barriotriste

Film Review: When Poverty Turns Surreal

The Arts Fuse Currents

Music

Classical Album Review: Steve Reich at 90 — The Pulse Still Holds

By Jonathan Blumhofer | October 5, 2026

ECM New Series’ reissue of the composer’s seminal early recordings restores their bite, rigor, and uncommon spiritual warmth.

Visual Arts

Visual Arts Review: Esther’s Many Faces at the Gardner

By Debra Cash | October 4, 2026

An incisive exhibition traces how Rembrandt, his Dutch contemporaries, and earlier artists remade a biblical story of concealment, power, and survival.

Film

Film Review: When Poverty Turns Surreal

By Steve Erickson | October 6, 2026

Stillz’s “Barrio Triste” transforms the dangers of life in Medellín into a haunting journey through cosmic horror, media distrust, and adolescent fear.

Books

Book Review: Novelist Tom McCarthy’s Labyrinth of Law, Language, and Delusion

By Bill Littlefield | October 6, 2026

In this novel, a brilliant European jurist, an addictive little blue pill, and an elusive conspiracy yield a dazzling but sometimes exhausting exercise in literary complexity.

Poetry at The Arts Fuse

Weekly Feature: Poetry at The Arts Fuse

October 1, 2026

This week’s poem: Joanna Fuhrman’s “Why Aren’t You Angry?”

Dance

Book Review: Jack Cole — Hollywood Dance’s Dazzling Bad Boy

By Debra Cash | September 29, 2026

“Jazzed” makes a persuasive case for Jack Cole’s artistic importance, even as its overly admiring portrait evades some of his darkest behavior.

Theater

Theater Review: “Moon Man Walk” Lands Gently at Gloucester Stage

By David Greenham | September 22, 2026

James Ijames’s funny, moving family fable receives an engaging New England premiere, but its comforts also raise questions about what local theater should risk in a moment of public crisis.

Television

Television Review: “Brothers” — Anything More Than a Long SNL Sketch?

By Sarah Osman | September 30, 2026

The real-life friends play fictionalized versions of themselves in a genial but thin comedy built around a long-running family rumor.

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

October Short Fuses — Materia Critica

By Arts Fuse Editor | October 1, 2026

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

Spotlight

Arts Commentary: Superman, Spider-Man, and the American Art of Slugging Nazis

By Michael Marano | September 30, 2026

William Nicholas Love’s punch heard round the internet belongs to a long comic-book history of fighting homegrown fascism—from Captain America to “The Clan of the Fiery Cross.”

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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