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Film Review: “Young Mothers” Finds Grace in Hardship

Coming Attractions

Coming Attractions: August 2 through 17 — What Will Light Your Fire

Our expert critics supply a guide to film, visual art, theater, author readings, television, and music. More offerings will be added as they come in.

The Arts Fuse Currents

Music

Classical Album Review: Film Composers in the Concert Hall

By Jonathan Blumhofer | August 2, 2026

A Singapore Symphony Orchestra recording of compositions by John Williams, Bernard Herrmann, and Hugo Friedhofer quietly punctures old prejudices about film composers and “serious” music.

Visual Arts

Visual Arts Commentary: The Great Spirit Gets Company

By Trevor Fairbrother | August 1, 2026

In Boston and Hanover, new works by Alan Michelson and Kent Monkman challenge the myth of the vanishing Native—and the Cyrus Dallin bronze that enshrined it.

Film

Film Review: “Young Mothers” Finds Grace in Hardship

By Tim Jackson | August 2, 2026

The Dardenne brothers’ latest film transforms a series of fragile stories about teenage motherhood into an unsentimental, deeply compassionate study of resilience.

Books

Book Review: Dennis Cooper’s “Closer” — A Mirror Held to Desire’s Dark Core

By Michael Londra | August 1, 2026

Dennis Cooper’s “transgressive” reputation obscures his deeper project: language as moral instrument, and the victim rather than the predator as the true subject.

Poetry at The Arts Fuse

Weekly Feature: Poetry at The Arts Fuse

July 30, 2026

This week’s poem: Brendan Lorber’s “Sag Harbor in the morning”

Dance

Dance Review: The Akram Khan Company — Remembering, Selectively

By Debra Cash | July 10, 2026

In “Thrikra: Night of Remembering,” Akram Khan’s searing imagery of female ritual and sacrifice is shadowed by what the work chooses not to confront.

Theater

Theater Review: Amid a Smokey Haze, Double Edge Theatre Delivers an Inspirational Warning

By Nicole Estvanik Taylor | July 25, 2026

Double Edge Theatre revives its 2015 roaming spectacle of ecological grief, political resistance, and communal art.

Television

Television Review: This Time Around, A Wilder Prairie

By Sarah Osman | July 10, 2026

Strong performances and sharper realism redefine Little House on the Prairie for a new generation.

Podcasts

Short Fuse Podcast #90: Frederick Douglass — Our “North Star”

By Elizabeth Howard | July 13, 2026

Guest host Jessica Khan talks to DJ and broadcaster Kwame Daniels about his immersive live musical performance, “North Star.”

Short Fuses

August Short Fuses — Materia Critica

By Arts Fuse Editor | August 1, 2026

Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.

Spotlight

The Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll at Mid-Year: Warming Up a Riff — How It Happened, and Why It Matters

By Tom Hull | July 23, 2026

Few things more clearly attest to the endurance of the human spirit and the drive for creativity than the uninterrupted and unstoppable torrent of brilliant new jazz albums we’ve already seen this year.

About the Arts Fuse

The Arts Fuse was established in June, 2007 as a curated, independent online arts magazine dedicated to publishing in-depth criticism, along with high quality previews, interviews, and commentaries. The publication's over 70 freelance critics (many of them with decades of experience) cover dance, film, food, literature, music, television, theater, video games, and visual arts. Support arts coverage that believes that culture matters.

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