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

Grace Kelly: A Legacy of Wholesome Elegance

This is a timely moment to take a fresh look at the silken blonde hair, the pearls laid on peachy skin, the decent, ladylike clothes and the serene beauty that was Grace Kelly. The film star of the 1950s became, of course, Princess Grace — although she had that title in her movie roles and in the American mind’s eye long before Prince Rainier of Monaco met her at the Cannes film festival in 1955 and made her his bride. Watching the crowds gravitate toward the screen whe

HBO's "The Pacific" Gives Lie to Generational Exceptionalism

After years of treating the Greatest Generation with reverence, years in which late-life oral testimonies have established that generation’s quietly reflective bearing, it’s a jolt to read, say, James Jones’s From Here to Eternity, and find the heroes of World War II portrayed so anti-heroically, much the way veterans of our later wars have more typically been portrayed. Near the end of that work, Jones—a Pearl Harbor and Guadalcanal veteran—has Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt holed up at his pros

Jimi Hendrix's patchwork coat heads to the Museum of the American Indian

Say the name Jimi Hendrix and you think: Rock star. Woodstock. Crazy costumes. Greatest electric guitar player ever. But his sister Janie and the National Museum of the American Indian want you to know that part of his great style came from his Native American ancestry. Now 49 and head of Jimi Hendrix's Seattle-based estate, she brought one of the musician's custom-made coats and two replica guitars to the museum Wednesday for an upcoming exhibit, "Up Where We Belong: Native Mu

History channel's Kennedy miniseries has been cast

History channel has finally cast its controversial eight-hour Kennedy miniseries. Greg Kinnear will play President John F. Kennedy; Katie Holmes has been cast as first lady Jacqueline Kennedy; Barry Pepper is portraying Attorney General Robert Kennedy; and Tom Wilkinson has been cast as family patriarch Joe Kennedy Sr. The basic cable network caused a storm back in December when it announced its first stab at a scripted miniseries, mostly because the Kennedy project hai

First look: 'Conspirator' follows the drama after Lincoln's death

Any grade-school student can tell you the story of the 1865 assassination of Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theater at the hand of John Wilkes Booth. But what happened next? Robert Redford's new film, The Conspirator, follows the race to hunt down the small band of Confederate sympathizers who helped plot the attack. Think of it as Law & Order: Civil War Unit. James McAvoy (Atonement) stars as a decorated Union soldier who reluctantly agrees to

My Lai on PBS: A Dark Day That Still Resonates

The slaughter of hundreds of unarmed villagers in Quang Ngai Province, Vietnam, in March 1968 — an event that came to be known as the My Lai massacre — is both an open wound in the American psyche and a cautionary tale at a time when we are once again fighting wars, and killing civilians, on foreign soil. The story of the killings and the subsequent cover-up is also vividly theatrical: a three-act drama of idealism, horror and slow, fumbling justice. It is told superbly by Barak Goo

King Tut Returns to New York City in New Exhibit

[Bruce Feiler is the bestselling author of Walking the Bible, Abraham, and America’s Prophet, and the host of Walking the Bible on PBS. His new book, The Council of Dads, describes how he responded to a cancer diagnosis by asking six friends to help father his daughters.] He came to power at age 9. Under the wing of powerful handlers, he overturned the changes of his father’s regime and restored the state religion. He died 10 years later after a mysterious accident that strongly sug

Q&A with Egyptian Antiquities Chief Zahi Hawass

Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" opened on Friday at New York's Discovery Times Square Exposition center, next door to Sardi’s on West 44th Street. It’s the last stop on a six-city North American tour billed as the "Return of the King," a reference to the original Tut exhibition that debuted at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1976. That show, which revealed the boy king's mysterious treasures (and mummy) to American audiences for the first time, created the ur-mo

US history given some dramatic re-creation on "History"

The creative forces behind “America: The Story of Us’’ have trumpeted their intention to offer every school in the nation a free DVD of this six-night, 12-hour series, and that emphasis on attracting young viewers is abundantly clear from the first episode. This is American history served up docudrama style, with narrative velocity and visual pizzazz. What’s gained by this approach is a certain storytelling oomph. What’s lost is a certain gravitas. I suspect it’s a tradeoff that His

Ridley Scott claims his new "Robin Hood" will be the most accurate rendition

Next month sees one of the most long-awaited clashes in a while. At its heart is the age-old duel between dependency and private initiative, between individual freedom and oppressive authority, between youth and age. The general election? No. I’m talking about Robin Hood, Ridley Scott’s new film starring Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett, which premieres next month. But the very fact that the election crossed my mind gives the clue as to why Robin Hood survives while almost every oth

NOLA Gathering to Watch Their City’s Star Turn in "Treme"

In the family center of the Charbonnet-Labat-Glapion Funeral Home on St. Philip Street, the local historic neighborhood association came together for a meeting on Sunday night. After a few mentions of “beautification issues,” they got down to the matter at hand: in a few minutes’ time, the city’s Tremé neighborhood, unknown to most and mispronounced by many, was about to become very, very famous. The viewing party at the funeral home — red carpet attire requested — was one of countl

"Have You Heard From Johannesburg": The Long Story of a Long Revolution

“Invictus” isn’t the only recent film to look at apartheid and the complicated legacy it left in South Africa. But unlike Clint Eastwood and his cast, Connie Field has taken the documentary route in “Have You Heard From Johannesburg,” a series of seven films that will have its world premiere this week at Film Forum in Manhattan. Clocking in at eight and a half hours, “Have You Heard From Johannesburg,” which takes its title from a line in a 1976 song by Gil Scott-Heron, is meant t

1897 Overhead railway footage screened as part of programme for Museum of Liverpool (UK)

Members of the public were invited to attend a screening of the famous Lumière Brothers’ Liverpool Overhead Railway (LOR) films at Liverpool FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) on Friday. As part of the public programme for the new Museum of Liverpool (MoL), the free lecture showcased new findings of the world’s first tracking shot by Alexandre Promio in 1897. It was introduced by Sharon Brown, curator of land transport and industry for National Museums Liverpool (NML

Peter Beaumont: Why America preferred to forget about the Pacific war – until now

[Peter Beaumont is foreign affairs editor at the Observer.] When Tom Hanks was making Saving Private Ryan, the writer Nora Ephron sent him a book that weighs in at almost 2,000 pages: the Library of America's Reporting World War II. It was a thoughtful gift, appropriate to his then role as an infantry captain on D-Day. But when Hanks began dipping into the collection, he remarked earlier this month, what gripped him the most was not the war in Europe but the other great US campaign

Michael C. Scott: Hollywood’s Obsession with the Ancient Epics

[Michael C Scott is the author of ‘From Democrats to Kings - The Brutal Dawn of a New World from the Downfall of Athens to the Rise of Alexander the Great’. Reprinted with permission from Neo Kosmos.] We are in an era of sandals and swords epic movies. Gladiator, 300, Alexander, Troy, not to mention a spate of recent TV series (the HBO/BBC2 series Rome) and fictional spin offs (Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief in cinemas now). More are in the pipeline (a rumored version of Xenophon’s Anabasis amongst others). The movie world, it seems, is in love with ancient Greece and Rome. Many commentators though complain at the lack of historical accuracy in these films, moan about casting choices and ridicule the changing or simplifying of plot lines. These epics movies are epic disasters they claim. But I don’t think so. Sure, all the above criticisms may be right. But I don’t think that qualifies them as epic disasters. In fact, they remind us about an important aspect of ancient myths and legends: that they changed. Epics like the Iliad for example weren’t written down in the ancient world for an awfully long time; they existed initially as oral poetry and their story-line changed over the generations.

Victor Davis Hanson: "Spartacus" is Little More than Soap Opera

[Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno.] I have been catching up on the episodes of the new Starz series on Spartacus, the Thracian slave who terrified Rome between 73 to 71 BC, through a mass servile uprising originating in Capua. At least most of the names of the known charact

Thomas Doherty: The Real-ish World of ‘24’ and the Magic One of ‘Lost’ See Their Last Hours

[Thomas Doherty is a professor in the American Studies Department at Brandeis University.] IT LOOKS like the terrorists have won: Fox has canceled “24.’’ After eight seasons, or 192 hours in Jack Bauer time, the action-psychodrama edited to a digital countdown is being rubbed out, done in not by nameless Islamic republics, rogue Soviet arms dealers, or tech-savvy Mexican drug cartels but the ruthless economics of network television. Measured against the bargain basement overhead of

Silk Road treasures go on display in Los Angeles

Mummies and other artifacts found along the fabled route in China are the stars of a new exhibition at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana. This weekend, the Bowers Museum opens an exhibition featuring about 150 artifacts from the area, "Secrets of the Silk Road: Mystery Mummies of China" (through July 25). The stars of the show are two mummies and the trappings of a third, already celebrities in the world of archaeology. Found in burial sites of different eras, they are Caucas

New "Camelot" TV series to be made

Television viewers who can't miss the latest episde of The Tudors or other historically-based fair will soon have a new program to watch - Camelot, which will be based on Thomas Malory’s 15th century book, Le Morte d’Arthur. Starz Entertainment and GK Films will be producing the 10-episode series, which will debut in the first half of 2011. They describe Camelot as a modern telling of the Arthur legends that is relatable to contemporary audiences. “The story of Arthur i

Neanderthals go to Washington (National Museum of Natural History)

"It's about everyone, about who we are as a species," said Rick Potts, director of the human origins program and curator of anthropology at the museum, standing next to a life-size bronze statue of a Homo sapiens holding a piece of meat. The museum's new $20.7 million (£13.8) exhibition hall, dubbed the Hall of Human Origins, provides visitors an "opportunity to connect their personal life to the evidence that human species evolves over million of years," museum