In the age of COVID-19, Arts Fuse critics have come up with a guide to film, dance, visual art, theater, and music — mostly available by streaming — for the coming weeks. More offerings will be added as they come in.
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Latest in Visual Arts
Visual Arts Commentary: An Enduring New England Design Influence — The Shaker Style
As we move into the 21st Century, with the Climate Crisis and consumerism on the rise, the Shaker’s “less is so much more” sensibility takes on even more significance, practical as well as spiritual.
Latest in Music
Classical Album Review: Žibuoklė Martinaitytė’s “Saudade” — Engrossing and Accessible Recent Orchestral Music
Taken together, these four pieces showcase a composer whose handling of the orchestra is expert and whose sense of form, in these works at least, feels unerringly right.
Latest in Dance
Arts Feature: Dance Favorites of 2020
Community is what I miss most of all the pandemic’s deprivations—doing stuff with others.
Latest in Television
Television Review: “Surviving Death” — Probing Death and the Great Beyond
Surviving Death’s balance between personal experiences and scientific theories makes the series unexpectedly provocative.
Latest Podcast
Short Fuse Podcast #35: An Interview with Dancer and Critic Merli V. Guerra
Host Deanna Costa interviews Arts Fuse contributor Merli V. Guerra, a multifaceted dancer as well as a writer..
Latest in Books
Book Review: “Freak Out! My Life with the Mothers of Invention” — Intimate Observations
Fans of Frank Zappa who want to know about Frank the man as well as Zappa the musical and political icon would be wise to seek out Freak Out!
Latest in Theater
Theater Review: “The Race” — Business as Unusual
This is a very effective political drama, a relevant warning about what social critic Chris Hedges calls the formation of “corporate totalitarianism.”
Latest in Film
Film Review: “The White Tiger” — Class Warfare, Indian Style
This is a wicked and entertaining satire on the dizzying class conflicts roiling Indian society, a neo-Marxist story of masters and servants, money and corruption — a Horatio Alger tale with a devilish twist.
Latest in Food
Book Review: Black Food Matters — “The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food”
The Rise is the rare cookbook that does more than offer a culinary and educational journey. It inspires.
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KEEP THE ARTS FUSE LIT! — Our Winter Appeal
Please take this opportunity to make a difference for a magazine that is committed to sustaining the future of the arts in this country.
Opera Feature: Should We Be Updating Operas So They Address Present-Day Issues?
Philip Glass’s librettist Arthur Yorinks offers his thoughts on whether and how to update an opera as the Boston Lyric Opera releases its revamped and filmed version of The Fall of the House of Usher.
Film Review: “Breaking Fast”– The Romantic Life, Among Gay Muslims
Films like Breaking Fast introduce audiences to cultures that they may not be familiar with — that they may even be hostile to — but through conflicts and dreams that are universal, that revolve around family, love, and friendship.
Listening During Covid, Part 4: Fascinating Vocal Adventures from Different Times and Places
I may be in quarantine, but music can transport me back to the Middle Ages, or to the court of Catherine the Great of Russia, or, via Donizetti, to an imagined India.
Film Review: “Azizler” (aka Stuck Apart) — Trapped Again
Azizler is a slow burn; unfortunately, the payoff isn’t worth the wait.
Film Review: “Epicentro” — An Affectionate View of Cuba
Politics is not the filmmaker’s interest in this lovely, affecting documentation of non-bureaucratic, everyday life in Havana.