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

Andreas Whittam Smith: To Understand Modern France, You Really Must See "La Rafle"

[Andreas Whittam Smith is a columnist for the Independent (UK).] The memory of France's most shameful wartime episode, buried deep for 30 years and then only grudgingly recognised, has finally come fully to the surface. For the appalling fate that the French state inflicted on thousands of its Jewish people one morning in July 1942 has become the subject of a film made with serious and respectful intent, a sort of documentary with actors. It is titled La Rafle (The Round-up). It ope

Istvan Rev: Outrageous "Inglorious Basterds" Based on Real History

[Istvan Rev is a professor of history at Central European University, Budapest.] Charles T. Pinck, president of the O.S.S. Society, an organization of veterans of the Office of Strategic Services, the World War II predecessor of the C.I.A., argued in the Washington Times that the film “Inglorious Basterds” loses its pretense as a fantasy when it attaches a fictional group of Jewish commandos to the real O.S.S., thereby giving the viewer the impression that this story is true.

American Heritage Reviews “The Pacific”

[Jennifer J. Rodibaugh is the Assistant Editor of American Heritage Magazine.] As I write, tens of thousands of American soldiers are scraping out a life of tedium, punctuated by moments of terrible violence, in a rocky landscape of scorched earth far to the east. They seek an enemy that slips effortlessly through the terrain, is incomprehensible in its motives, and which attacked us first. Sound familiar? With this in mind, it is difficult not to question Steven Spielb

The History of the Jewish Star in the Realm of the Union Jack - a Review of the Jewish Museum London

One of the first objects you see in the newly expanded Jewish Museum London, which opens on Wednesday, is also one of the museum’s oldest: the remains of a 13th-century Jewish ritual bath (a mikvah) uncovered during a 2001 construction project in the City of London. As seen here, it is a bit too robustly reconstructed, its age and fragmentary character mollified with the use of modern materials and mirrors mounted like rays above its well. But it offers testimony to a long history i

Lewis H. Lapham: How the “Lively Arts” Became “the Media”

[Lewis H. Lapham is Editor of Lapham’s Quarterly.][This essay appears in the March 2010 issue of Lapham's Quarterly and is posted at TomDispatch.com with the kind permission of that magazine.]Art as a medium of exchange is the gift in the hand of its creator, alive in the mind of its beh

First Exhibition Ever to Focus on Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's Enthusiasm for Art (London)

This exhibition is the first ever to focus on Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s shared enthusiasm for art. Bringing together more than 400 items from the Royal Collection, it celebrates the royal couple’s mutual delight in collecting and displaying works of art, from the time of their engagement in 1839 to the Prince’s untimely death in 1861. The exhibition also challenges the popular image of Victoria – the melancholy widow of 40 years – and reveals her as a passionate and open-minded young wo

"Green Zone": Jason Bourne Goes to Iraq This Isn't

Some say it is too soon for a movie on Iraq; others say it is too late. Given what we know about weapons of mass destruction (WMD), though, most would probably agree that Green Zone (Universal) is nothing other than two hours of anticlimax. Granted, it may be SO 2003 to ask that very inconvenient question of why coalition forces invaded Iraq. Yet Paul Greengrass’s film – much like The Bourne Supremacy (2004) and The Bourne Ultimatium (2007) – remains thrilling till the very end, sinc

Meet the new action heroes: Lincoln, Da Vinci, Dickens and Queen Victoria

Forget Indiana Jones. If you're making a period-piece adventure these days, you might want to consider putting the whip, wooden stake or pistol in the hand of a long-gone world leader or esteemed author. It may sound a bit strange, but that's the message coming back from pop culture at the moment. Consider the fact that, at bookstores right now, Abe Lincoln and Queen Victoria are each taking on dark supernatural threats and that Hollywood has plans to turn Charles Dickens, H.P. Love

National Portrait Gallery Presents First Ever Exhibition Devoted to Indian Portraits (UK)

An important exhibition telling the story of the Indian portrait over three centuries will open at the National Portrait Gallery on 11 March 2010. Bringing together 60 works from international public and private collections, The Indian Portrait 1560-1860 will celebrate the beauty, power and humanity of these works of art. The exhibition sets out to show that Indian portraiture - an area of artistic achievement overlooked in Britain - should be seen alongside other outstanding portraits from arou

Centre Pompidou Shows Fifty Large-Format Paintings in Tribute to Lucian Freud

The Centre Pompidou is to pay tribute to Lucian Freud, one of the greatest of contemporary painters. Now 88 years old, he is one of the world’s most important living artists. He has not shown in France since the Centre’s last major retrospective of his work nearly a quarter of a century ago, in 1987, though his fame has since then only grown and his place in the history of art become ever more assured. The exhibition will present an outstanding selection of Freud’s work, consisting

Film awakens France's shame in the Holocaust

France likes to point the cinema camera on its own past, good and bad, but one of the darkest events in modern French history has been almost banished from the screen, until now. The movie Le Rafle, which opens in France on Wednesday, is the first to address head-on the most notorious episode in the persecution of French Jews during the Second World War. The film, which has won glowing tributes from advance viewers, tells the story of the arrest of 13,000 Parisian Jews, including 4

One hundred years later, evolution continues for Smithsonian's Natural History museum

You could say that it was a hunting expedition that captured the whole world: In 1909, Theodore Roosevelt embarked on an East African safari, with financial help from the Smithsonian Institution, and ended up collecting more than a thousand specimens, including several hundred big game. This hunting expedition would cause an uproar these days, but back in Roosevelt's time these trophies were objects of unabashed public curiosity. At about the same time, the Smithsonian was building

Ed Koch on "Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Sűss

[Ed Koch was mayor of NYC from 1978 to 1989. He's credited with restoring fiscal stability to the city and creating affordable housing. He's also a film buff.] Before seeing Harlan: In the Shadow of 'Jew Sűss', I had never heard of Veit Harlan, who directed the 1940 movie Jew Sűss. While I don't know for certain, I assume he was responsible for the script in that film which the New York Times' Manohla Dargis described in her review of this picture as "one of t

Prado Museum Opens Exhibition Dedicated to the Armour and Paintings of the Spanish Court (Madrid)

35 paintings will be seen alongside 31 full suits of armour and pieces of armour loaned from the Royal Armoury in Madrid, considered the finest collection in the world along with that of the imperial collection in Vienna. Together, they will narrate the evolution and impact of the court portrait in the period from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Particularly noteworthy is the juxtaposition of Titian’s portrait of Charles V at Mühlberg and the impressive suit of equestrian armour belonging to the

No Enchanted Evenings in "The Pacific"

MIDWAY through the first hour of “Band of Brothers,” HBO’s 2001 mini-series about a company of paratroopers during and after D-Day, there’s a scene on a troop ship that’s jampacked with new recruits on their way to hard fighting in the European theater. “Right now some lucky bastard’s headed for the South Pacific,” one soldier says to another, envious. “He’s going to get billeted on some tropical island sitting under a palm tree with six naked native girls helping him cut up coconuts so he can h

Douglas Brinkley: History According to Tom Hanks

[Douglas Brinkley is a professor of history at Rice University and a CBS News historian. His most recent book is The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America.] To the young Tom Hanks, history was as dull as an algebra equation. For Hanks — a classic baby boomer, born in 1956 — World War II was just a string of long-ago muzzle flashes in black-and-white. Yet he did have a more direct connection to the global cataclysm. His father had been a U.S. Naval mechan

In the Shadow of "Jew Süss"

“The dimensions are unimaginable. What did such films lead to? What was their direct effect?” Christiane Kubrick poses the question that can’t be answered in Harlan: In the Shadow of “Jew Süss” (Harlan-Im Schatten von Jud Süß). But if it’s impossible to measure direct consequences of a film (or any work of art), Felix Moeller’s documentary considers the layered and lasting aftermath of Jew Süss, the 1940 anti-Semitic propaganda drama made by Kubrick’s uncle, Viet Harlan. Opening 3 M

Major Collection of Middle Eastern Photography being Built for National Museums (UK)

The Art Fund today announced that it has embarked upon an exciting new venture - the creation of a national collection of recent Middle Eastern photography, to be owned jointly by the V&A and the British Museum. The collection will be known as The Art Fund Collection of Middle Eastern photography at the V&A and the British Museum. In total, the charity is allocating £100,000 to enable the two museums to build the Collection, which is to encompass photography f

Saddam Hussein's Personal Physician to Show Works at University of Leicester (UK)

After spending 20 years in the service of one of history’s most notorious dictators, the artwork of Dr Ala Bashir provides a chilling insight into the horror of Iraq’s recent history. A new exhibition - to be shown for the first time in its entirety - will be showcased at Embrace Arts at the RA centre, the University of Leicester’s arts centre, from Saturday 15 May to Sunday 4 July 2010, with a special opening event on Friday 14 May. Called ‘Recent Work: Memories of K

Paolo Veronese, the Petrobelli Altarpiece, and Venice in Texas

Combine a mystery and a masterpiece and what do you have? You have “Paolo Veronese: The Petrobelli Altarpiece,” a small, perfectly focused exhibition recently at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin. The show--which has also been seen at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa--comes with a backstory engaging enough to make museum-goers pay close attention. In the 1560s, already in command of his genius for opulent