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: Visiting a Museum during a Pandemic — A Trip to the deCordova
“We ask that you limit your stay to two hours, and remember that our restrooms are not open.”
Latest in Music
Jazz CD Review: John Scofield’s “Swallow Tales” — Steve Swallow’s Quirky Romanticism
This is an intelligent, inventively performed, be-boppish tribute to a composer I now know better than ever.
Latest in Dance
Arts Commentary: Constraint in Quarantine
Our eyes may be quarantined, but our minds are not.
Latest in Television
Television Review: Hulu’s “The Great” — Russian Tyranny for Laughs
In The Great, Tony McNamara proves that period pieces that pit conniving yet sympathetic women against tyrannical men can make for a kind of refreshingly cathartic entertainment.
Latest Podcast
Podcast Review: “Team Deakins” — For Film Geeks Only (and That’s not a Bad Thing)
The podcast Team Deakins has quite a bit to teach us about the art and craft of cinematography.
Latest in Books
Book Commentary: “Pandemic!” by Slavoj Žižek — Choosing Reality and Survival Over Panic and Barbarism
“In a crisis we are all Socialists,” goes an old adage. But can that instinct be trusted in an increasingly barbaric world?
Latest in Theater
Theater Interview: Anthony Clarvoe on “The Living” — Surviving Plague Time
The Living “is about the impulse to draw back, to lie, to conceal, and to retreat versus the impulse to gather, to commune, to cooperate, to find common ground. Those two conflicting impulses seem to inform our response to every disaster.”
Latest in Film
Film Review: “The Ghost of Peter Sellers” — A Riveting Postmortem
The documentary has a “why me?” element to it, with a dark comic edge, but it isn’t a pity party.
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
THE ARTS FUSE TURNS 13! — Our Spring Appeal
During this crisis, please help sustain this independent magazine’s commitment to keeping our arts and culture vibrant and alive.
Classical CD Reviews: Thomas Adès’ Piano Works, “Ecstatic Science,” and Michael Gordon’s “Anonymous Man”
Thomas Adès is a formidable pianist and his output for his native instrument is fundamentally gripping; yMusic’s new album is a spectacularly-played and -recorded disc; Michael Gordon’s Anonymous Man is undeniably hypnotic but gets stuck in a loop that goes on for a mite too long.
Book Review: “I Belong to Vienna” — The Merit of Not Doing the Wrong Thing
The value and virtue of I Belong to Vienna is that it personalizes and humanizes a global reign of terror into an understandable drama.
Film Commentary: Movie Love or, Seven Moments from the Ontology of the Cinematic Image
The anti-cinema, represented by CGI, obliterates perception; it is not interested in tutoring the eye to see more deeply.
Classical CD Reviews: François-Xavier Roth conducts Mussorgsky and Ravel, Manfred Honeck conducts Tchaikovsky and Leshnoff, and Mikolajus Čiurlionis Orchestral Works
François-Xavier Roth and his period ensemble Les Siècles serve up freshness of playing and conviction of interpretation; Manfred Honeck is a conductor who can draw compelling, electrifying accounts of the standard canon as if on cue; the verdict’s mixed on the music of Lithuanian-born composer Mikalojus Čiurlionis.
Book Interview: Heather Cox Richardson on “How the South Won the Civil War”
“Politics is driven by language, and America’s peculiar history has given oligarchs the language to undercut democracy.”