Monsters-of-God-3

Television Review: “Monsters of God” Trades “Tiger King” Chaos for True-Crime Dread

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

Music Festival Review: At Newport Jazz 2026, the Past and Future Jam Side by Side

By Paul Robicheau | August 5, 2026

Kamasi Washington, Herbie Hancock, Flea and a lively new generation showed how the festival is stretching jazz’s boundaries without losing its center.

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: “Wild Inside” — The Story of the Owl That Stopped New York

By Peter Keough | August 3, 2026

In her wry, incisive documentary,  filmmaker Penny Lane turns an owl’s rise and fall into an unusually moving inquiry into animal sentience, urban spectacle, and the cost of liberation.

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 Preview: Brinae Ali Dances Baby Laurence Back Into the Spotlight

By Debra Cash | August 3, 2026

At Jacob’s Pillow, Brinae Ali’s “Baby Laurence Legacy Project” reanimates a jazz tap master’s bebop musical brilliance through choreography, live music, and technology.

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: “Monsters of God” Trades “Tiger King” Chaos for True-Crime Dread

By Sarah Osman | August 5, 2026

HBO’s docuseries on the illegal reptile trade is less wild than its predecessors, but its sorrowful, criminal undertow makes it unsettling in a different way.

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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