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: Spiegel (5-29-09)
They wanted to clean up the basement but found a treasure trove of photos instead. After Berlin teacher Manfred Beier died, his sons stumbled across 60,000 pictures. Their father, it turns out, created one of the best documentations of life in East Germany, and the first days of the West.
It's amazing how little you can know about your own father: After the death of Berlin resident Manfred Beier in 2002, his sons Wolf and Nils began to sort out their inheritance and came across a treasure. They found dozens of wooden boxes stacked on shelves as well as numerous chests of drawers -- similar to pharmacist cabinets and apparently custom-made. The drawers contained removable inserts, each of which had staggered rows of small drilled holes about three centimeters in diameter. Each of these holes held a roll of miniature film.
It's amazing how little you can know about your own father: After the death of Berlin resident Manfred Beier in 2002, his sons Wolf and Nils began to sort out their inheritance and came across a treasure. They found dozens of wooden boxes stacked on shelves as well as numerous chests of drawers -- similar to pharmacist cabinets and apparently custom-made. The drawers contained removable inserts, each of which had staggered rows of small drilled holes about three centimeters in diameter. Each of these holes held a roll of miniature film.
Sunday, May 31, 2009 - 23:10
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SOURCE: HBO (5-30-09)
For five years, Winston Churchill played perhaps the single most important role in thwarting the Nazis during WWII, with his intrepid leadership and rhetoric inspiring millions of Britons and other members of the free world to fight Hitler's Germany to the bitter end.
Continuing the story of Churchill told in HBO's award-winning film, "The Gathering Storm," INTO THE STORM is set against the backdrop of World War II, and offers an intimate look at the making of a nation's hero, whose prowess as a great wartime leader ultimately undermined his political career and threatened his marriage to his lifelong supporter, Clemmie.
Continuing the story of Churchill told in HBO's award-winning film, "The Gathering Storm," INTO THE STORM is set against the backdrop of World War II, and offers an intimate look at the making of a nation's hero, whose prowess as a great wartime leader ultimately undermined his political career and threatened his marriage to his lifelong supporter, Clemmie.
Sunday, May 31, 2009 - 22:31
SOURCE: NYT (5-30-09)
When Ruth Padel resigned last week as Oxford’s professor of poetry
after only nine days on the job, it put an end — for now, at least —
to a tale that began with past charges of sexual harassment against
Ms. Padel’s primary competition for the position, the Nobel laureate
Derek Walcott, and grew to include discreet tip-offs, fervid
editorials, and Ms. Padel’s eventual admission that she had helped
publicize the allegations against her rival.
Ugly stuff, in other words, and mightily entertaining. But behind much of the frothy speculation and accusation was an older, subtler and more intractable conflict between the myths of poetry and the realities of the modern university. What we may be willing to put up with from a poet — in Mr. Walcott’s case, and perhaps Ms. Padel’s as well — is different from what we’re willing to put up with from a professor, which can be quite a problem when the poet is expected to profess.
The tension between these expectations, and the close...
Sunday, May 31, 2009 - 16:56
SOURCE: WaPo (5-27-09)
The Washington Post's Maureen Fan went to homes designed by her grandfather, architect Fan Wenzhao, or Robert Fan, who left Shanghai when the Communists took over in 1949. [Includes video.]
Saturday, May 30, 2009 - 13:28
SOURCE: NYT (5-29-09)
PHILADELPHIA — It is best to approach “Star Trek: The Exhibition” at the Franklin Institute here with phasers set to stun. And to avoid any quantum entanglement, make sure that if you visit the show before it closes on the stardate equivalent to Sept. 20, your transporter is in working order. Otherwise, there is just no telling the confusion that might result.
You might think, for example, that most starships of the 23rd and 24th centuries pretty much looked like the U.S.S. Enterprise in 2245 (Starfleet Registry NCC-1701; commanding officer, Capt. James T. Kirk). Or you might surmise, from the strange costumes in the opening gallery, that most biped alien life forms of that period had a funky taste in fashion, perhaps reacting against the ho-hum uniforms worn by Starfleet.
You might even suspect from the details of the Danish postmodern-nightclub-style Enterprise-D bridge (where you can sit in the seat in which Capt. Jean-Luc Picard directed his Galaxy-class...
You might think, for example, that most starships of the 23rd and 24th centuries pretty much looked like the U.S.S. Enterprise in 2245 (Starfleet Registry NCC-1701; commanding officer, Capt. James T. Kirk). Or you might surmise, from the strange costumes in the opening gallery, that most biped alien life forms of that period had a funky taste in fashion, perhaps reacting against the ho-hum uniforms worn by Starfleet.
You might even suspect from the details of the Danish postmodern-nightclub-style Enterprise-D bridge (where you can sit in the seat in which Capt. Jean-Luc Picard directed his Galaxy-class...
Saturday, May 30, 2009 - 12:23
SOURCE: AP (5-29-09)
Defiantly low-tech yet accurate to the second, Big Ben is having its 150th birthday Sunday, its Victorian chimes carrying the sound of Britain into the 21st century.
It's a birthday the world can share in. The peals of London's favorite clock are carried globally by BBC radio, and its 315-foot tower, roughly 16 stories, is the city's most famous landmark.
But getting inside and seeing Big Ben, the sonorous main bell that gives its name to the whole contraption, isn't easy. Security measures mean few are granted admission, and there's no elevator, so those who are escorted in must climb 334 winding limestone stairs.
It's a birthday the world can share in. The peals of London's favorite clock are carried globally by BBC radio, and its 315-foot tower, roughly 16 stories, is the city's most famous landmark.
But getting inside and seeing Big Ben, the sonorous main bell that gives its name to the whole contraption, isn't easy. Security measures mean few are granted admission, and there's no elevator, so those who are escorted in must climb 334 winding limestone stairs.
Saturday, May 30, 2009 - 12:04
SOURCE: Gregory McNamee at the Britannica Blog (5-29-09)
Robert Indiana’s sculpture Love is an iconic Pop art image of the 1960s, born in 1966, during the first years of the Vietnam War, and speaking to the ideals of a nation already tired of that divisive conflict. Versions of the piece dot the United States, from New York City to Phoenix, Indianapolis to New Orleans, and the world, gracing parks in Taiwan, China, Portugal, Israel, and England, to name just a few of the places where it has...
Saturday, May 30, 2009 - 11:39
SOURCE: Archeology Magazine (6-1-09)
The computer-based adventure game Secret of the Lost Cavern lets players explore Europe 17,000 years ago through the eyes of Arok, a teenage boy who leaves his tribe to discover the world beyond the valley where he grew up. Arok's journey is set up as a series of puzzles. First, he has to learn about cave painting and figure out how to make a spear-thrower before finding his way through a maze of caves. Each part of the journey includes lessons about Upper Paleolithic life that weave together archaeological research on artwork, stone-tool technology, environment, and social structure.
Saturday, May 30, 2009 - 11:34
SOURCE: Times (UK) (5-30-09)
Hamburg, hit by declining tourism figures, is calling on the Beatles to ease it through the crisis. Or, as the Fab Four would have put it: Help!
“John Lennon used to say that he was born in Liverpool but grew up in Hamburg,” says Ulf Krueger who has been pushing the port to brand itself as a Beatles city for more than 20 years.
The moment has come: a five-storey Beatles museum, complete with a life sized model of the Yellow Submarine and a mock-up of the Hamburg clubs where they played, was opened today to a Ringo Starr-like drum roll.
Around the corner, a square has been renamed Beatles Platz, shaped like a gramophone record, with John, Paul, George, Ringo in stainless steel — and a fifth Beatle, who could be either the sacked drummer Pete Best or the bassist, Stu Sutcliffe.
From Beatles Platz there are now Beatles tours that take visitors around all the grubby corners of the Reeperbahn, Hamburg’s Red Light district, where the group...
“John Lennon used to say that he was born in Liverpool but grew up in Hamburg,” says Ulf Krueger who has been pushing the port to brand itself as a Beatles city for more than 20 years.
The moment has come: a five-storey Beatles museum, complete with a life sized model of the Yellow Submarine and a mock-up of the Hamburg clubs where they played, was opened today to a Ringo Starr-like drum roll.
Around the corner, a square has been renamed Beatles Platz, shaped like a gramophone record, with John, Paul, George, Ringo in stainless steel — and a fifth Beatle, who could be either the sacked drummer Pete Best or the bassist, Stu Sutcliffe.
From Beatles Platz there are now Beatles tours that take visitors around all the grubby corners of the Reeperbahn, Hamburg’s Red Light district, where the group...
Saturday, May 30, 2009 - 10:01
SOURCE: Nation (5-28-09)
Join The Nation's John Nichols, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, Nation Editorial Board member Eric Foner and many others in a tribute to the life and work of a great American patriot on the 200th anniversary of Thomas Paine's death.
Thursday, May 28, 2009 - 21:03
SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Ed (5-29-09)
An outdoor exhibit of American Indian art is vandalized five times in two months. Are the culprits destructive students, racists, or both?
It depends whom you ask.
Beyond the Chief, a collection of street signs honoring different tribes, opened in February at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Within five weeks, vandals had bent the signs and — in an instance that suggests the culprit was either a poor speller or British — written in permanent marker: "Uh oh I vandalised this!"
Robert Warrior, director of American Indian studies and curator of the exhibit, says that the campus has traditionally been unwelcoming to American Indians and that the tensions worsened after 2007. That was the year the university bowed to pressure from the National Collegiate Athletic Association and scrapped the popular Chief Illiniwek mascot.
Edgar Heap of Birds, a professor of Native American studies at the University of Oklahoma, is...
It depends whom you ask.
Beyond the Chief, a collection of street signs honoring different tribes, opened in February at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Within five weeks, vandals had bent the signs and — in an instance that suggests the culprit was either a poor speller or British — written in permanent marker: "Uh oh I vandalised this!"
Robert Warrior, director of American Indian studies and curator of the exhibit, says that the campus has traditionally been unwelcoming to American Indians and that the tensions worsened after 2007. That was the year the university bowed to pressure from the National Collegiate Athletic Association and scrapped the popular Chief Illiniwek mascot.
Edgar Heap of Birds, a professor of Native American studies at the University of Oklahoma, is...
Thursday, May 28, 2009 - 20:44
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (5-25-09)
The 41cm long figure, named Cristo Ritrovato (Christ Refound) was bought late last year from a private collection and since then has been on a marathon tour of the country.
It started in Rome where among those to admire it were Pope Benedict XVI and various senior government officials and has also been displayed in Milan, Trapani, Palermo and is currently on show in Naples.
More than 60,000 people have seen the sculpture but there is a growing concern within the Italian artworld that it was not created from the hand of the Renaissance master Michelangelo Buonarroti.
When it was presented last December among those to vouch for its authenticity were Italy's ambassador to the Holy See Antonio Zanardi Landi and Professor Antonio Paolucci, art historian and Vatican museum director.
At a press conference they described the "svelte form and the sweetness of the finishing touches as similar to those of Michelangelo's Pieta in the Basilica...
It started in Rome where among those to admire it were Pope Benedict XVI and various senior government officials and has also been displayed in Milan, Trapani, Palermo and is currently on show in Naples.
More than 60,000 people have seen the sculpture but there is a growing concern within the Italian artworld that it was not created from the hand of the Renaissance master Michelangelo Buonarroti.
When it was presented last December among those to vouch for its authenticity were Italy's ambassador to the Holy See Antonio Zanardi Landi and Professor Antonio Paolucci, art historian and Vatican museum director.
At a press conference they described the "svelte form and the sweetness of the finishing touches as similar to those of Michelangelo's Pieta in the Basilica...
Tuesday, May 26, 2009 - 21:59
SOURCE: NYT (5-26-09)
Brooks McNamara, a theater historian who shepherded a vast and disorganized array of letters, photographs, scripts, sheet music, set and costume designs, business records and other memorabilia into a valuable historical collection known as the Shubert Archive, died on May 8 in Doylestown, Pa. He was 72 and lived in Doylestown and Manhattan.
The immediate cause was pneumonia, said his wife, Nan. Mr. McNamara had been suffering from sporadic cerebellar ataxia, a degenerative nerve disorder.
The Shubert Archive was established in 1976 after the Shubert Foundation, the nonprofit entity that officially controls the theater-owning Shubert Organization, asked Mr. McNamara to appraise a mountain of material stored in Shubert theaters in New York and nationwide.
Over the next decade, Mr. McNamara, who was then a professor of performance studies at New York University, along with an archivist, Brigitte Kueppers and some 80 graduate student interns, worked to...
The immediate cause was pneumonia, said his wife, Nan. Mr. McNamara had been suffering from sporadic cerebellar ataxia, a degenerative nerve disorder.
The Shubert Archive was established in 1976 after the Shubert Foundation, the nonprofit entity that officially controls the theater-owning Shubert Organization, asked Mr. McNamara to appraise a mountain of material stored in Shubert theaters in New York and nationwide.
Over the next decade, Mr. McNamara, who was then a professor of performance studies at New York University, along with an archivist, Brigitte Kueppers and some 80 graduate student interns, worked to...
Tuesday, May 26, 2009 - 20:47
SOURCE: LAT (5-25-09)
There's something about Amelia Earhart.
More than seven decades after she disappeared without a trace in the South Pacific on her flight around the world, Earhart remains the most famous female aviator in history, a timeless heroine and inspiration to generations of women, filmmakers and fashionistas.
Flying was just the beginning. Earhart was also a fashion icon and designer with her close-cropped hair, pants and leather jackets. She was a leader in women's rights and the peace movement. She was a president and founding member of the Ninety-Nines -- the original women's pilot organization. She was a pioneering businesswoman -- a partner in both Transcontinental Air Transport and Ludington Airlines and a luggage designer -- a wife (she was married to publisher George Putnam) and a writer.
"I'm looking at my bulletin board here at a letter, and it's addressed to 'Amelia Earhart Smithsonian Institute,' " Cochrane noted recently with a laugh...
More than seven decades after she disappeared without a trace in the South Pacific on her flight around the world, Earhart remains the most famous female aviator in history, a timeless heroine and inspiration to generations of women, filmmakers and fashionistas.
Flying was just the beginning. Earhart was also a fashion icon and designer with her close-cropped hair, pants and leather jackets. She was a leader in women's rights and the peace movement. She was a president and founding member of the Ninety-Nines -- the original women's pilot organization. She was a pioneering businesswoman -- a partner in both Transcontinental Air Transport and Ludington Airlines and a luggage designer -- a wife (she was married to publisher George Putnam) and a writer.
"I'm looking at my bulletin board here at a letter, and it's addressed to 'Amelia Earhart Smithsonian Institute,' " Cochrane noted recently with a laugh...
Tuesday, May 26, 2009 - 13:27
SOURCE: Larry Rohter in the NYT (5-24-09)
“It has been a long time since any of us boys have seen a woman, so we are writing to you in hopes that you’ll help us out of our situation,” Cpl. Frank J. Gizych lamented in a letter posted from the fog-shrouded Aleutian Islands. “Since we know that it’s impossible to see a woman in the flesh, we would appreciate it very much if you could send us a photo of yourself.”
It was July 1944, and America was at war. From bases and battlefields in Europe and on Pacific islands, soldiers, sailors and airmen were sending streams of letters to their favorite actresses in Hollywood, asking for pinup photos and commenting on life on the front lines.
Almost all of that mail, which studios usually answered with a glossy shot showing the star in a saucy pose, has been lost. But the actress Donna Reed, later famous for her roles as Mary Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life” and the middle-class housewife Donna Stone on “The Donna Reed Show” and who won an Oscar for “From Here to...
It was July 1944, and America was at war. From bases and battlefields in Europe and on Pacific islands, soldiers, sailors and airmen were sending streams of letters to their favorite actresses in Hollywood, asking for pinup photos and commenting on life on the front lines.
Almost all of that mail, which studios usually answered with a glossy shot showing the star in a saucy pose, has been lost. But the actress Donna Reed, later famous for her roles as Mary Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life” and the middle-class housewife Donna Stone on “The Donna Reed Show” and who won an Oscar for “From Here to...
Monday, May 25, 2009 - 13:57
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (5-25-09)
A new biography of Jane Austen claims to have identified Dr Samuel
Blackall as the mystery suitor who broke the novelist's heart and
sparked a rift with her sister.
Although Austen never married, the emotional warmth of her romantic novels has always fed speculation about her private passions.
The 2007 film Becoming Jane explored her youthful flirtation with a handsome Irishman named Tom Lefroy who – it is suggested – was the inspiration for the rugged Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.
But now a literary historian claims that her true love was a clergyman named Dr Samuel Blackall, who first caught Austen's attention in 1798 when he was a guest of their mutual friends, the Lefroys.
According to Dr Andrew Norman, Dr Blackall's letters to friends disclose his wish to pursue a courtship with the young author, but his uncertainty was treated as a snub by Austen.
Monday, May 25, 2009 - 13:50
SOURCE: Salon (5-22-09)
The idea behind the 2006 megahit "Night at the Museum" had enough inherent charm that it was completely possible to look beyond the movie's clunky structure and overly sentimental framing device and just enjoy the ride. Ben Stiller played Larry Daley, a divorced dad who, after failing at numerous other careers (and thus coming to feel he'd become a disappointment to his young son) takes a job as a night watchman at the Museum of Natural History in New York, only to find that the exhibits come alive at night. The "father proving his worth to his kid" thing aside, "Night at the Museum" offered numerous delights: A fabulous T. rex skeleton springs into action, an assemblage of playful, shambling bones (his favorite game is fetch); a tiny cowboy (Owen Wilson) and a Roman centurion (Steve Coogan) emerge from their dioramas and proceed to wreak havoc on the place, albeit on a miniaturized scale.
"Night at the Museum," directed by Shawn...
"Night at the Museum," directed by Shawn...
Friday, May 22, 2009 - 18:44
SOURCE: NYT (5-21-09)
When the Metropolitan Museum set up its first sculpture department in 1886, it threw in anything and everything that wasn’t framed, stitched or printed: “all the sculptures, pottery, porcelain, glassware, jewelry, engraved gems, bronzes, inscriptions, and other such objects of art, commonly termed Bric-a-Brac.”
No doubt to some eyes the museum’s newly reopened American galleries look like Bric-a-Brac City. Twenty generously appointed period rooms, 12 of them seriously spiffed up, along with the glass-enclosed Charles Engelhard Court flooded with Central Park light, hold the full range of items specified in that early Met inventory and much, much more.
And all look good, especially the court. When it made its debut in 1980, it had a sunken floor and large beds of plantings. The floor has now been raised and paved with light-colored stone and the plantings reduced to clear a wide-open space. What was once a kind of oversize conversation pit with a cafe to the...
No doubt to some eyes the museum’s newly reopened American galleries look like Bric-a-Brac City. Twenty generously appointed period rooms, 12 of them seriously spiffed up, along with the glass-enclosed Charles Engelhard Court flooded with Central Park light, hold the full range of items specified in that early Met inventory and much, much more.
And all look good, especially the court. When it made its debut in 1980, it had a sunken floor and large beds of plantings. The floor has now been raised and paved with light-colored stone and the plantings reduced to clear a wide-open space. What was once a kind of oversize conversation pit with a cafe to the...
Friday, May 22, 2009 - 18:32
