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Now that the new year is here, midseason breaks are winding down, which makes it the perfect time to reflect on the television programs that premiered in the fall –- and will soon be back on screens across the country.
Read MorePaul Goodman was a professed anarchist — not the bomb-throwing kind, who believe destruction is foreplay to solution, but the anti-violent kind, deriving from the nineteenth century Russian thinker, Kropotkin, who espoused cooperation among free individuals.
Read MoreAn underground academic critic explores the fascinating intersections between the Kardashian sisters’ novel “Dollhouse” and Ibsen’s play “A Doll House.” The more things change …
Read More“A Dangerous Method” fits neatly into director David Cronenberg’s body of work, which is often obsessed with a body-mind connection.
Read MoreThe documentary “The Klezmatics: On Holy Ground” is pleasing to watch, but there are a number of ways of respecting as well as loving great artists, the most important being coming up with the chutzpah necessary to ask the tough questions that generate illuminating, inspiring, or interesting answers.
Read MoreThe essential task of the critic is not to like or dislike the arts or to push bromides, such as to celebrate the “power of reading.” Despite some troublesome modifications, Lionel Trilling carries on the mission of E.A. Poe and Henry James: he articulates the value of the serious act of judgment in a culture hostile to it.
Read MoreHighlights in classical music during January include a visit by the acclaimed cappella group Anonymous Four at the Gardner Museum’s new concert hall, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project performing “Strange Bedfellows: Unlikely Concertos.”
Read MoreDirector Steve McQueen’s skillful exploration of troubled human behavior and his use of New York as a psychological landscape make “Shame” off-putting to watch, while at the same time it draws us in. We have no moral compass beyond our own attitudes to ambiguous contemporary sexual mores.
Read MoreThe places where Pieter Saenredam worked were never the same after he committed them to paper and paint. His single known painting of a building in Amsterdam -– of the old town hall –- became iconic during the life of the artist.
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Arts Remembrance: Tribute to Jazz Producer Alex Lemski