fans to pore over once the papers go on public display next February after they have been catalogued.
...
The papers, covering her theatre career and donated by the trustees of her estate to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, show the late actress as the sort of woman prepared to call a policeman a "moron" to his face and to fight for the right to utter expletives on stage.
The 22 boxes of papers, which include scripts, photographs, letters and scrapbooks, also show that Hepburn was insecure about her acting, especially on stage. She made pages of notes on intonation, cadence and pitch for a voice that Tallulah Bankhead once compared to "nickels dropping in a slot machine".
Hepburn, who died in 2003, threw away very little, providing much for acting scholars and fans to pore over once the papers go on public display next February after they have been catalogued.
...
Wednesday, October 31, 2007 - 12:55
SOURCE: USA Today (10-31-07)
Phil Donahue is getting in the last word. One of the first television personalities to speak out against America's hapless adventure in Iraq, Donahue was also among the war's earliest media casualties. He lost his MSNBC talk show back in 2003 when, according to an internal memo, his bosses had begun worrying that he would turn his show into "a home for the liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity."
Donahue, for all appearances, vanished from view. But not for long. Last month, he showed up at the Toronto International Film Festival with a new documentary, Body of War, a searing chronicle of a U.S. soldier gravely wounded in Baghdad, and his tortured physical and emotional struggle to find a place of comfort back home.
Whether a testament to the former TV host's popularity, or simply the potency of his subject matter, Donahue's film (which he co-directed with veteran documentarist Ellen...
Donahue, for all appearances, vanished from view. But not for long. Last month, he showed up at the Toronto International Film Festival with a new documentary, Body of War, a searing chronicle of a U.S. soldier gravely wounded in Baghdad, and his tortured physical and emotional struggle to find a place of comfort back home.
Whether a testament to the former TV host's popularity, or simply the potency of his subject matter, Donahue's film (which he co-directed with veteran documentarist Ellen...
Wednesday, October 31, 2007 - 01:03
SOURCE: Jonathan Darman in Newsweek (10-24-07)
Queens are meant to be looked at, not touched. Early in the new film "Elizabeth: The Golden Age," England's Elizabeth I, played by Cate Blanchett, is bored by a bad date. Watching, at close range, is a flock of curious courtiers; her suitor, a stuttering continental royal, is clearly terrified by the mob. Ever gracious, the queen offers some advice. Her secret for life in the public eye, she tells her companion, is to pretend she lives behind "a pane of glass." It keeps her safe, cuts her off from the courtly crowd. "They can't touch me," she says. "You should try it."
"Elizabeth" is worth watching in the midst of this election season even if it offers us little escape. The Virgin Queen's world, after all, is in many ways our own. A nation is in peril. Bitterly divided at home, it vacillates between two warring dynasties. Threatened by dark forces abroad, it worries that a decisive moment is coming when one great empire...
"Elizabeth" is worth watching in the midst of this election season even if it offers us little escape. The Virgin Queen's world, after all, is in many ways our own. A nation is in peril. Bitterly divided at home, it vacillates between two warring dynasties. Threatened by dark forces abroad, it worries that a decisive moment is coming when one great empire...
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 - 21:25
SOURCE: NYT (10-30-07)
The letter to George C. Tyler, a theatrical producer in New York, suggests a young actress that he “might keep in mind” for a part. “She has had a variety of experience,” it says, and “she comes from a good family.”
The well-bred lady was Katharine Hepburn, and the undated letter, from a family friend, is part of a cache of theater-related photographs, scrapbooks, journals, scripts and more. Four years after Hepburn’s death, the material forms a gift from her estate to the New York Public Library that is to be announced today. The documents, all related to Hepburn’s stage career, offer a revealing glance at her personality, profession and obsessions.
There are fan notes from Henry Fonda, Laurence Olivier and Judy Garland. “I’ve always said you were our leading actress,” Garland wrote during the 1952 run of “The Millionairess,” before complaining, “I am getting fat and pregnant and mean.” After seeing “The West Side Waltz” in 1981, Charlton Heston wrote, “You...
The well-bred lady was Katharine Hepburn, and the undated letter, from a family friend, is part of a cache of theater-related photographs, scrapbooks, journals, scripts and more. Four years after Hepburn’s death, the material forms a gift from her estate to the New York Public Library that is to be announced today. The documents, all related to Hepburn’s stage career, offer a revealing glance at her personality, profession and obsessions.
There are fan notes from Henry Fonda, Laurence Olivier and Judy Garland. “I’ve always said you were our leading actress,” Garland wrote during the 1952 run of “The Millionairess,” before complaining, “I am getting fat and pregnant and mean.” After seeing “The West Side Waltz” in 1981, Charlton Heston wrote, “You...
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 - 21:16
SOURCE: NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF in the NYT (10-28-07)
NO sane architect, one can assume, would want to invite comparisons between his building and the Parthenon. So it comes as little surprise that the New Acropolis Museum, which stands at the foot of one of the great achievements of human history, is a quiet work, especially by the standards of its flamboyant Swiss-born architect, Bernard Tschumi.
But in mastering his ego, Mr. Tschumi pulled off an impressive accomplishment: a building that is both an enlightening meditation on the Parthenon and a mesmerizing work in its own right. I can’t remember seeing a design that is so eloquent about another work of architecture.
When this museum in Athens opens next year, hundreds of marble sculptures from the old Acropolis museum alongside the Parthenon will finally reside in a place that can properly care for them. Missing, however, will be more than half of the surviving Parthenon sculptures, the Elgin Marbles, so called since they were carted off to London by Lord...
But in mastering his ego, Mr. Tschumi pulled off an impressive accomplishment: a building that is both an enlightening meditation on the Parthenon and a mesmerizing work in its own right. I can’t remember seeing a design that is so eloquent about another work of architecture.
When this museum in Athens opens next year, hundreds of marble sculptures from the old Acropolis museum alongside the Parthenon will finally reside in a place that can properly care for them. Missing, however, will be more than half of the surviving Parthenon sculptures, the Elgin Marbles, so called since they were carted off to London by Lord...
Sunday, October 28, 2007 - 19:33
SOURCE: NYT (10-28-07)
WE are a nation of grad students, or that’s what people in the book business seem to be hoping as they race to sell us not only the finished work of famous authors but also the rough drafts.
To compete with Knopf’s new translation of “War and Peace,” by the husband-and-wife team of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, for example, HarperCollins has brought out a translation, by Andrew Bromfield, of an earlier version of the novel, completed three years before the final text but never published in Tolstoy’s lifetime. This version, which includes more peace than war, eliminates nearly all the conversations in French and allows Prince Andrei to survive the Battle of Borodino. It’s also hundreds of pages shorter than the Knopf doorstopper, which may recommend it to slackers as well as to Tolstoyans.
On the other hand, the draft of Thomas Wolfe’s “Look Homeward, Angel” — called “O Lost: A Story of the Buried Life” in the original — published by the University of...
To compete with Knopf’s new translation of “War and Peace,” by the husband-and-wife team of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, for example, HarperCollins has brought out a translation, by Andrew Bromfield, of an earlier version of the novel, completed three years before the final text but never published in Tolstoy’s lifetime. This version, which includes more peace than war, eliminates nearly all the conversations in French and allows Prince Andrei to survive the Battle of Borodino. It’s also hundreds of pages shorter than the Knopf doorstopper, which may recommend it to slackers as well as to Tolstoyans.
On the other hand, the draft of Thomas Wolfe’s “Look Homeward, Angel” — called “O Lost: A Story of the Buried Life” in the original — published by the University of...
Sunday, October 28, 2007 - 19:27
SOURCE: NYT (10-27-07)
Two young men who have just returned from war meet one night at a college party and discover that their mutual abhorrence of what they have been through has led them to a deep loathing of the politicians who caused it. In Stephen Massicotte’s excellent new play, “The Oxford Roof Climber’s Rebellion,” the two veterans are T. E. Lawrence and Robert Graves, and it takes no leap of the imagination to translate their World War I experiences into stories from today’s newspaper.
The play, produced by Urban Stages, inventively expands on the real-life friendship of the two soldier-scholars and their shared passion of disillusion. In Mr. Massicotte’s version Graves and Lawrence meet at Oxford in 1920 and undertake a campaign against the heresy, promulgated by politicians, that war is noble and that its victims are all heroes.
The plot revolves around a plan by Lord Curzon, the British foreign secretary, to set aside Nov. 11 as a permanent Day of Remembrance to honor “...
The play, produced by Urban Stages, inventively expands on the real-life friendship of the two soldier-scholars and their shared passion of disillusion. In Mr. Massicotte’s version Graves and Lawrence meet at Oxford in 1920 and undertake a campaign against the heresy, promulgated by politicians, that war is noble and that its victims are all heroes.
The plot revolves around a plan by Lord Curzon, the British foreign secretary, to set aside Nov. 11 as a permanent Day of Remembrance to honor “...
Sunday, October 28, 2007 - 14:05
SOURCE: NYT (10-24-07)
One day a vandal, the next an artist. That is the story of the baseball-capped culprit who dumped a bottle of dye into the famed Trevi Fountain here on Friday, turning the waters blood-red for a day.
As soon as it was clear that the 18th-century Baroque fountain had not been seriously damaged, intellectuals and art critics began reconsidering the gesture as something nearing genius.
“Once the indignation had died down, we rediscovered the Fountain of Trevi,” said Roberto D’Agostino, an Italian blogger. “It’s a resurrection of Andy Warhol, the act of highlighting an object of mass consumption.”
A box found near the fountain held leaflets signed “Ftm Futurist Action 2007,” a reference to Futurism, the early 20th-century art movement that advocated a violent break with the past. The fliers said that the act was, in part, a protest of the cost of the Rome Film Fest, which runs until Saturday, and that the color referred to the event’s red carpet.
As soon as it was clear that the 18th-century Baroque fountain had not been seriously damaged, intellectuals and art critics began reconsidering the gesture as something nearing genius.
“Once the indignation had died down, we rediscovered the Fountain of Trevi,” said Roberto D’Agostino, an Italian blogger. “It’s a resurrection of Andy Warhol, the act of highlighting an object of mass consumption.”
A box found near the fountain held leaflets signed “Ftm Futurist Action 2007,” a reference to Futurism, the early 20th-century art movement that advocated a violent break with the past. The fliers said that the act was, in part, a protest of the cost of the Rome Film Fest, which runs until Saturday, and that the color referred to the event’s red carpet.
Friday, October 26, 2007 - 18:52
SOURCE: NYT (10-25-07)
PENNVILLE, Ga., Oct. 21 — To understand how Howard Finster, a Baptist preacher and bicycle repairman, became one of the most notable folk artists in the world, it is worth a visit to where it all started: the tiny white wooden house in this hamlet, tucked into the state’s northwestern corner.
It was in the Howard Finster Vision House, a name it has acquired since his death in 2001, that Mr. Finster said he was directed by God to stop repairing bicycles and paint “sermon art.” And it was here, years later, that he made a “garden of paradise,” a sprawling art environment he lovingly tended for 30 years that many consider to be his greatest work.
In these Paradise Gardens, as they are now called, Mr. Finster salvaged and transformed everyday objects into whimsical statues, mosaics and playhouses. He collected and saved so much junk for his art projects at one point that he had to make a deal to appease his wife, Pauline. She could have the front half of the house...
It was in the Howard Finster Vision House, a name it has acquired since his death in 2001, that Mr. Finster said he was directed by God to stop repairing bicycles and paint “sermon art.” And it was here, years later, that he made a “garden of paradise,” a sprawling art environment he lovingly tended for 30 years that many consider to be his greatest work.
In these Paradise Gardens, as they are now called, Mr. Finster salvaged and transformed everyday objects into whimsical statues, mosaics and playhouses. He collected and saved so much junk for his art projects at one point that he had to make a deal to appease his wife, Pauline. She could have the front half of the house...
Friday, October 26, 2007 - 18:50
SOURCE: NYT (10-25-07)
Laurence Fishburne is going to Broadway next spring in a production of “Thurgood,” the one-man play by George Stevens Jr. about the former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. The producer Bill Haber’s company, Ostar Productions, started making plans for Broadway after the show’s brief, sold-out run at the Westport Country Playhouse in 2006 with James Earl Jones in the title role. “Thurgood” will open on April 20 at the Booth Theater, with previews beginning on March 30.
Friday, October 26, 2007 - 18:49
SOURCE: NYT (10-26-07)
When most New Yorkers think of Ellis Island, they probably recall the Great Hall where 12 million immigrants were processed, which opened to the public in 1990 after three decades of neglect and disrepair.
But unknown to most people is the fact that Ellis Island contains a long-forgotten 22-building hospital complex, which during its busiest years, from 1902 to 1930, was one of the largest public health undertakings in United States history, and a place of heartbreak and hope, sickness and recovery.
Since 1998, Lorie Conway, a Boston-based journalist and documentary filmmaker, has worked to uncover the hospital’s history. She received exclusive access from the National Park Service to film at the abandoned hospital for two years.
She stepped into buildings overgrown with ivy and filled with asbestos and broken glass. She traveled across the country to find records in dusty government archives. She tracked down descendants of long-dead immigrants,...
But unknown to most people is the fact that Ellis Island contains a long-forgotten 22-building hospital complex, which during its busiest years, from 1902 to 1930, was one of the largest public health undertakings in United States history, and a place of heartbreak and hope, sickness and recovery.
Since 1998, Lorie Conway, a Boston-based journalist and documentary filmmaker, has worked to uncover the hospital’s history. She received exclusive access from the National Park Service to film at the abandoned hospital for two years.
She stepped into buildings overgrown with ivy and filled with asbestos and broken glass. She traveled across the country to find records in dusty government archives. She tracked down descendants of long-dead immigrants,...
Friday, October 26, 2007 - 18:47
SOURCE: http://weekly.ahram.org (10-26-07)
Ramadan TV is over, but one serialised drama lives on: Hala Sakr seeks out informed opinion regarding the controversy surrounding the monarch's portrayal in King Farouk, which though restricted to the Saudi satellite channel during Ramadan is now being screened again on national television
It's been 55 years since King Farouk I, Egypt's last monarch, left the country and the throne, and 40 years since his death in Italy. Having kept a more or less low profile since then, the regent hit back with a vengeance this Ramadan. Since the screening of the 30-episode TV drama Al-Malik Farouk (King Farouk), written by Lamis Gaber and starring Syrian actor Taim El-Hassan, Farouk's spectre has haunted living rooms and café terraces alike, with virtually the entire population debating the merits of the monarchy, abolished a year after the king departed in 1953. An avalanche of praise for the monarchy took the country by surprise, prompting one weekly magazine often detracted for being...
It's been 55 years since King Farouk I, Egypt's last monarch, left the country and the throne, and 40 years since his death in Italy. Having kept a more or less low profile since then, the regent hit back with a vengeance this Ramadan. Since the screening of the 30-episode TV drama Al-Malik Farouk (King Farouk), written by Lamis Gaber and starring Syrian actor Taim El-Hassan, Farouk's spectre has haunted living rooms and café terraces alike, with virtually the entire population debating the merits of the monarchy, abolished a year after the king departed in 1953. An avalanche of praise for the monarchy took the country by surprise, prompting one weekly magazine often detracted for being...
Friday, October 26, 2007 - 18:42
SOURCE: NYT (10-26-07)
The hair itself looked unexceptional, dark with sun-burnished tips, perhaps 100 strands, wrapped in a piece of notebook paper. But when the final gavel fell Thursday in a bizarre auction conducted under high security here, the hair and the sheaf of historical documents that accompanied it sold for $100,000, the minimum bid.
The lock of hair on auction was taken 40 years ago from the corpse of Che Guevara, the famed revolutionary and cultural icon, by one of the men who had tracked him down and, after he was killed, buried him.
The lone bidder was Bill Butler, 61, a Texas bookstore owner and collector of ’60s memorabilia. After making the bid, Mr. Butler told reporters by telephone that Mr. Guevara was “one of the greatest revolutionaries in the 20th century” and that it was “a great feeling” to own the items, which he said he would display in his bookstore.
The lock of hair on auction was taken 40 years ago from the corpse of Che Guevara, the famed revolutionary and cultural icon, by one of the men who had tracked him down and, after he was killed, buried him.
The lone bidder was Bill Butler, 61, a Texas bookstore owner and collector of ’60s memorabilia. After making the bid, Mr. Butler told reporters by telephone that Mr. Guevara was “one of the greatest revolutionaries in the 20th century” and that it was “a great feeling” to own the items, which he said he would display in his bookstore.
Friday, October 26, 2007 - 18:20
SOURCE: NYT (10-26-07)
Since 1875, the mummified, tattooed head of a Maori warrior has been part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Natural History at Rouen in Normandy.
But when Rouen’s mayor arranged recently to return it to New Zealand as an act of “atonement” for colonial-era trafficking in human remains, the national Ministry of Culture stepped in to block him.
The ministry contends that the head is a work of art that belongs to France and that its return could set an unfortunate precedent for a huge swath of the national museum collections — from Egyptian mummies in the Louvre to Asian treasures in the Musée Guimet and African and Oceanic artifacts in the Musée du Quai Branly.
“The mayor of Rouen made his decision without any consultation, and his decision is against the law,” Olivier Henrard, the legal adviser for the Ministry of Culture, said Thursday, referring to a 2002 law that states that works of art are “inalienable.”
“There are other...
But when Rouen’s mayor arranged recently to return it to New Zealand as an act of “atonement” for colonial-era trafficking in human remains, the national Ministry of Culture stepped in to block him.
The ministry contends that the head is a work of art that belongs to France and that its return could set an unfortunate precedent for a huge swath of the national museum collections — from Egyptian mummies in the Louvre to Asian treasures in the Musée Guimet and African and Oceanic artifacts in the Musée du Quai Branly.
“The mayor of Rouen made his decision without any consultation, and his decision is against the law,” Olivier Henrard, the legal adviser for the Ministry of Culture, said Thursday, referring to a 2002 law that states that works of art are “inalienable.”
“There are other...
Friday, October 26, 2007 - 18:19
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (10-25-07)
Fans of The Da Vinci Code may think that £4,000 is a small price to pay for an exclusive document that clears the good name of the mysterious Knights Templar.
The Templars were rumoured to have found the Holy Grail.
The Vatican is selling a limited edition of life-sized replicas of a giant forgotten parchment that absolves the mysterious knights of their status as heretics.
Only 799 copies of the document, which is the size of a small dinner table, will be sold for €5,900 (£3,925) each.
An 800th copy will be presented to Pope Benedict XVI.
The 300-page Processus Contra Templarios (Trial against the Templars), measuring more than two metres across, records the trial of the knights when they were accused of heresy before Pope Clement V between 1307 and 1312.
Also known as the Chinon parchment, the original artefact was discovered in the Vatican's secret archives in 2001 after it had been wrongly catalogued for more...
The Templars were rumoured to have found the Holy Grail.
The Vatican is selling a limited edition of life-sized replicas of a giant forgotten parchment that absolves the mysterious knights of their status as heretics.
Only 799 copies of the document, which is the size of a small dinner table, will be sold for €5,900 (£3,925) each.
An 800th copy will be presented to Pope Benedict XVI.
The 300-page Processus Contra Templarios (Trial against the Templars), measuring more than two metres across, records the trial of the knights when they were accused of heresy before Pope Clement V between 1307 and 1312.
Also known as the Chinon parchment, the original artefact was discovered in the Vatican's secret archives in 2001 after it had been wrongly catalogued for more...
Thursday, October 25, 2007 - 18:48
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (10-23-07)
Art historians have come up with countless theories over the years to explain why the Mona Lisa appears to have no eyebrows.
But now Pascal Cotte, a Parisian engineer, claims to have the answer after spending 3,000 hours studying digital scans of Leonardo Da Vinci's enigmatic 16th-century portrait.
Using a high-definition camera, he claims to have uncovered the fine brush strokes of eyebrows and lashes Leonardo originally gave the Florentine merchant's wife.
Over the centuries, however, the delicate lines either faded or were wiped off during careless restoration, Mr Cotte said at a Leonardo exhibition in San Francisco.
"If you look closely at Mona Lisa's left eye you can clearly see that the cracks around it have slightly disappeared," he said. "That may be because one day a curator or restorer cleaned the eye, and in doing so probably removed the eyelashes and eyebrow."
But now Pascal Cotte, a Parisian engineer, claims to have the answer after spending 3,000 hours studying digital scans of Leonardo Da Vinci's enigmatic 16th-century portrait.
Using a high-definition camera, he claims to have uncovered the fine brush strokes of eyebrows and lashes Leonardo originally gave the Florentine merchant's wife.
Over the centuries, however, the delicate lines either faded or were wiped off during careless restoration, Mr Cotte said at a Leonardo exhibition in San Francisco.
"If you look closely at Mona Lisa's left eye you can clearly see that the cracks around it have slightly disappeared," he said. "That may be because one day a curator or restorer cleaned the eye, and in doing so probably removed the eyelashes and eyebrow."
Tuesday, October 23, 2007 - 19:10
SOURCE: Times (UK) (10-21-07)
Some years ago, I walked around Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin. It’s an astonishing building, based on a deconstruction of the Star of David. A lot of Berliners had paid to look at it, proud that this beautiful edifice representing modern, liberal, cultured Germany coming to terms with its past was there. Nobody mentioned, or seemed to notice, that it was empty. They hadn’t put the exhibit in. Berlin’s Jews were absent from Berlin’s Jewish Museum, as they were from Berlin. It was a more ironically poignant memorial to Germany than the Germans imagined.
I was reminded of Libeskind’s building as I watched The Relief of Belsen (Monday, C4),a docu-drama on the liberation of the concentration camp. “Where are the Jews?” I kept whispering. We were being shown British and Germans, and Richard Dimbleby, and any amount of authentic-looking stage management and set design; there were just no on-screen inmates. They were referred to: they were down the road, round the...
I was reminded of Libeskind’s building as I watched The Relief of Belsen (Monday, C4),a docu-drama on the liberation of the concentration camp. “Where are the Jews?” I kept whispering. We were being shown British and Germans, and Richard Dimbleby, and any amount of authentic-looking stage management and set design; there were just no on-screen inmates. They were referred to: they were down the road, round the...
Monday, October 22, 2007 - 20:32
SOURCE: Press Release--New-York Historical Society (10-22-07)
New-York Historical Society President and CEO Louise Mirrer, curator Richard Rabinowitz and historian and Lafayette in Two Worlds author Lloyd Kramer will provide members of the media with an in-depth preview of the Historical Society’s new exhibition, French Founding Father: Lafayette’s Return to Washington’s America, on Thursday, November 15 from 10 a.m. to Noon at the New-York Historical Society (170 Central Park West at 77th Street).
On the occasion of Gilbert du Motier Lafayette’s 250th birthday, the exhibition explores the Marquis’ role in the American Revolution and how his year-long tour of the fledgling United States in 1824 inspired the patriotic identification of a young nation. During Lafayette’s visit, the “nation’s guest” was greeted as a hero by millions of cheering supporters in towns and cities across America for his bravery during the tortuous war for independence, his loyalty to General Washington, and as a symbol of freedom.
French...
On the occasion of Gilbert du Motier Lafayette’s 250th birthday, the exhibition explores the Marquis’ role in the American Revolution and how his year-long tour of the fledgling United States in 1824 inspired the patriotic identification of a young nation. During Lafayette’s visit, the “nation’s guest” was greeted as a hero by millions of cheering supporters in towns and cities across America for his bravery during the tortuous war for independence, his loyalty to General Washington, and as a symbol of freedom.
French...
Monday, October 22, 2007 - 18:20
SOURCE: NYT (10-21-07)
JONATHAN DEMME is a bit of an opportunist.
Other less-alert types might have visited Scotty’s Fish and Chips in a rough-and-tumble part of town here, been impressed by the oxtail stew, the friendly staff and the humble but spotless surroundings, and then come back for lunch. But Mr. Demme, the director of more than two dozen films, liked the restaurant so much he decided to rewrite a scene previously set in an arcade in “Dancing With Shiva,” a feature film starring Anne Hathaway he’s filming nearby, and shoot it there instead.
Mr. Demme generally tends to mix art and life in his films, most recently blending his admiration for a former president and a persistent interest in politics into “Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains,” which will begin showing in New York, Los Angeles and three other cities on Friday.
But even someone as astute as Mr. Demme could not have predicted that after he agreed to make the movie, Mr. Carter would re-enter the news in a big...
Other less-alert types might have visited Scotty’s Fish and Chips in a rough-and-tumble part of town here, been impressed by the oxtail stew, the friendly staff and the humble but spotless surroundings, and then come back for lunch. But Mr. Demme, the director of more than two dozen films, liked the restaurant so much he decided to rewrite a scene previously set in an arcade in “Dancing With Shiva,” a feature film starring Anne Hathaway he’s filming nearby, and shoot it there instead.
Mr. Demme generally tends to mix art and life in his films, most recently blending his admiration for a former president and a persistent interest in politics into “Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains,” which will begin showing in New York, Los Angeles and three other cities on Friday.
But even someone as astute as Mr. Demme could not have predicted that after he agreed to make the movie, Mr. Carter would re-enter the news in a big...
Sunday, October 21, 2007 - 21:50
