Roundup: Pop Culture & the Arts ... Movies, Documentaries and Museum Exhibits

The New Robin Hood: Libertarian Rebel?

The new Ridley Scott film"Robin Hood", which has opened to mixed reviews on its merits as entertainment, is also drawing some critics' political ire. In New York's leftist weekly, The Village Voice, Karina Longworth laments that"instead of robbing from the rich to give to the poor, this Robin Hood preaches about 'liberty' and the rights of the individual" and battles against"government greed"; the film, she scoffs, is"a rousing love letter to the tea party movement." On a similar note, the Ne

The Founders of Cubism, Ardent Fans of Film

Arne Glimcher’s discursive documentary, “Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies,” argues that films, from the earliest days of Thomas Edison and the Lumière Brothers, were a crucial formative influence on Modern painting, especially Cubism. Using prolific visual comparisons, it tries to show how Cubism, founded by Picasso and Braque in 1907, supposedly translated the movies’ revolutionary portrayal of time, space and motion into fine art. Photography had already captured moments that m

Film review: The Ghost Writer

When Robert Harris’s book, The Ghost, was published in 2007 it startled many members of the British intelligentsia, not least because New Labourite Harris appeared to have turned on his Leftist comrades. In it a biographer is hired to ghostwrite the memoirs of a former Prime Minister, Adam Lang, who soon becomes indicted for war crimes thanks to a resentful ex-colleague he fired as Foreign Secretary. In the nature of the war, the alleged crimes, Lang’s ancestry, personality, ideolo

"To Kill a Mockingbird" celebrates its 50th this year

...All summer “To Kill a Mockingbird” will be relived through at least 50 events around the country, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the publication of a book that became a cultural touchstone and an enduring staple of high-school reading programs. Its publisher, HarperCollins, is trying to tap into what appears to be a near-endless reserve of affection for the book by helping to organize parties, movie screenings, readings and scholarly discussions. The publisher has recruited

Black Fashion Museum collection finds a fine home with Smithsonian

The velvet opera coat was stretched out on a bed of archival paper and tucked into a person-size box that resembled a humble coffin. A clutch of Smithsonian curators and restoration experts gently lifted it -- like scholarly pallbearers with white gloved hands and keen eyes for precision -- onto an examination table for loving inspection. The coat, estimated to be from the early 1900s and possibly more than 100 years old, was exquisitely crafted of sapphire blue velvet with what loo

Lindy in the Sky With Amelia, Orville and Wilbur

The obsessive urge to get airborne unites the singing dreamers in “Take Flight,” an ambitious concept musical about the pioneering spirits of American aviation making its United States premiere at the McCarter Theater Center here. On a windy Southern beach Orville and Wilbur Wright pore over physics statistics to a disjointed melody, their progress confounded by problems of equilibrium. Anxious to be the first to cross the Atlantic, Charles Lindbergh fights off an array of competi

The Joys of Jumpology

When the photographer Philippe Halsman said, “Jump,” no one asked how high. People simply pushed off or leapt up to the extent that physical ability and personal decorum allowed. In that airborne instant Mr. Halsman clicked the shutter. He called his method jumpology.... The idea of having people jump for the camera can seem like a gimmick, but it is telling that jumpology shares a few syllables with psychology. As Halsman, who died in 1979, said, “When you ask a person to jump, his

“A Place Out of Time: The Bordentown School” -- PBS documentary showcases a separate, "equal" NJ school

You could listen to a lot of dry lectures by a lot of windy history professors and still not learn as much about race issues in the century after the Civil War as you do in “A Place Out of Time: The Bordentown School.” This hourlong film by Dave Davidson, Monday on PBS, seems on the surface to be a simple documentary: the history of an all-black school in Bordentown, N.J., that existed from 1886 to 1955. But by the time the story is told, you have come to see the school as a microco

Hudson to play Winnie Mandela amid legal threats

Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson is to star in a biopic of former South African President Nelson Mandela's ex-wife Winnie, whose lawyers have already contacted the film makers threatening to block it. "Winnie," which also features Terrence Howard as Nelson Mandela and is based on a book by Anne Marie du Preez Bezdrob, starts shooting in South Africa on May 31 and could be ready for theatres by spring next year. Producer Andre Pieterse said Winnie Madikizela-Mandel

"John Rabe": An old-fashioned, manipulative epic

The German actor Ulrich Tukur brings an understated intensity and psychological depth to the title role of “John Rabe,” a sweeping historical film that exalts a largely unsung real-life hero who risked his life to do the right thing. Rabe, a Nazi German industrialist stationed in China, is credited with saving the lives of more than 200,000 Chinese during the infamous 1937 massacre in Nanking (now Nanjing) in the second Sino-Japanese war. In a matter of weeks, the Japanese slaughtered at least 2

How Robin Hood became a socialist

Ridley Scott's "Robin Hood," starring Russell Crowe as a common archer turned proto-revolutionary and national warrior, will bring no merriness to the month of May. Given Crowe's surly persona, the film affords no capering in the greenwood in the manner of Douglas Fairbanks, no cocky Saxon tricksterism in the vein of Errol Flynn, and mercifully no SoCal modernity in the style of Kevin Costner. In their desire to break with the traditional aura of the English outlaw, Scott, Crowe and wr

New Third Reich Monument in Berlin

Who exactly were the men who planned and administered the Nazi crimes? The new "Topography of Terror" documentation center opened on Thursday in Berlin at the site of the former Gestapo and SS headquarters. It reveals the faces of the almost unknown perpetrators of the Holocaust. The index cards cover an entire wall, several hundred of them in pink, beige or green, containing names, dates of birth and handwritten notes. They are the details of some of the 7,000 former empl

PBS’ Masterpiece Mystery Deals with Communist Atrocity and UK, US Complicity

This week’s season premiere episode of the PBS drama series Masterpiece Mystery brought two very happy things. One, the return of the series Foyle’s War for a seventh season is quite welcome. Starring Michael Kitchen as Inspector Christopher Foyle, the chief police detective in a coastal English town during and after World War II, the series includes good mystery puzzles while taking quite seriously the moral implications of all of its characters’ actions. The second good thing was

Hawaiian history stirringly told in "Kaiulani"

Hawaii's 19th-century colonization by the U.S. forms the intriguing backdrop for "Princess Kaiulani," a stirring romantic drama centering on the last royal heir to the native line of traditional monarchs. Film Retitled since screening as "Barbarian Princess" last year at the Hawaii International Film Festival, where it won the audience award, this independent film is attractively cast and produced with a distinct specialty luster. It's likely to appe

A Bank’s Ads, Dressed Up in Historical Garb

EARLY in the first installment of “America: The Story of Us,” the 12-hour documentary series on the History cable channel that began on April 25 and covers 400 years of United States history, an actor depicting a British soldier bumps into another depicting Paul Revere, and the narrator Liev Schreiber says, “When revolution comes to North America, Revere will be at the center of it.” Viewers might be momentarily confused when the screen goes dark, signaling a commercial break, only

Stan Lee to host series for History

As part of a slate of new shows, the "X-Men" creator will co-host "Stan Lee's Superhumans," which will find people whose genetic differences have given them remarkable abilities. Daniel Browning Smith, dubbed the world's most flexible man, will host the series with Lee. "Superhumans" will debut on the network during the third quarter and is joined by five other series and a slew of specials being greenlighted in time for the network's "upfront"

Naomi Wolf: The Great American Escapism

[Naomi Wolf’s most recent book is Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries.] Barack Obama, however mixed his accomplishments to date as U.S. President, has sought to rebrand America and reclaim its former signature asset: its ability to embody universally admired values. As popular culture is usually the way those values are transmitted, it is worth considering what it is about American cinema, music and popular literature that makes them so compelling to many other

Jordi Savall: Tracing Jerusalem's History In Music

Monday night at Lincoln Center in New York City, early-music expert Jordi Savall is taking his audience back to ancient Jerusalem. But this project is different from the work that has earned Savall acclaim for resurrecting forgotten music from the Renaissance and Baroque eras. The Jerusalem project spans six centuries — right up to the present day — and the clash of cultures and religions that has torn the city apart. Savall says he doesn't believe in form

Anthony Barnett: The Sculptures of "the Greatest Englishman"

[Anthony Barnett is the founder of openDemocracy.net and the editor of its UK section, Our Kingdom.] After 1945, for a long post-war generation through to the 80s, the sculptor, Henry Moore, who was born 1898 and died in 1986, was Britain’s most famous artist. Massive versions of his works were acquired around the world so that you could say that ‘the sun never set on Henry Moores’. He was referred to as “The Greatest Living Englishman”. His sponsor, the influential art patron and T

A new view onto the Third Reich 'center of evil' in Berlin

BERLIN -- A knee-high wall, a rusty gate, the brick foundations of razed buildings - such are crumbling remnants of the Nazi empire in the heart of Berlin known by historians as the "center of evil." Sixty-five years after the end of World War II, a new exhibition center is opening this week on the site where the feared Gestapo, SS and other Nazi agencies ran Adolf Hitler's police state from 1933 to 1945. The center adds a museum and a library to the previousl