Arts Fuse Editor

Television Review: “Ramy,” Season 2 — An Egyptian-American Muslim on a Hilarious Quest

June 2, 2020
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Much of the fun of Ramy comes from its deadpan embrace of heightened absurdity.

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Jazz Album Reviews: Matthew Shipp and Whit Dickey — Unrepentant Proponents of Free Jazz

June 2, 2020
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Decades on, Matthew Shipp and Whit Dickey have grown into mature models of how to keep the faith when following an idiosyncratic muse.

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Book Review: “The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien” — Ignoring the Poetry

June 1, 2020
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This is a beautifully produced book, replete with illustrations. Full-page photos of evocative landscapes are supplemented by both maps and smaller shots detailing architectural features.

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Pop Album Review: “how i’m feeling now” by Charli XCX — What Life is Like, Sheltering in Place

May 29, 2020
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Charli has successfully dramatized her impatiently jagged state of mind, supplying an emotionally honest stream of consciousness that suggests what she (and no doubt many others of her generation) is feeling and thinking in quarantine.

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Television Commentary: Unreeling the Newsreels in “The Plot Against America”

May 28, 2020
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Was this alternate history lesson too much of a downer for viewers weighed down by the burdens of their own unexpected rendezvous with history?

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Book Interview: Zena Hitz on the Pleasures and Values of the Intellectual Life

May 28, 2020
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“We’re at the end, or toward the end, of an extended collapse of the institutions that made it possible for many of us to make a living through intellectual or creative activity. We’ll have to find another way.”

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Book Review: “I Belong to Vienna” — The Merit of Not Doing the Wrong Thing

May 26, 2020
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The value and virtue of I Belong to Vienna is that it personalizes and humanizes a global reign of terror into an understandable drama.

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Film Commentary: Movie Love or, Seven Moments from the Ontology of the Cinematic Image

May 26, 2020
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The anti-cinema, represented by CGI, obliterates perception; it is not interested in tutoring the eye to see more deeply.

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Poetry Review: “I Aint Yo Earthmama” — Poets Susan Barba and Wanda Coleman

May 24, 2020
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The two books reviewed here represent the launch of the reborn Black Sparrow Press under the auspices of David R. Godine, Publisher. Very exciting. Let’s give them a big warm Boston welcome!

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Opera CD Review: A Compact, Powerful New Opera from Carlisle Floyd, Composer of “Susannah”

May 24, 2020
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Prince of Players is based on a play that also yielded the movie Stage Beauty, and it’s one of the best new operas to come along in years.

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