Night at the Museum (2006)
Larry Daley (Stiller) is a kind-hearted dreamer who always knew that he was destined for greatness, he just never quite knew how. None of his ideas or inventions have panned out, so with a heavy heart, he takes a regular job as a lowly graveyard-shift security guard at the Museum of Natural History in order to provide a more stable life for himself and his ten-year-old son. On his first night on the job, however, he finds that the guardianship of the museum is far from stable. At nightfall an Egyptian spell brings the artefacts and wax figures to life. With Attila the Hun charging to war through the hallways, the diorama miniatures embroiled in a deadly feud, and a two-ton Tyrannosaurus Rex nagging to play fetch, Larry turns to a wax replica of President Roosevelt (Williams) for a little advice on keeping things intact.

Night at the Museum 2 (2009)
Stiller reprises his role as Larry Daley, the hapless security guard who encounters living and breathing museum exhibits. This time round, the Museum of Natural History has been closed for renovations, and the museum pieces moved into federal storage at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, where the collection includes artefacts associated with many of the great figures of American history including Theodore Roosevelt (Williams), Amelia Earhart (Adams), General Custer (Hader) and Al Capone (Jon Bernthal). Larry must infiltrate the museum's tight security to rescue Jedediah (Wilson) and Octavius (Coogan), who have been shipped there by mistake.

At the dawn of the 20th century, Bruno Paul (1874-1968) stood like a colossus astride the landscape of an emerging Modernism. As an illustrator, architect and educator his influence was unequalled. Arguably the most important German designer of his generation, his work was ubiquitous in the technical and professional publications of his day. For five decades, Paul's reputation was unparalleled among progressive German artists. As a young man he was a member of the Munich avant-garde responsible for the creation of the Jugendstil. As a designer of furniture and interiors, he achieved a commercial success unmatched by his illustrious contemporaries. In the light of his professional accomplishments, he was the most influential German architect of his generation, a figure of international significance. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Adolf Meyer and Kem Weber were among his students, and their work developed from the practices of his atelier. Indeed, as director of the Vereinigte Staatsschulen fur freie und angewandte Kunst in Berlin he presided over an institution that rivaled the Bauhaus as a centre of progressive instruction in the arts. Despite the renown he enjoyed at the height of his career, Paul's name has been largely absent from the standard histories of the modern movement. Indeed, this book is the first comprehensive study of his life and work. Nevertheless, Paul's story embodies a significant facet of the history of 20th-century design: the development of Modernism in Central Europe and its coalescence from the influences of Jugendstil, Elementarism, Classicism, Expressionism and Functionalism. Paul played a prominent role in this coalescence, and he deserves a place of honour in the history of the modern movement. Yet his biography also encompasses a less familiar, but no less significant, aspect of the history of modern design. It is the story of a pragmatic Modernism that occupied a middle ground between avant-garde experimentation and conservative professional practice, a Modernism that was timeless, practical and principled. It was this pragmatic Modernism that won the patronage of the middle classes and established progressive design as an accepted alternative, and eventually as the preferred alternative to the period styles. Moreover Paul's pragmatic Modernism, and its underlying principles, remain as relevant today as when they were first conceived.