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: WaPo (2-20-08)
In 1588, the Spanish Armada that threatened Elizabethan England was undone by a storm. Seventeen years later, the infamous Gunpowder Plot, an effort by angry Catholics to blow up Parliament, failed when the conspirators panicked and were captured. These close calls with fate were rapidly put to good propaganda use by the rulers of England, and there emerged a persistent new theme in early 17th-century politics: Providence was looking out for Britain.
A new exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library called "History in the Making" is an episodic survey of how history and current events were managed, manipulated and mythologized in the years before and after the career of William Shakespeare. It also surveys the politicized and even tendentious historical works that Shakespeare drew upon in his plays, works that were often convenient, dynastic fictions in favor of the Tudor ruling family. And it continues well past the death of Shakespeare, through the middle of...
A new exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library called "History in the Making" is an episodic survey of how history and current events were managed, manipulated and mythologized in the years before and after the career of William Shakespeare. It also surveys the politicized and even tendentious historical works that Shakespeare drew upon in his plays, works that were often convenient, dynastic fictions in favor of the Tudor ruling family. And it continues well past the death of Shakespeare, through the middle of...
Wednesday, February 20, 2008 - 20:28
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SOURCE: Interview at the website of Tim O'Shea: Talking with Tim (2-18-08)
Visitors to the site may remember my late January used bookstore discovery of Bill Mauldin’s 1944 World War II book, Up Front. That discovery ultimately led me to contact Todd DePastino, regarding both his latest work, a biography of Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front (which is to be released by W. W. Norton on February 25) and Mauldin’s Willie & Joe: The WWII Years (edited by DePastino and set to be released on March 24 by Fantagraphics). I can honestly say I enjoy every interview I do for this blog, but when DePastino’s replies hit my email in-box, I just sat and savored it for at least 15 minutes. After reading it once, I stood up from my computer and paced for a moment or two, that’s how engaging I found his responses. While it may be apparent that I had not gotten my hands on a copy of the biography before this interview, I have since been able to peruse an advance copy. As interesting as you (hopefully) will find this interview, it’s only a small aspect of the wealth of...
Wednesday, February 20, 2008 - 13:13
SOURCE: The State (South Carolina) (2-18-08)
As the Great War raged in Europe in 1917, a group of African-American draftees and their white officers — all from South Carolina — mustered into the newly built Camp Jackson in Columbia to train for the trenches.
But before they could be sent to fight in World War I, the institutional racism of the day kicked in. They would not be allowed to serve alongside all-white U.S. units.
The solution? They would fight for France, a U.S. ally.
“Some had never seen a city,” said Anne Clarkson, a former Fort Jackson captain who has studied the little-known regiment and its most famous member, Medal of Honor recipient Freddie Stowers of Sandy Springs, for nearly two decades.
“Some showed up with no shoes, and the next thing they know is they are being shipped to France. Think about that,” she said. “But (in combat) they didn’t lose a single foot of ground.”
“The entire regiment was awarded the Croix de Guerre,” said Clarkson, referring...
But before they could be sent to fight in World War I, the institutional racism of the day kicked in. They would not be allowed to serve alongside all-white U.S. units.
The solution? They would fight for France, a U.S. ally.
“Some had never seen a city,” said Anne Clarkson, a former Fort Jackson captain who has studied the little-known regiment and its most famous member, Medal of Honor recipient Freddie Stowers of Sandy Springs, for nearly two decades.
“Some showed up with no shoes, and the next thing they know is they are being shipped to France. Think about that,” she said. “But (in combat) they didn’t lose a single foot of ground.”
“The entire regiment was awarded the Croix de Guerre,” said Clarkson, referring...
Tuesday, February 19, 2008 - 22:10
SOURCE: LAT (2-17-08)
There's the Hollywood sign everyone knows -- white letters 50 feet high, recognized the world over as the landmark of Tinseltown.
And then there's the other Hollywood sign, the hidden one, whose red neon letters were once as familiar as the larger sign just across the canyon.
The sign that read "Outpost" in neon letters 30 feet high was, like the original "Hollywoodland" sign, raised up to publicize a new housing development, Hillside Homes of Happiness.
It went up on the hilly terrain above Hollywood Boulevard's Grauman's Chinese Theatre in the late 1920s, designed to outshine the "Hollywoodland" competition. But by the beginning of World War II, it had vanished from sight and memory -- until the winter of 2002.
That's when Outpost Estates residents and Runyon Canyon hikers Bob Eicholz and Steve Scott discovered the twisted wreckage of the rust-scarred steel letters and girders, covered by overgrown brush,...
And then there's the other Hollywood sign, the hidden one, whose red neon letters were once as familiar as the larger sign just across the canyon.
The sign that read "Outpost" in neon letters 30 feet high was, like the original "Hollywoodland" sign, raised up to publicize a new housing development, Hillside Homes of Happiness.
It went up on the hilly terrain above Hollywood Boulevard's Grauman's Chinese Theatre in the late 1920s, designed to outshine the "Hollywoodland" competition. But by the beginning of World War II, it had vanished from sight and memory -- until the winter of 2002.
That's when Outpost Estates residents and Runyon Canyon hikers Bob Eicholz and Steve Scott discovered the twisted wreckage of the rust-scarred steel letters and girders, covered by overgrown brush,...
Tuesday, February 19, 2008 - 22:01
SOURCE: AP (2-19-08)
Israel's national museum opened two new exhibits Monday of paintings with a tragic history: They were stolen from museums and salons by the Nazis and never reclaimed because many of the rightful owners perished during World War II.
The exhibits, which include paintings by masters like Henri Matisse, Claude Monet and Georges Seurat, are meant to bring to life the dramatic stories behind the art — and perhaps reunite the works with the owners or heirs. Visitors who recognize a painting as their own and can prove it can file a claim.
"Our feeling about them is that our job is to hold them in custody, in a way, as a kind of memorial to their loss, and when the opportunity arises to return a work we are happy to do so," said James Snyder, the Israel Museum's director.
The exhibits, which include paintings by masters like Henri Matisse, Claude Monet and Georges Seurat, are meant to bring to life the dramatic stories behind the art — and perhaps reunite the works with the owners or heirs. Visitors who recognize a painting as their own and can prove it can file a claim.
"Our feeling about them is that our job is to hold them in custody, in a way, as a kind of memorial to their loss, and when the opportunity arises to return a work we are happy to do so," said James Snyder, the Israel Museum's director.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008 - 18:51
SOURCE: Der Spiegel (2-15-08)
Until now, no one has managed to force open the darkest corners of Poland's "sealed memory." Andrzej Wajda's new World War II drama, "Katyn," succeeds. It tells the long-taboo tale of the roughly 14,500 Polish military officers murdered by the Soviet army in 1940.
When "Katyn" opened in Poland last fall, a nation remembered its dead. Polish students were obliged to see it, and a candlelit vigil was held at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw.
The vigil featured a reading of the names of each of the 14,500 Polish officers murdered at Katyn. It took almost two days. Television and radio stations covered the event live.
The first name was spoken by Polish President Lech Kaczynski. Well-known journalists and actors from the "Katyn" cast also helped read the names of those victims who had been positively identified. Some 7,500 names were absent from the list, including that of Jakub Wajda, the father of...
When "Katyn" opened in Poland last fall, a nation remembered its dead. Polish students were obliged to see it, and a candlelit vigil was held at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw.
The vigil featured a reading of the names of each of the 14,500 Polish officers murdered at Katyn. It took almost two days. Television and radio stations covered the event live.
The first name was spoken by Polish President Lech Kaczynski. Well-known journalists and actors from the "Katyn" cast also helped read the names of those victims who had been positively identified. Some 7,500 names were absent from the list, including that of Jakub Wajda, the father of...
Monday, February 18, 2008 - 18:17
SOURCE: http://www.zap2it.com (2-15-08)
The long-awaited "John Adams" miniseries has a premiere date at HBO.
The seven-part miniseries will debut Sunday, March 16, a week after the series finale of "The Wire." Parts one and two will air back-to-back, with subsequent installments debuting on each of the next five Sundays.
Based on David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, the miniseries stars Paul Giamatti ("Sideways," "Cinderella Man") as the second president of the United States and Laura Linney ("The Savages," "The Squid and the Whale") as his wife, Abigail. It follows Adams' life for 50 years, from his leadership in the independence movement through the early days of the republic and his time as president.
The seven-part miniseries will debut Sunday, March 16, a week after the series finale of "The Wire." Parts one and two will air back-to-back, with subsequent installments debuting on each of the next five Sundays.
Based on David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, the miniseries stars Paul Giamatti ("Sideways," "Cinderella Man") as the second president of the United States and Laura Linney ("The Savages," "The Squid and the Whale") as his wife, Abigail. It follows Adams' life for 50 years, from his leadership in the independence movement through the early days of the republic and his time as president.
Monday, February 18, 2008 - 03:35
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (2-16-08)
The first thing you notice is the frocks. They glow and shimmer most desirably, as the ladies swirl and pose in furs, filigrees, embroideries and jewel-bright satins. Not just on the red carpet, but also in the film: The Other Boleyn Girl, which had its world premiere in Berlin last night.
It's the tale of two sisters at the court of the Tudor king: the clever, scheming, brunette Anne and her younger sibling, the quieter, more unworldly blonde Mary. Played, respectively, by Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson - the casting of whom seems intended to tap American star power rather than to find actresses with a credible chemistry or family resemblance - the sisters vie for the favours of a svelte and charming Henry VIII (Australia's Eric Bana), who is still married to his first wife, but has a roving eye and an itch for a male heir.
The film will be billed as the battle of Scarlett v Nathalie to dominate the narrative. Both, in fact, are meaty roles and, while...
It's the tale of two sisters at the court of the Tudor king: the clever, scheming, brunette Anne and her younger sibling, the quieter, more unworldly blonde Mary. Played, respectively, by Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson - the casting of whom seems intended to tap American star power rather than to find actresses with a credible chemistry or family resemblance - the sisters vie for the favours of a svelte and charming Henry VIII (Australia's Eric Bana), who is still married to his first wife, but has a roving eye and an itch for a male heir.
The film will be billed as the battle of Scarlett v Nathalie to dominate the narrative. Both, in fact, are meaty roles and, while...
Saturday, February 16, 2008 - 17:10
SOURCE: Economist (2-14-08)
HISTORY has been unkind to the Barbarians. Some 1,600 years have passed since they began to redraw the boundaries of Europe, yet their names are best remembered for the anti-social and savage behaviour always associated with Vandals, Goths and Huns. Now an exhibition in Venice seeks to help rehabilitate them. The Vandals? They took Carthage when the locals were watching a circus. Huns? Attila was not always as bad as he is painted; he forbore, after all, to sack Rome. As for the Goths, they were not without their redeeming features, either.
This show is the latest sign of a growing interest—visible in fiction, film, television and even computer games—in the hordes that felled Rome. The chief curator is Jean-Jacques Aillagon, a French former culture minister, who dramatises the traditional view of the Barbarians by exhibiting a scattering of 19th-century paintings that depict them in the worst possible light. In one, two near-naked hooligans are destroying an elegant marble...
This show is the latest sign of a growing interest—visible in fiction, film, television and even computer games—in the hordes that felled Rome. The chief curator is Jean-Jacques Aillagon, a French former culture minister, who dramatises the traditional view of the Barbarians by exhibiting a scattering of 19th-century paintings that depict them in the worst possible light. In one, two near-naked hooligans are destroying an elegant marble...
Friday, February 15, 2008 - 16:28
SOURCE: International Herald Tribune (2-13-08)
In a city that often shows scant regard for history, the Los Angeles Opera is undertaking an extraordinary project of reclamation. Under the banner "Recovered Voices," James Conlon, in his second season as the company's music director, is reviving operas suppressed by the Nazis.
Next Sunday Conlon, 57, is to conduct the project's first fully staged production, a double bill of "Der Zwerg" ("The Dwarf") by Alexander Zemlinsky and "Der Zerbrochene Krug" ("The Broken Jug"), which Viktor Ullmann composed not long before being interned in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. (He died two years later in Auschwitz.)
Though such works have been unearthed in Europe at least since the 1970s, they have yet to take root in America, where Conlon has for years extolled their virtues. But "Recovered Voices" has already raised nearly $5 million to stage some of these operas.
Next Sunday Conlon, 57, is to conduct the project's first fully staged production, a double bill of "Der Zwerg" ("The Dwarf") by Alexander Zemlinsky and "Der Zerbrochene Krug" ("The Broken Jug"), which Viktor Ullmann composed not long before being interned in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. (He died two years later in Auschwitz.)
Though such works have been unearthed in Europe at least since the 1970s, they have yet to take root in America, where Conlon has for years extolled their virtues. But "Recovered Voices" has already raised nearly $5 million to stage some of these operas.
Friday, February 15, 2008 - 12:32
SOURCE: NYT (2-14-08)
If you look out the windows of President Lincoln’s Cottage at the Soldiers’ Home — the idiosyncratic and intriguing museum that is opening to the public on Tuesday after a ceremonial event on Monday — you have to imagine what Abraham Lincoln might have seen during those summer evenings when he stood here. The cottage is on a hilltop, the third highest in the area. And when Lincoln first came here, seeking a respite from the summer heat, the swampy air and the incessant bustle of the White House, he could have looked out over the expanding city below him, with the unfinished Washington Monument and incomplete Capitol dome rising in the distance.
The departing president, James Buchanan, may have recommended this pastoral spot to Lincoln. The 34-room Gothic Revival “cottage” was built by a businessman, George W. Riggs, who, in 1851, sold it along with more than 250 acres to the United States government. It became part of a federal home for retired and disabled veterans, but,...
The departing president, James Buchanan, may have recommended this pastoral spot to Lincoln. The 34-room Gothic Revival “cottage” was built by a businessman, George W. Riggs, who, in 1851, sold it along with more than 250 acres to the United States government. It became part of a federal home for retired and disabled veterans, but,...
Thursday, February 14, 2008 - 23:10
SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Ed (2-13-08)
Reed College’s archives have turned up a true gem of 20th-century poetry history, a high-quality recording of Allen Ginsberg reading his epochal long poem, “Howl,” that was taped a few months before it was published and became the subject of a landmark obscenity trial.
The recording was made on reel-to-reel tape in front of a group of students in a Reed dormitory lounge in February 1956, during Ginsberg’s visit to the college on a hitchhiking trip with a fellow poet, Gary Snyder, a 1951 Reed graduate.
Mark Kuestner, a special-collections librarian at Reed, and John Suiter, a Boston-based literary scholar, discovered the tape last summer in Reed’s archives while Mr. Suiter was preparing a biography of Mr. Snyder, who is an emeritus professor of English at the University of California at Davis. Ginsberg died in 1997.
The recording was made on reel-to-reel tape in front of a group of students in a Reed dormitory lounge in February 1956, during Ginsberg’s visit to the college on a hitchhiking trip with a fellow poet, Gary Snyder, a 1951 Reed graduate.
Mark Kuestner, a special-collections librarian at Reed, and John Suiter, a Boston-based literary scholar, discovered the tape last summer in Reed’s archives while Mr. Suiter was preparing a biography of Mr. Snyder, who is an emeritus professor of English at the University of California at Davis. Ginsberg died in 1997.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008 - 18:07
SOURCE: History Today (2-8-08)
The 1937 first edition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit is to be auctioned in London with an estimated value of £30,000. The Bonhams sale in London on March 18th includes the first foreign language edition of the book, translated into Swedish ten years later, and the last photograph taken of the author. The first issue of the The Hobbit is inscribed by Tolkien to his friend, Elaine Griffiths. The book, which is the prequel to The Lord of the Rings and features the adventures of hobbit Bilbo Baggins, has sold over 100 million copies.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008 - 01:35
SOURCE: Randy Lewis at The Edge of the American West (blog) (2-8-08)
[Randy Lewis teaches American Studies at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of two books on documentary film, the co-editor of a book on James Joyce, and the co-producer of several documentary films including Texas Tavola: A Taste of Sicily in the Lone Star State.]
Film history has a grim anniversary today. On February 8, 1915, D.W. Griffith released The Birth of a Nation in Los Angeles. A racist screed aimed at African Americans who sought to remake their lives during the era of Reconstruction, Griffith’s film became the first American “blockbuster” — an extraordinarily expensive movie whose jaw-dropping profits were not matched until Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered in 1937. Like the Nazi...
Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - 16:07
SOURCE: Independent (UK) (2-11-08)
The Nobel Prize-winning novelist Doris Lessing says she believes Barack Obama would be assassinated if he were elected president.
Asked if she supported Hillary Clinton or Mr Obama, Lessing told the Stockholm daily Dagens Nyheter "it doesn't matter," but suggested the two should join forces in the election.
"It would be best if they ran together. Hillary is a very sharp lady. It might be calmer if she wins and not Obama," Lessing was quoted as saying.
"He would probably not last long, a black man in the position of president. They would kill him," Lessing said on Saturday. She did not specify who she believed would kill Obama.
Asked if she supported Hillary Clinton or Mr Obama, Lessing told the Stockholm daily Dagens Nyheter "it doesn't matter," but suggested the two should join forces in the election.
"It would be best if they ran together. Hillary is a very sharp lady. It might be calmer if she wins and not Obama," Lessing was quoted as saying.
"He would probably not last long, a black man in the position of president. They would kill him," Lessing said on Saturday. She did not specify who she believed would kill Obama.
Monday, February 11, 2008 - 20:05
SOURCE: AP (2-11-08)
Three gunmen in ski masks and dark clothes burst into a museum just before closing time. After a quick run through the building, they hustled out the door and sped off with paintings by Cezanne, Degas, van Gogh and Monet valued at $163.2 million.
Authorities appealed Monday for any witnesses to help reconstruct the robbers' getaway from the E.G. Buehrle Collection, a private museum of Impressionist works whose founder had his own troubled history with stolen art.
"This is an entirely new dimension in criminal culture," police spokesman Marco Cortesi said, calling it the largest art robbery in Switzerland's history and one of the biggest ever in Europe.
Authorities appealed Monday for any witnesses to help reconstruct the robbers' getaway from the E.G. Buehrle Collection, a private museum of Impressionist works whose founder had his own troubled history with stolen art.
"This is an entirely new dimension in criminal culture," police spokesman Marco Cortesi said, calling it the largest art robbery in Switzerland's history and one of the biggest ever in Europe.
Monday, February 11, 2008 - 20:02
SOURCE: Reuters (2-5-08)
It was more than just the historic settings in Berlin that drew Tom Cruise to Germany last summer to film his $80 million epic "Valkyrie," about a failed 1944 attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
It was also the cash.
The German government was able to show Cruise the money - writing a check for €4.8 million, or $7.1 million, for the MGM/United Artists production.
A fresh source of film subsidies has injected new vigor into Germany's rich cinematic tradition, which before the Nazis took power in 1933 had been a great rival to Hollywood, with classics like Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" and Josef von Sternberg's "The Blue Angel," featuring a young Marlene Dietrich.
It was also the cash.
The German government was able to show Cruise the money - writing a check for €4.8 million, or $7.1 million, for the MGM/United Artists production.
A fresh source of film subsidies has injected new vigor into Germany's rich cinematic tradition, which before the Nazis took power in 1933 had been a great rival to Hollywood, with classics like Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" and Josef von Sternberg's "The Blue Angel," featuring a young Marlene Dietrich.
Monday, February 11, 2008 - 19:40
SOURCE: Megan Marshall in Slate (2-8-08)
Robert Frost has been having a hard winter. First the remote Vermont farmhouse where he summered from 1939 to 1963 was vandalized by partying teenagers. Windows were smashed, dishes broken, a chair split up for firewood, precious artwork and antiques splattered with beer and bodily fluids. Then last month, charges were raised against a scholarly edition of Frost's private notebooks. The work, first published in early 2007, had been heralded as offering a rare glimpse into the reclusive poet's creative process. But now the notebook transcriptions appear to be riddled with errors that made Frost look like "a dyslexic and deranged speller," who often "made no sense," according to poet William Logan, a professor at the University of Florida who compared sections of the published version with manuscript originals from the archives at Dartmouth College.
Where was the greatest damage done? In the minds of documentary editors—the people who prepare historical and...
Where was the greatest damage done? In the minds of documentary editors—the people who prepare historical and...
Monday, February 11, 2008 - 19:23
SOURCE: NYT (2-10-08)
THOUGH no one talks about them much, Ernest Hemingway wrote two plays. The first, finished in 1926, was “Today Is Friday,” a forgettable one-acter set on the evening of the original Good Friday, when three Roman centurions get together at a tavern to discuss memorable crucifixions they’ve seen, including the one that afternoon. Not surprisingly, they sound a lot like Hemingway’s Nick Adams. “He looked pretty good to me in there today,” one of them says admiring Jesus’ stoicism.
His other play, “The Fifth Column,” which the Mint Theater Company in Manhattan is presenting, beginning Feb. 26, is a full-length drama written in 1937, when Hemingway was a correspondent covering the Spanish Civil War. The play takes its name from Franco’s remark that he had four columns advancing on Madrid and a fifth column of loyalists inside the city ready to attack from the rear. “The Fifth Column” is not about Franco sympathizers, however, but about an American war correspondent who is a...
His other play, “The Fifth Column,” which the Mint Theater Company in Manhattan is presenting, beginning Feb. 26, is a full-length drama written in 1937, when Hemingway was a correspondent covering the Spanish Civil War. The play takes its name from Franco’s remark that he had four columns advancing on Madrid and a fifth column of loyalists inside the city ready to attack from the rear. “The Fifth Column” is not about Franco sympathizers, however, but about an American war correspondent who is a...
Sunday, February 10, 2008 - 18:12
SOURCE: Jack Shafer at Slate.com (2-7-08)
Of all the slow-moving targets that bleed profusely when you hit them, can there be a fatter, slower, juicier bull's-eye to sight your scope on than the $450 million Newseum, the four-years-in-the-building, seven-story, steel-and-glass monument to journalistic vanity just a nine iron away from Washington, D.C.'s National Mall?
One of the most expensive museums ever built, according to the New York Times' Kit Seelye, the Newseum contains 250,000 square feet of exhibit space, including 15 theaters, 14 galleries, two broadcast studios, a "4-D time-travel experience," interactive computer stations by the score, 50 tons of Tennessee marble, a three-level Wolfgang Puck restaurant, a food court, and 6,214 journalism artifacts together weighing more than 81,000 pounds ("Wonkette's" slippers, the hotel door from the Watergate break-in, a decommissioned KXAS-TV news helicopter, Rupert Murdoch's first wife, etc.).
One of the most expensive museums ever built, according to the New York Times' Kit Seelye, the Newseum contains 250,000 square feet of exhibit space, including 15 theaters, 14 galleries, two broadcast studios, a "4-D time-travel experience," interactive computer stations by the score, 50 tons of Tennessee marble, a three-level Wolfgang Puck restaurant, a food court, and 6,214 journalism artifacts together weighing more than 81,000 pounds ("Wonkette's" slippers, the hotel door from the Watergate break-in, a decommissioned KXAS-TV news helicopter, Rupert Murdoch's first wife, etc.).
Friday, February 8, 2008 - 14:36
