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.
Main Content
Latest in Visual Arts
Book Review: “The Art of Classic Planning” — How to Build Beautiful and Enduring Communities
By so memorably reestablishing the fundamentals of urban design and planning, The Art of Classic Planning will be a strategic addition to any architecture or urban planning library.
Latest in Music
Arts Remembrance: The Three Funkiest Handclaps in Music History — An Appreciation of Bill Withers
When I think of Bill Withers I think of just three handclaps. It’s my favorite example in his music, or just about anyone else’s, of the power of restraint — not slamming and flailing about to shift a groove into overdrive.
Latest in Dance
Arts Commentary: Helping Dance at a Time of Social Distancing
How, frankly, could I help people engage with their inherent creative powers and feel just a little bit better?
Latest in Television
Television Review: “The Virtues” — The Twisted Path to Redemption
The pace of this superb mini-series is keyed to generating intimacy with the characters and their struggles.
Latest in Books
Book Review: “August” — A Rewarding Curiosity in the Ordinary
August is funny in a way — over time its small scale rhythms and monosyllabic reactions generate a comforting beauty that settles in.
Latest in Theater
Arts Commentary: Pestilence on Stage, Part One — Karel Čapek’s”The White Plague”
The White Plague uses dread to shock us into empathy for ourselves, to be alarmed by the fragility of our bodies as well as the resources and ethics of the medical system.
Latest in Film
Film Review: Recommendations — Architecture and Design Documentaries for the Housebound
Films for those who practice — or are just interested in — design, architecture, and urban planning
Latest in Food
Food Commentary: The Chicken Sandwich Wars — Political Food Fight Revisited
I confess that I was one of those schmucks who tried (and failed) to stay vigilant in my high-minded refusal to eat at Chick-fil-A.
Read the Latest
Short Fuse Podcast #26 –Live Music and Talk with Student Musicians Aaron Halford and Matty Michna
Musicians Aaron Halford and Matty Michna describe their journeys to Boston and ponders their futures beyond The Hub.
Television Review: “Tiger King” — King of the American Jungle
What’s so appealing about Tiger King? Perhaps it is that the lurid goings-on are so distinctively American.
Music Review: Bob Dylan’s “Murder Most Foul”
Bob Dylan’s new song not only articulates the madness that undermines the American experience, but supplies a certain kind of corrective, a tonic, for that kind of insanity.
Opera CD Review: A Tenor as a Villain? Donizetti’s Unusual Two-Tenor Opera Gets a First — and Fine — Recording
An 1829 opera about Elizabeth I and her supposed lover — enlivened by underhanded threats, virtuous resistance, remorse, and an attempted poisoning — proves well worth reviving.
Book Review: “Franci’s War” — A Very Relevant Holocaust Memoir
Here we have the story of a young Czech woman who could not only take a piece of fabric and shape it into a gorgeous dress, but could also take her experiences during WWII and shape them into a compelling memoir.