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 Review: Trump Likes Minimalism? Really?
All four budgets that Donald Trump and his sycophants sent to Congress had nada for the arts and humanities.
Latest in Music
Rock Album Reviews: New Musical Anarchy from Paul Leary and the Melvins
Unlike so many of the iconoclasts from the ’80s, these architects of alternative rock stay true to their school.
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 True Crime Series: “The Investigation” — Unraveling Evil
The Investigation is a slow-burning thriller that fuses the gravity of a documentary with the darkness of a complex murder mystery.
Latest Podcast
Podcast Review: “CHECK YOUR HEAD: Mental Help for Musicians”
It is vital to take into account the pivotal role that money, politics, and racism play in the availability and efficacy of mental health services.
Latest in Books
Book Review: “Mike Nichols: A Life” — Portrait of an Protean Artist
This nearly 600-page text is a closely detailed, comprehensive portrait by a biographer riveted, as many of us are, by his charismatic subject.
Latest in Theater
Theater Review: “Solitaire Suite” — Strange Things Flashing in the Night
The show is made all the more powerful by the fact that we’ve now spent 12 months enduring Covid and four years of science denial and “alternative facts.”
Latest in Film
Film Review: Wither the People of Magnitogorsk — “Kombinat”
Without ignoring the terrible-beautiful magnetism of the industrial imagery we love to hate and hate to love, the camera is gradually, gently, drawn across the river and away from the workday, to spend time with these very real humans who serve the machines.
Latest in Food
Book Review: “Jew-ish: Reinvented Recipes from a Modern Mensch” — Nosh Nirvana?
Jake Cohen is “modern” in that he takes a contemporary approach at spreading the gospel; he is an expert at using social media.
Read the Latest
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.
Film Review: Being and Time in “Truth or Consequences”
This is a thoughtful, surprisingly moving, and extremely ambitious film, one that employs an innovative style and some unconventional pacing to explore an unusually complex philosophical and emotional landscape.
Literary Remembrance: Lawrence Ferlinghetti — The Modest Beat
Ferlinghetti was a truly Whitman-like figure who really had been through it all, traveled the world, and fought for what he believed in. I have yet to hear anyone say an unkind word said about him.
Film Review: “Do Not Split” — A Compelling, Disturbing, and Imperfect Look at the Hong Kong Riots
Is Do Not Split a fine example of provocative filmmaking? Yes. Should you watch it? Certainly. Will it help you understand the forces feeding the discontent and shaping the discourse generated by the conflict? Not really.
March Short Fuses – Materia Critica
Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, and visual arts — fire off a few brief bursts of criticism.
Film Review: Nicholas Jarecki’s “Crisis” — Death, Opioids, and Corporate Greed
Crisis takes on the opioid crisis – which has killed more people than the war in Vietnam — and gives corporate villainy (Big Pharma) the Hollywood treatment.