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
Book Review: “¡Printing the Revolution! — The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now”
There’s a looseness, a jagged brio that gives the images in ¡Printing the Revolution! a visual bang — a kind of primal pop.
Latest in Music
Jazz Album Reviews: Pianists Masabumi Kikuchi and Theo Walentiny — Poetic Solo Flights
Two albums, from a late master and a newbie, are notable additions to the current wave of introspective solo piano excursions.
Latest in Dance
Arts Feature: Dance Favorites of 2020
Community is what I miss most of all the pandemic’s deprivations—doing stuff with others.
Latest in Television
Television Review: “Exterminate All the Brutes” — A Familiar, and Partial, History Lesson
As an introduction to the progress of colonization and the horrors that white people have inflicted on BIPOC, Exterminate All the Brutes achieves its admirable mission.
Latest Podcast
Short Fuse Podcast #36: An Interview with Neal Goren, Conductor and Artistic Director of Catapult Opera
New podcast host Elizabeth Howard talks to Neal Goren about contemporary opera: the trends, attracting new audiences, and how opera can be adapted for the internet.
Latest in Books
Book Commentary: Literary Legacies — Children’s Literature
2020 and 2021 saw the deaths of five titans of children’s and young adult literature. Here’s to revisiting old “classics” and discovering new ones.
Latest in Theater
Book Review: Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt” — Closing the Circle, Perfectly
This is a great work, more linear than Tom Stoppard’s earlier dramas, yet filled with such intelligence and compassion that it will be read and seen for years and years and, perhaps, over time be regarded as his richest, most haunting play.
Latest in Film
Film Review: “Violation” – Rethinking Revenge
Violation utilizes extreme violence not to revel in a revenge fantasy but to deconstruct the genre’s militantly feminist appeal — “kill your rapist” — as a self-destructive endeavor offering no catharsis whatsoever.
Latest in Food
Book Review: “Jew-ish: Reinvented Recipes from a Modern Mensch” — Nosh Nirvana?
Jake Cohen is “modern” in that he takes a contemporary approach at spreading the gospel; he is an expert at using social media.
Read the Latest
Jazz Album Review: Miguel Zenón’s Law Years Band & Christian McBride’s New Jawn Band
Two pianoless quartets + two restless leaders = some of the best music of the last few years.
Classical CD Review: György Ligeti’s “Études” — Well Played and Clearly Lived In
Throughout these Études, Driver’s playing marries tonal warmth with textural precision.
April Short Fuses – Materia Critica
Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
Arts Reconsideration: The 1971 Project — Celebrating a Great Year in Music (April Entry)
Arts Fuse writers continue their countdown of great music celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and the list includes Marvin Gaye, Link Wray, David Bowie, Jean Knight, and The Rolling Stones.
Book Review: “The Search for John Lennon” — Going Down the Wrong Road
In her search for John Lennon, the author follows her fancy and picks and chooses which rocks she wants to look under, all the while giving herself the space to wax poetic on whatever theme moves her. It’s an appealing approach. Too bad then that the book is a let down.