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

Art and History Clash in San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO — From the floor-to-ceiling windows in his office atop the Gap headquarters, Don Fisher, the company’s billionaire founder and chairman emeritus, has dazzling IMAX-style vistas of San Francisco Bay. But the killer view has stiff competition from the flotilla of Calders, Diebenkorns, Rauschenbergs, Twomblys and a succession of Mick Jaggers by Andy Warhol that form a veritable art park in his midst. One of the country’s foremost collectors of contemporary art, Mr. Fisher

10 most historically inaccurate movies

We all accept that movies stretch the truth in the interest of building drama. The following ten flicks, however, treat the truth like it was Silly Putty -- pulling and twisting it until it's unrecognizable. 1. 10,000 B.C. Director Roland Emmerich is usually a stickler for realism (see: sending a computer virus via Macintosh to aliens in Independence Day). So we hate to inform him that woolly mammoths were not, in fact, used to build pyramids. Heck, woolly mammoths weren't even found in the desert. They wouldn't need to be woolly if that were the case. And there weren't any pyramids in Egypt until 2,500 B.C or so. 2. Gladiator Emperor Commodus was not the sniveling sister-obsessed creep portrayed in the movie. A violent alcoholic, sure, but not so whiny. He ruled ably for over a decade rather than ineptly for a couple months. He also didn't kill his father, Marcus Aurelius, who actually died of chickenpox. And instead of being killed in the gladiatorial arena, he was murdered in his bathtub.... 

Race row over 'King Kong' Vogue cover

The cover of the latest issue of Vogue magazine is always eagerly awaited as a guide to trends and styles. And when the fashion bible announced that a black man would grace that space for the first time in the magazine's 116-year history, there was already extra interest in its April issue. But the picture of the basketball star, LeBron J

Titanic survivor's secrets revealed

A pocket watch which stopped at the exact moment the Titanic sank and one of only four remaining tickets for the voyage will go on sale as part of a collection left by the last survivor of the tragedy with memories of the disaster. For 94 years, survivor Lillian Asplund had refused to speak about the tragedy which claimed the lives of her father and three brothers. Only after her death, aged 99, have her family uncovered details of the terrible events. Miss Asplund left

5th-Graders spend day as 18th-century villagers

Dressed in Colonial-style clothing, parent Martha Kibbey held up a handsaw and asked a group of fifth-graders at Darnestown Elementary School whether anyone needed a limb amputated. "We have some bullets you can bite on, because we don't have any anesthetic," Kibbey told the students while explaining an 18th-century apothecary's services. "Our children today do not have enough history taught to them. They get bits and pieces. This makes it come alive," said socia

HBO John Adams series writer defends program

HBO's seven-part miniseries, John Adams, based on David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning book about America's second president, premiered last weekend. The New Republic asked historian John Patrick Diggins and author Steven Waldman to critique the series. Click here to see their discussion of Parts 1 and 2. This week, Kirk Ellis, the series' writer and co-executive producer, will be joining the discussion. Waldman kicked off the discussion with his thoughts on last night's airing of Part 3. C

D B Cooper: Parachute may belong to famed hijacker

Hoping to solve at least part of a 36-year-old mystery, the FBI is analyzing a torn, tangled parachute found in southwest Washington to determine if it belonged to famed plane hijacker D.B. Cooper. Children playing outside their home near Amboy found the chute's fabric sticking up from the ground in an area where their father had been grading a road, agent Larry Carr said Tuesday. They pulled it out as far as they could, then cut the parachute's ropes with scissors. The

Titanic offices open secrets of liner's history

The Titanic drawing offices are to be unveiled to the public today, unlocking the secrets of the world's most famous ship. The former offices in the old main Harland & Wolff building on Queen's Road will give a unique insight into the history of the ill-fated liner. The building, which was the hub of the H&W empire, is not usually open to the public, but courtesy of Titanic Quarter Ltd, visitors will get the chance to view a real piece of Titanic history never s

Truth is the first casualty on the 'Tudors'

DUBLIN, Ireland -- For a guy playing Henry VIII, Jonathan Rhys Meyers was looking very skinny in his jeans, relaxing in a trailer on the Irish set of Showtime's steamy period drama "The Tudors." The series, which critics could take or leave but many viewers are eating up (the costumes! the sets! the sex scenes!), returns for its second season Sunday.... The king's physical appearance may be a minor point, really, when you consider the historical facts that "The Tudors

History museum opens exhibit on severe weather

Coming off a year in which Kansas endured destructive ice storms, killer tornadoes and severe flooding, the state history museum has opened an exhibit on extreme weather. Organizers say the timing is a coincidence, because they have been working on the exhibit for more than a year. But they also say it's a reminder of why Kansans routinely look to the sky and what outsiders remember most about the state. The exhibit, "Forces of Nature," opened Friday at the Ka

Beatles try to block historic bootleg

The Beatles are trying to block the release of an album of "lost" songs recorded during Ringo Starr's first performances with the group. The eight unreleased songs date from 1962 when the Fab Four agreed to do a few final gigs at Hamburg's Star Club, where they had performed as a fledgling band. The songs include Paul McCartney and John Lennon singing an early B-side, Ask Me Why, McCartney singing Hank Williams' Lovesick Blues, and George Harrison doing Mauric

In Mexico, on the Lam With Ken Kesey

In 1966, the Merry Prankster fled to a dead-end town in Mexico to escape a jail term. Four decades later, a journey to that same town becomes a pilgrimage in search of both the man and the myth.

'The Counterfeiters': A Holocaust Fable With A Happy Ending?

Let's be clear: Austria's The Counterfeiters was not the best foreign-language film of the year. (For my money, that would be the minutely observed, grim-but-humane Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days.) It is a good, compelling film, but, its Oscar win notwithstanding, it is an uneasy hybrid of competing forms: Holocaust fable, crime thriller, true(ish) story, and moral inquiry. The story begins in prewar Berlin, where master forger Salomon Sorowitsch, or "Sally" (Karl M

John Adams: Now the most widely sung unsung hero

In 1819, 18 years after leaving the White House, John Adams fretted that "Mausoleums, Statues, Monuments will never be erected to me. … Panegyrical romances will never be written, nor flattering orations spoken to transmit me to posterity in brilliant colors." He was mostly right. Where's the Adams Memorial in Washington, the college named after Adams, the currency bearing Adams's image? The first and third presidents are on Mount Rushmore, but no Adams gazes out between G

Cartoonist sets out to take taboo out of swastika

Swastikas can be funny, insists American cartoonist Sam Gross, whose new book is devoted to cartoons featuring the controversial symbol most often associated with the German Nazi Party. The swastika is the focus of the jokes in We Have Ways of Making You Laugh: 120 Funny Swastika Cartoons, the latest effort from the 74-year-old cartoonist best known for his drawings of talking cats, flying cows and snails falling in love with Scotch-tape dispensers. The idea came to Gro

Film details how Allies foiled Nazi pillage of Europe's art

Adolf Hitler's obsession with creating a Nazi super museum to house plundered art is at the heart of The Rape of Europa. Equally fascinating about the documentary is America's wartime attempt to minimize damage to European public art during bombing raids and to return stolen pieces to their original owners. Dubbed Monuments Men, these were artists and curators drafted into military service. Many marched along with troops into France, Italy and Germany in the hope of sec

U.S. TV's The History Channel drops 'the' and 'channel' from its name

The History Channel in the United States is now history. Make that History. The cable network quietly dropped "the" and "channel" from its name recently, claiming History for itself. "Our brand is, in the media landscape, synonymous with the genre of history so I don't think it's presumptuous of us to call ourselves History," said Nancy Dubuc, the network's executive vice-president. That's how many viewers already refer to it, she said. &qu

Mystery painter of a Victorian portrait donated to Trowbridge Museum may have finally been identified

After 22 years of conjecture, the mystery painter of a Victorian portrait donated to Trowbridge Museum may have finally been identified. The portrait, donated in 1986, shows a young Victorian woman showing off her wedding ring, in a piece museum staff believe is likely to have been painted especially for her husband. Until now, no-one at the museum has known anything about the origins of the painting, but a member of the public recently enlightened them on the possible

Paul Robeson Exhibit in Bay Area

“PAUL ROBESON, A HERO FOR ALL TIME” Exhibition, March 31-April 30, 2008, Oakland City Hall Rotunda April 9, 2008 will mark the 110th anniversary of the birth of Paul Robeson, son of an escaped slave who became world famous as a scholar, All-American athlete, singer, actor of stage and film, and political activist. The exhibit draws from the extensive collection of memorabilia assembled by the Bay Area Paul Robeson Centennial Committee and consists of artifacts s

Before Polaroid fades into history, let's remember how influential -- and cool -- the art of the snapshot, and the cameras themselves, could be

It's not as if "instant photography" died in an instant. Once digital cameras became affordable, its days were numbered. And technically (if not technologically), it's not even dead. Fuji still makes instant film. Even so, the announcement last month that Polaroid would stop producing instant film is a landmark in the history of photography. Cambridge photographer Elsa Dorfman exclusively uses Polaroid film in her celebrated large-format portraits. Her response to the news