A theory on documentaries that strip-mine the 1960s: The less fresh insight the program has to offer, the earlier the Buffalo Springfield song “For What It’s Worth” will turn up on the soundtrack. Written by Stephen Stills, that astonishing song (“There’s something happening here/What it is ain’t exactly clear”) came to encapsulate ’60s turmoil so perfectly that resorting to it is a subconscious admission by a documentarian: “I have nothing to say that Stephen Stills didn’t say better in 2 minutes 41 seconds.”

The song is heard about two minutes into the two-hour “1968 With Tom Brokaw,” tomorrow night on the History Channel. Its instantly recognizable two-note opening rings like an alarm bell for the viewer: “Warning: Regurgitation of a lot of stuff you already know ahead.”

It didn’t have to be that way. Mr. Brokaw has an eclectic array of voices in his program: Arlo Guthrie, Tommy Smothers, Pat Buchanan, James Taylor, Rafer Johnson, Dorothy Rabinowitz. And...

Opening Thursday, December 13, this free exhibition marks the first of the Library’s new interactive gallery experiences which invite the public to experience the institution’s vast collections like never before (Fully opened in April 2008, the new Library of Congress Experience will offer virtual hands-on interaction with rare and unique items, such as the rough draft of The Declaration of Independence, the Gutenberg Bible and original volumes from Thomas Jefferson's Library).

A significant collection gathered over a half-century by Florida collector Jay I. Kislak, “Exploring the Early Americas” provides a glimpse of life in the Americas before Christopher Columbus set sail. Interactive stations offer visitors virtual, hands-on journeys into the history of the Americas. Divided by time period, the exhibition covers Pre-contact America, European Explorations and Encounters, and Aftermath of the Encounters.

Artifacts dating from 1500 B.C. tell the history of the...

No Country For Old Men, the new movie by the Coen brothers, is quite good - and we know this because a bunch of dusty old historians just said so.

The National Board of Review yesterday voted No Country For Old Men as the best film of 2007, the first high-profile movie awards to be handed out in what's due to become a predictably tiresome three-month awards season. But that's not the only reason why the National Board of Review awards are significant - they've also ensured that everyone will be so sick of the babble surrounding No Country For Old Men by February that it doesn't even stand a sniff of a chance of winning an Oscar any more.

There's something uniquely depressing about awards season, you know. Over the next few weeks and months, about a billion groups and organisations will get together to decide what films were good in 2007, and each result will be pored over an analysed to see if it gives any indication of who'll win an Oscar. Then on Oscar night...

A new storm is brewing in the world of Da Vinci theorists after a mysterious group claimed it has used mirrors to uncover hidden biblical images in some of the great master’s most famous works.

In recent years, art history scholars have unveiled Templar knights, Mary Magdalene, a child and a musical script hidden in the Italian’s paintings.

It is well-documented that Da Vinci, who lived between 1452 and 1519, often wrote in mirror writing, either in an attempt to stop his rivals stealing his ideas or in a bid to hide his scientific theories, often deemed as subversive, from the powerful Roman Catholic Church.

But now a group known as The Mirror of the Sacred Scriptures and Paintings World Foundation believes that he applied the same technique to some of his best-known creations, including the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, to conceal mysterious faces and religious symbols.

When applied to the sketch The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne...

MARSHALL, Tex. — When the light at University Avenue is green, drivers can pass Wiley College without a glance. There was a time, however, when this small black liberal arts college here caught the attention of a nation: in the 1930s, Wiley’s polished team of debaters amassed a series of victories over white competitors that stunned the Jim Crow South.

The college would go on to groom civil rights leaders like James Farmer Jr. and Heman Sweatt, whose lawsuit against the University of Texas Law School in the 1940s helped pave the way for public school integration. Yet Wiley itself, like many black colleges, has struggled for survival ever since, and even reached the brink of collapse. This year, professors and staff members accepted unpaid furloughs. One employee could not share a recent report with trustees because his department could not afford copy paper.

Now Wiley is looking for a Hollywood ending.

On Dec. 25, “The Great Debaters" will...

Filmmaker Oliver Stone is expected to visit Tehran in the near future to negotiate arrangements for a film about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian press reported last week.

"We have announced that he has asked for permission to travel to Iran for direct negotiations and to plan the project," one official told the Tehran Times.

Stone first sought Iranian permission last summer to make the film, variously referred to as"Ahmadijenad's Adventures" or"The Truth About Ahmadinejad." His initial request was denied, but was then reconsidered and approved by the President himself"if certain conditions were met."

Among such conditions, the Tehran Times reported,"Stone would not be allowed to invent any scenarios. [Instead,] he should only use incidents from the president's real life in the film." See"Oliver Stone may visit Tehran for Ahmadinejad biopic: Sajjadpur," Tehran Times, November 30: http://...

“Ford at Fox,” a gargantuan set that assembles 24 of the 50-some films John Ford made for the studio that was his most consistent home, may be just the nudge the old paradigm [of nostalgia collections] needs. Other studios, notably Warner Brothers with Stanley Kubrick and Universal with Alfred Hitchcock, have produced collections devoted to single directors, but no previous effort has matched what Fox has put into this impressive undertaking.

Reviving some extremely rare works in fully restored versions, presenting critical editions of the major titles (in three instances, complete with alternate cuts) and reintroducing several overlooked masterworks, “Ford at Fox” finally does for a filmmaker what the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in France and our homegrown Library of America have long done for writers. Scattered, individual films have been recast into a body of work — an oeuvre — easily accessible for the first time.

For Claude Monet, 1912-22 was a watershed decade. He was perhaps the most successful artist of his time, and his genius had already assured him a place in history.

But as he aged, his painting noticeably lost subtlety. Brush strokes became bolder, and colors strikingly blue, orange or brown. His images lost detail and flowed into one another. His days as an avant-garde rebel had long passed, but some critics would later wonder whether the Impressionist was suddenly trying to become an abstract expressionist.

What has long been known about Monet’s later years is that he suffered from cataracts and that his eyesight worsened so much that he painted from memory. He acknowledged to an interviewer that he was “trusting solely to the labels on the tubes of paint and to the force of habit.”

Now, thanks to modern digital techniques, scientists and critics can have a better idea how cataracts changed what Monet saw. This year, an ophthalmologist at Stanford...

A smile is the strangest thing. In the right context it can illuminate the world, suggest kindness or joy, invite us into intimacy. But in the wrong setting, or on the wrong faces, it seems creepy, malevolent, even disgusting: a sign of moral corruption.
These thoughts were prompted by a visit, in October, to the four interconnected Spanish Civil War shows at the International Center of Photography in New York City (on view through January 6) and by a series of photographs that the New York Times had published the previous month. One of the first photos a viewer encounters at the museum is called "Republican militiamembers, Barcelona"; it was taken by Gerda Taro in August 1936. It shows a young, handsome couple sitting on rattan deck chairs; in the background is a blurry collection of trees. The man, dark-haired, wears a button-down shirt and a tie under his coveralls and sports a pointed hat with a star, which would have identified to which of Spain's many left-wing...