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

Abe Lincoln as You’ve Never Heard Him

“NOW he belongs to the ages,” Edwin Stanton, Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of war, said at the president’s deathbed. “And to the studios,” he could have added.The latest in a long parade of screen Abes, coming right on the heels of Benjamin Walker’s ax-swinging, martial arts version in “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,” is Daniel Day-Lewis, who, though he grew up in England and Ireland and had to learn about Lincoln almost from scratch, plays the lead in Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” which opens Friday.

Simon Schama: Skyfall's Leaner, Meaner James Bond

Simon Schama is a professor of history and art history at Columbia University. He is a contributing editors of the Financial Times, and regular broadcaster and documentary film maker for the BBC.Bond was also the answer to another area where Britain felt challenged in the late 1950s: the shrinking manhood department. Films rehearsing the wartime heroics of escaping POWs or against-the-odds naval battles were an exhausted genre. The greatest generation wore trusses and had retired to the pub with a perpetual half pint of bitter. Churchill was doddering; his successors among the ruling class were ponderously tweedy. As Noel Coward once put it, “Continentals have sex; the British have hot water bottles.” Not Fleming, though. A sexual omnivore with a “cruel mouth” and hawkish mien, he projected onto Bond and indulged a taste for the erotic whip that makes Christian Grey look like Mary Poppins. For years Fleming carried on a long affair with the decidedly upper-crust Anne Charteris, then married to the media magnate Viscount Rothermere. When with regret she returned to London from Goldeneye, she wrote wistfully, “I loved cooking for you, sleeping beside you, and being whipped by you.”

Mr. Lincoln Goes to Hollywood

In Lincoln, the Steven Spielberg movie opening this month, President Abraham Lincoln has a talk with U.S. Representative Thaddeus Stevens that should be studied in civics classes today. The scene goes down easy, thanks to the moviemakers’ art, but the point Lincoln makes is tough.Stevens, as Tommy Lee Jones plays him, is the meanest man in Congress, but also that body’s fiercest opponent of slavery. Because Lincoln’s primary purpose has been to hold the Union together, and he has been approaching abolition in a roundabout, politic way, Stevens by 1865 has come to regard him as “the capitulating compromiser, the dawdler.”The congressman wore with aplomb, and wears in the movie, a ridiculous black hairpiece—it’s round, so he doesn’t have to worry about which part goes in front. A contemporary said of Stevens and Lincoln that “no two men, perhaps, so entirely different in character, ever threw off more spontaneous jokes.”...Related LinksHNN Hot Topics: "Lincoln": The Movie

'Argo' finally tops box office with $12.4M

It took three weeks, but "Argo" finally found its way to the top of the box office.The Warner Bros. thriller from director and star Ben Affleck, inspired by the real-life rescue of six U.S. embassy workers during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, made nearly $12.4 million this weekend, according to Sunday studio estimates. "Argo" had been in second place the past two weeks and has now made about $60.8 million total...

The Cuban Missile Crisis: An all-too-real October surprise on PBS

It seemed at first more a testimony to his own advanced age that 75-year-old Bob Schieffer invoked the Cuban Missile Crisis before the final presidential debate got underway in Boca Raton, Fla., Monday night. Yet, as a pair of PBS documentaries tonight reminds us, nothing could be more central to a contemporary foreign policy discussion than the frightening brink of total nuclear annihilation reached during that tense October, 50 years ago this week.Just about the whole vocabulary of current international dealings were used in that conflict half a century ago. Blockades, showing strength, drawing a red line — all part of Monday’s debate — were at the center of the Cuban Missile Crisis. And the war porn that got us all into it – annotated aerial spy plane photos of construction sites and alleged warmaking plans — along with show-and-tell demonstrations at the U.N., were part of the process of invading Iraq a decade ago....

National Geographic to auction famous photos, art

National Geographic Society has chronicled scientific expeditions, explorations, archaeology, wildlife and world cultures for more than 100 years, amassing a collection of 11.5 million photos and original illustrations.A small selection of that massive archive - 240 pieces spanning from the late 1800s to the present - will be sold at Christie's in December at an auction expected to bring about $3 million, the first time any of the institution's collection has been sold.Among the items are some of National Geographic's most indelible photographs, including that of an Afghan girl during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a portrait of Admiral Robert Peary at his 1908 expedition to the North Pole, a roaring lion in South Africa and the face of a Papua New Guinea aborigine.Paintings and illustrations include N.C. Wyeth's historical scene of sword-fighting pirates, Charles Bittinger's view of Earth as seen from the moon, and Charles Knight's depictions of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals...,

A Look at Prohibition, Hardly Dry: ‘American Spirits’ at the National Constitution Center

PHILADELPHIA — It has been a long time since anybody said: “You know, the 18th Amendment was a pretty good idea. Too bad it was overturned by the 21st.” And perhaps only the most prescriptively devout among us is likely to advocate banning the sale of alcohol again in the United States.But that is what makes the history of Prohibition such a challenge to understand. We have to imagine what kind of passions created it, but we risk distorting them because they are so alien.Yet that movement altered the Constitution in a radical fashion, extending its reach to matters once considered personal and restricting freedoms rather than expanding them. In effect from 1920 to 1933, Prohibition drastically altered the legal system of every state, and overturned ordinary citizens’ behaviors and expectations. While claiming high virtue and utopian prospects, it inspired spectacular violations and grotesque criminal violence....

NYC's Rainbow Room gets landmark status

New York City's iconic Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center has been designated a landmark.The city Landmarks Preservation Commission on Tuesday voted to give the popular nightspot on the 65th floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza city landmark status...

Clue Arises Regarding Lost Photo of Mahler

Twenty-five years ago, when the daughter of Arnold Schoenberg was working through his archive for a book project, she came across an empty picture frame. It was missing what the Schoenberg family calls one of the composer’s most precious possessions: a signed picture of Gustav Mahler with a musical quotation from Mahler’s Symphony No. 2.Now that picture appears to have re-emerged. A Los Angeles man has contacted the Schoenberg family and offered to sell it back for $350,000, saying the photograph was a gift to his grandfather from a composer in Schoenberg’s circle. Schoenberg family members say they doubt the gift story, suspect that the photo was at some point stolen by someone, and have demanded its return. They suggested that they might take legal action....

‘Fly’ at Ford’s Theatre: Special effects and tap dancing bring this history lesson to life

With its energetic, all-male cast, dancing and multi-sensory special effects, Fly grabs your attention and holds it tight. This play also offers a creative and sensitive portrayal of historical events that kids will enjoy.Fly tells the story of four Tuskegee Airmen as they prepare for and serve in World War II. The play’s dialogue is straightforward and humorous at times, but dancing gives Fly tempo and an additional layer of emotion. A hip-hop tap dancer weaves in and out of scenes and the main characters do frat-style stepping. Ricardo Khan, Fly’s co-author and director, explains why he included a tap dancer (known as the tap griot) in the play: “...because these guys were young and in the army, they had emotions they couldn’t display. And because they were black, they knew they had the burden/motivation of representation for the whole race.” Hence, Khan sought to express through tap what the airmen could not express through words. For example, when one character is furiously angry at his commanding officer, the tap griot’s feet explosively move.

Led Zeppelin Concert Film Is Released; No Reunion Planned

10:07 p.m. | Updated The three surviving members of Led Zeppelin made it clear on a visit to New York City on Tuesday to promote their concert film “Celebration Day” that they have no plans to reunite for another concert, much less for a tour or for a new album.“Sorry,” said John Paul Jones, the bassist, when he was asked what he would say to fans who wanted to see the group play again “in the flesh.” Jimmy Page, the band’s guitarist and founder, said a reunion “seems unlikely,” given the band’s members have not worked together since the 2007 concert at London’s 02 Arena that is the subject of the new film.And Robert Plant, the vocalist, batted away another reporter’s question about a possible reunion with a joke: “We’ve been thinking about all sorts of things,” he said. He paused for a beat. “Then we can’t remember what we’ve been thinking about.”...

Telling the Story of His Family, and of a Union

It’s a powerful image: Blood streaming down a union organizer’s nose and splattered all over his white shirt after thugs from the Ford Motor Company attacked him and others who were distributing union fliers.That 1937 photograph is just one of the searing scenes in “Brothers on the Line,” a new documentary about the Reuther brothers: Walter, the future United Auto Workers president standing next to the bloodied organizer, and Victor and Roy. Together they played a pivotal role in transforming the United Auto Workers into what was for decades the nation’s most powerful labor union.Victor Reuther’s grandson Sasha Reuther features that photo prominently in the new documentary, which he directed and helped produce, to tell how the brothers built the U.A.W. and how that union helped raise living standards for not just one million autoworkers, but also for a large swath of America. The film shows the fierce struggles and sit-down strikes that led to the unionization of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, and how the U.A.W. played a major role in underwriting the civil rights movement as well as that of Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers....

A Landmark Race With the Bull Moose

ON Oct. 14, 1912, as Theodore Roosevelt campaigned in Milwaukee as the Progressive Party candidate for president, he was shot point-blank in the chest by a Brooklyn bartender named John Schrank, who opposed Roosevelt’s quest for a third term. Despite his bleeding wound, Roosevelt insisted on being taken to a hall to deliver the 50-page speech he had prepared, prefacing it by telling the crowd about the assassination attempt but adding, “It takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”Bull Moose was the popular name for his party, based on Roosevelt’s earlier comment that he was “fit as a bull moose” to become president again.On display now at the Oyster Bay Historical Society are two leaves from the speech and the steel eyeglass case that Roosevelt had in his pocket. The bullet passed through them before entering his body, and the holes are clearly visible....

Polish philharmonic named for Jewish virtuoso

The Polish city of Czestochowa is renaming its orchestra to honor a native son: Bronislaw Huberman, a Polish-Jewish violin virtuoso who helped save hundreds of German Jews from the Holocaust and who founded the precursor to what is now the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.An inaugural concert by the Bronislaw Huberman Philharmonic on Wednesday evening comes amid a broader rediscovery of the importance that Poland's large Jewish community had on Polish culture before it was wiped out in the Holocaust...

Royal Collection buys Warhol portraits of queen

Britain's Royal Collection Trust has gone Pop Art with the purchase of four famous Andy Warhol portraits of Queen Elizabeth II.The colorful screenprints are based on a formal photograph of the queen wearing a tiara and necklace that was used during her Silver Jubilee celebrations in 1977.They will form part of the Portraits of a Monarch exhibit starting in November at Windsor Castle. The purchase was announced Monday, but royal officials refused to say how much was paid for the portraits...

A Roosevelt Mimic Plays Him for Posterity

ROCK TAVERN, N.Y. — Double bully!It was like seeing double as Joe Wiegand beheld a life-size bronze statue of Theodore Roosevelt being completed recently at a foundry in this town outside Newburgh.“They nailed it,” Mr. Wiegand, 47, said of the likeness achieved by the sculptors.Mr. Wiegand should know. He makes a living dressing and speaking in the role of Roosevelt at events — a Roosevelt repriser, he calls it — and is such a dead-ringer for the 26th president, down to his robust build and mustache, that he was hired to model for the statue months earlier....

The Louvre’s New Islamic Galleries Bring Riches to Light

When I. M. Pei’s glass pyramid opened at the Louvre more than 20 years ago, many argued that this 70-foot-tall structure had destroyed the classical beauty of one of the world’s great museums. But today, as crowds wait on long lines outside the pyramid, which serves as the Louvre’s main entrance, what once seemed audacious has become as accepted a part of the city’s visual landscape as the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe.Now the museum is again risking the public’s wrath as it introduces the most radical architectural intervention since the pyramid in 1989. Designed to house new galleries for Islamic art, it consists of ground- and lower-ground-level interior spaces topped by a golden, undulating roof that seems to float within the neo-Classical Visconti Courtyard in the middle of the Louvre’s south wing, right below the museum’s most popular galleries, where the Mona Lisa and Veronese’s “Wedding Feast of Cana” are hung.

In the Footsteps of Alan Lomax: The Artists Behind the Music

If you know any of Aaron Copland's music, then you probably know "Hoedown," the finale of "Rodeo," the score that Mr. Copland wrote in 1942 for Agnes de Mille's ever-popular ballet about love among the cowpokes. "Hoedown" is a high-stepping orchestral fantasy based on "Bonaparte's Retreat," a 19th-century fiddle tune that Mr. Copland ran across in "Our Singing Country," a 1941 book co-edited by Alan Lomax, the celebrated folk-song collector. The version of "Bonaparte's Retreat" found in "Our Singing Country" was transcribed from a recording made by Mr. Lomax on a 1937 trip to Kentucky for the Library of Congress. It's a note-for-note rendering of the way the song was played by a fiddler named Bill Stepp. Every time you hear a symphony orchestra perform "Hoedown," you hear the ghost of Mr. Stepp's supremely virtuosic playing....

Two Centuries of Creating U.S. History

When the Society of Antiquaries of London was celebrated in an exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art this year, you could see how the society gradually discovered and interpreted Britain’s history, shaping a nation’s understanding of itself. Now, in a new show at the Grolier Club, “In Pursuit of a Vision,” you see the American counterpart to that narrative in a survey of the collections of the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Mass. The American society was partly inspired by the London one, but what a different world it imagines, and what a different sense of history it creates.

Folk Art Museum Picks New Director

The American Folk Art Museum in New York, which almost went out of business last year because of financial struggles, has appointed a new director, the museum announced Wednesday.The board selected Anne-Imelda Radice, who recently served as director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a federal agency that supports  libraries and museums. She will start next week.Struggling under a deficit and disappointing attendance, the museum was forced to close its 10-year-old flagship building in Midtown in 2011 and move to a smaller location near Lincoln Center in Manhattan. After considering dissolution and the transfer of its collections to another institution, the museum decided to continue operating with the help of financial infusions from trustees and the Ford Foundation....