Bill Marx
Since it is the innovators who make up the real history of the novel, Milan Kundera muses on the increasing tenuousness of this tradition of eccentric innovation. He also charts how the new arises from a collision between forgetting and remembering images of the past. The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts. By Milan Kundera.…
Increasingly, artistic directors are expected to be super-successful fundraisers, an unstable hybrid of peddler and visionary that throttles artistic independence. By Bill Marx The failure to renew the contract of Robert Woodruff as artistic director of one of America’s major regional theaters, the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard University, is symptomatic of a new…
This final ArtsCast features the conclusion of our series examining Boston at the cultural crossroads. Bill Marx speaks with Maureen Dezell who has written for the arts in various publications including the Boston Globe and the Phoenix and you have heard on the podcast interview various cultural movers and shakers about Boston lagging in cultural…
In an op-ed column, Bill Marx pointed out that for major American cities — beset by shrinking revenues, global competition, and the migration of corporate headquarters — tourism is essential. Some cities, such as Philadelphia, understand this but others, such as Boston, are slow learners. You will recall that last week featured a conversation with…
By Bill Marx At a time when special effects in films are increasingly computerized, it is inspiring to be reminded that images can be more than surfaces that thrill. A festival of movies by the master of the silent cinema, F.W. Murnau, will screen at the Museum of Fine Arts and Harvard Film Archive…
An intriguingly speculative study argues that the history of world literature boils down to a power struggle between outsiders and insiders.
Albanian writer reflects on winning the inaugural Man Booker International Prize for Fiction.
A.J. Liebling’s classic work of journalism about the fight game is back in print.
Critic Susan Sontag asks whether repeated exposure to images of violence makes us less sensitive to human suffering. Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag. (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 144 pages) By Bill Marx The controversy over whether images of American POWs held by Iraqi forces should be broadcast on television testifies to the…
The Floundering State of Film Criticism
Ana Rivas sent in this piece on a recent confab at Boston University featuring two film critics – Renata Adler, who for a short time in the ’60s was a film critic for The New York Times and A.O. Scott, who is the current chief film critic for the paper. The conversation contained some interesting…
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