Arts Fuse Editor
By Ken George View Gallery BOSTON, Mass.—John Ashcroft once had statuary at the Justice Department clad in thousands of dollars worth of drapery. An unruly aluminum breast had apparently unnerved the then attorney general, an assiduously religious man. Chalk it up to residual Puritanism, the ascendancy of the religious right, political correctness run amok or…
Read MoreTwo excellent books, one by Boston rocker Jen Trynin, plumb the insides of the worlds of jazz and rock ‘n’ roll.
Read MoreBy Lindsey McCormack View Gallery The acclaimed photojournalist Antonin Kratochvil delivered an afternoon talk at Harvard University recently, as black and white images of war zones and industrial wastelands flashed across a screen behind him. Few photographers alive have created such stunning chronicles of the global scope of war and environmental destruction. Yet what makes…
Read MoreOld timers Ray Davies, an ex-Kink, and Donald Fagen, ex-Steely Dan, have released surprisingly youthful solo albums. “Morph the Cat” (Reprise); “Other People’s Lives” (V2) By James Marcus “Hope I die before I get old,” declared The Who’s Pete Townshend in 1965, and certainly there have been times, during his drink-and-drug-addled middle decades, when he…
Read MoreBy Liza Weisstuch An illuminating new book suggests that, post-Holocaust, the question is no longer whether Jews should live in Germany but how they should live there. Being Jewish in the New Germany by Jeffrey Peck. (Rutgers University Press) Read an excerpt from “Being Jewish in the New Germany.” Last year marked the 60-year anniversary…
Read MoreBy Thomas Garvey Michael Haneke may be the only living director who really matters, but you might not guess that from “Cache” (“Hidden”), the new film that has finally brought the brilliant Austrian auteur some serious media attention. It’s far easier, actually, to guess from “Cache” why he’s suddenly a press darling: the film treats…
Read MoreIn new albums, three innovative African musicians manage to turn what has been called neotraditionalism into a progressive style. Amadou & Miriam, Dimanche a Bamako (Nonesuch); Thione Seck, Orientation (Stern’s Africa); Daby Balde, Introducing Daby Balde (Introducing/World Music Network). By Milo Miles Starting in the late 1980s, the watchword for many leading African-pop performers was…
Read MoreWoody Allen’s big comeback? His best work in a decade? Genius rivaling “Annie Hall”!? What potent, absorbing, and thoroughly compelling version of “Match Point” were these critics watching? Look, it’s set in London, not New York! Listen, that crackling soundtrack is opera, not jazz! And wait a minute, there is no would-be Woody character in…
Read MoreA brilliant new novel explores how the search for his family’s fate during the Holocaust nearly costs a man his sanity. “Götz and Meyer” by David Albahari. Translated from the Serbian by Ellan Elias-Bursac. (Harcourt, 176 pp., $23) By Tess Lewis “We need so little to imagine another world, don’t we?” asks the narrator of…
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Arts Remembrance: In Memoriam — Tom Stoppard