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

U2's Free Berlin Wall Concert Sparks Outrage

BERLIN — Irish rockers U2 returned to Berlin for a free mini-concert Thursday in front of the Brandenburg Gate, playing its classic singles and a duet with Jay-Z even as the show was obscured from public view by a nearly 6-1/2-foot (two-meter) high metal barrier. Bono greeted the crowd with the German words "Berlin, Du bist wunderbar!" (Berlin, you are wonderful!) and the band played a 30-minute, six-song set that featured "Sunday, Bloody Sunday," "One"

The Hotel Chelsea's grand ghosts: a review of 'Chelsea on the Rocks'

Back when the Underground was in the foreground of film discussion, Andy Warhol made a picture called The Chelsea Girls. It was shot in the celebrated Hotel Chelsea in New York, but it had much less to do with its setting than with Warhol’s attempts to reshape film form. Nonetheless, he felt a need to mention the place in his title. Now, however, comes a concentration on the place--Chelsea on the Rocks, a documentary meant as memorial. The hotel has had a century-old reputation as a

Forty Years of 'Civilisation'

Television can make you famous, but it can't keep you famous. It's a bit like heroin: No sooner do you stop taking your daily fix than you get all pale and clammy, after which you vanish in a puff of smoke. So far as I know, there's never been a TV star who lingered in the public eye for very long after departing from the airwaves—least of all Kenneth Clark. Even among his fellow art historians, Clark is only modestly well remembered. Most of his books are now out of print, and you'

After Mickey's Makeover, Less Mr. Nice Guy

LOS ANGELES — For decades, the Walt Disney Company has largely kept Mickey Mouse frozen under glass, fearful that even the tiniest tinkering might tarnish the brand and upend his $5 billion or so in annual merchandise sales. One false move and Disney could have New Coke on its hands. Now, however, concerned that Mickey has become more of a corporate symbol than a beloved character for recent generations of young people, Disney is taking the risky step of re-imagining him for the fut

A City of Mixed Emotions Observes Calvin's 500th

GENEVA — On a recent afternoon, stagehands prepared the Protestant meeting hall on the Place de la Fusterie for a musical, “The Calvin Generation,” to be performed there that evening. Springtime for Calvin? Not quite. The religious reformer, best known for his doctrines about a depraved humanity and a harsh God predestining people to hell or heaven, would not dance or sing that night. But the show was one of a vast program of commemorations — theater, a film festival, conferences,

Glynn Wilson Reviewing Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story"

If Michael Moore had arrived on the film scene as a conservative Republican activist in 1989, he might be heralded by Fox News today as a major American hero, and he might even be able to get a fair review in the so-called "liberal" New York Times. Unfortunately for him and his message, he started making movies during the late 1980s, when the presidencies of Republicans Ronald Reagan and then George Herbert Walker Bush made them the target of his outsourcing ire. Moore fir

Muhammad: The Biopic

Is Islam ready for a big-budget Hollywood blowout? Barrie Osborne, the producer of such blockbusters as The Lord of the Rings and The Matrix, has set to work on an English-language biopic about the Prophet Muhammad—despite an Islamic law that forbids the prophet from actually ever appearing on-screen. Still, the movie has a $150 million budget and is backed by a Qatari media company that put Muslim cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi in charge as its theological consultant, according to the Guardian

Lotz House Adds Painting by Matilda Lotz to Collection

The Historic Lotz House Civil War Museum has unveiled an original oil painting created by a young Matilda Lotz in 1880 at the age of 22. The painting titled, “The Donkey,” reflects Matilda’s life of perseverance and journey. Matilda Lotz was just a young child during the Civil War’s Battle of Franklin when she and her family willingly sought refuge in the Carter’s basement, which was located just 110 steps from their home. The offer to stay in the neighbor’s basement provided better

Secret Worcestershire Sauce recipe found

The original recipe was a closely guarded secret, but a former accountant at the company claimed that he found the notes dating from the mid 1800s in a skip by the firm's site. Brian Keogh, who died in 2006, said that he discovered the original recipe in two leather-bound folios written in sepia ink. The recipe was written in two different styles of handwriting, which analysts believe was due to the fact that no one knew the entire recipe. His daughter Bonnie Clifford is now working

Reverberations of a Trial and Its Shocking Aftermath

“This case has it all,” someone will often say about a particularly gruesome or scandalous court proceeding — the O. J. Simpson trial, for instance, or anything involving John Gotti Jr. But you won’t find a case with more “all” than the one nearly a century ago surrounding an Atlanta pencil factory superintendent named Leo Frank. It is mesmerizingly recreated and explored Monday on PBS in “The People v. Leo Frank,” a film by Ben Loeterman that even those already familiar with this ugly piece of

“Gandhi” three-part documentary on BBC TV, UK

There has been much talk recently about the script of a film portraying the romance between the wife of the last British Viceroy of India and the country’s first prime minister. The Indian government has demanded that some of Indian Summer’s scenes be rewritten and depictions of physical intimacy between Jawaharlal Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten be cut out before granting permission to film on location in Delhi, Punjab and Kashmir. All foreign films shot in India must be

The New Dracula

He's ba-aack. More than 112 years after Dracula first made his appearance, the blood-sucking icon is back for more action. According to a story on CNN.com, a sequel to Bram Stoker's 1897 classic, Dracula, was released this month in the US. Dracula The Un-Dead was written by Dacre Stoker, Bram Stoker's great-grandnephew, and Ian Holt, a Dracula historian. (Side note: Dracula historian? Are there Merlin or Harry Potter historians, too?). A college writing project sparked

Dangerous People Needed: a Review of "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers"

On Thursday night I had the privilege of viewing a premier of a film together with its star. The theater was in the U.S. Capitol, and the film was "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers" ( http://www.mostdangerousman.org ). This is a powerfully and engagingly constructed film about one of the most effective instances of whistle-blowing in our nation's history. Ellsberg risked life in prison

The movie "Amelia"? One critic gives it a thumbs up!

[Jim Castagnera is the author of Al Qaeda Goes to College and 17 other books.]          Reviews I’ve seen have been less than kind to “Amelia.”  The film “never gets off the ground,” said one.  “It never, however, truly takes flight,” echoes another.  Yet another carps that the film “barely makes it out of the hanger.”  “Where is the steely force that drives grand ambit

Rock'n'roll's Visual Side on Display in N.Y. Museum

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A major new photography exhibit is built around the idea that the eyes are just as important as the ears for appreciating and understanding rock 'n' roll. The Brooklyn Museum's sprawling show "Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present" opened on Friday as a study in the contrasts that run through the rock music subculture. Nearly 200 photographs, videos, album covers and slide shows, from multi-panel images of J

Kahlo, Trotsky and Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver started working on her new novel,"The Lacuna," in February 2002, when a"long-term ache" to write about the estrangement of art and politics in the U.S. was fired up by the events that followed 9/11. The word lacuna means a gap or interval, but it also has botanical and anatomical meanings; before Ms. Kingsolver became a writer, she earned a master's degree in ecology and evolutionary biology. The author's Africa-set 1998 novel"The Poisonwood Bible" was an Oprah's Book Club

“The Black Album”: adapted to the stage 20 years after The Satanic Verses affair - Liverpool, UK

Back in the early nineties, when other artists (and varying intelligence agencies) had more traditional ideas on their minds, Hanif Kureishi chose to focus on the “toxic fundamentalism bubbling away in Britain’s multicultural melting-pot.” Inspired by the fatwa of 1989 against Salman Rushdie over the The Satanic Verses, The Black Album sets liberalism against fundamentalism through a Muslim central character. Fifteen years on, the book stands up as an eerie warning from history. Sin

Not Your Mother's Literary Classics

I was browsing in a bookstore recently when a copy of Little Women caught my eye. The cover featured crude, inky sketches of the March sisters, arrayed in a quadrant. They seemed to be suffering from a collective bad hair day. "Oh God please!" Meg laments in the thought bubble over her head. "My skin is so bad I want to grow up, and fast!" Next to her, Amy reads from a Bible, sounding like an evangelical Molly Bloom ("Yes Yes God says hey girls be good …") while the

One Man's Crusade Against Slavery, Seen From Two Angles

RICHMOND, Va. — His body may lie a-moldering in the grave, but in what form exactly does his soul go marching on? We may think we know something about John Brown, the abolitionist and stern Calvinist who 150 years ago this month led 21 followers to take over the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va., expecting to gather weapons to fuel a widespread slave rebellion. His self-proclaimed Provisional Army of the United States took hostages (including a great-grandnephew of George Washington) and kil

Sneak Preview of Upcoming Plame/CIA Leak Flick

The Naomi Watts/Sean Penn film, with wonderful title "Fair Game," directed by Doug Liman, has been under wraps but here's a report by someone who attended a "test screening." Films are often changed based on reactions there. No set release date yet. Excerpt: "Fair Game is really a tremendous, thought provoking film. It's based on the same titled memoir by former CIA Agent Valerie Plame, who of course worked for the agency as an undercover spy until her hu