March 2007

Every now and then, and maybe even once a year if you’re lucky, you get a film that is so new—or at least that uses old themes and materials in so new a way—that it stays in your head for days. David Fincher’s Zodiac, about the frenzy that surrounded the Zodiac killer in the late 1960s and the aftermath of the hunt for him, is the best film so far of the young season, as shattering and innovative in its way as United 93 was at this time last year.

You may never have heard of the Civil War and Underground Railroad Museum of Philadelphia, but not because it hasn’t been around for a while. It was founded in 1888, by members of a veterans group called the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, and it’s the oldest Civil War museum in the nation. It has resided since 1922 in a brick row house on Pine Street. For most of that time it was simply the Civil War Library and Museum; in 2003 it added “Underground Railroad” to its name.