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A prickly woman’s survival depends on her ability to soften her edges in this riveting drama by Olivier Assayas, for which Maggie Cheung won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004. Assayas began his career by making incisive and unsentimental character studies. His technique became freer in his first collaboration with…
Read MoreBy Betsy Sherman As a film about a brief, cross-generational friendship, Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (now playing at the Kendall Square Cinema) doesn’t have the pop-culture cachet of Lost in Translation or Harold and Maude. It’s content to nestle into an ambiguously etched contemporary London in which people quote Wordsworth and make a fuss…
Read MoreA gorgeous documentary examines the 1990 heist of priceless art from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. By Betsy Sherman It must be hard to decide at what point to undertake a documentary about an ongoing investigation. What if events conspire to make the film you’ve shot seem half-baked, or even irrelevant? Rebecca Dreyfus’ “Stolen,” about…
Read MoreBruce Springsteen’s latest album, widely billed as his homage to folk music, is a tribute to Pete Seeger “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions,” Bruce Springsteen. By James Marcus It’s hard to pin down exactly when my Bruce Springsteen problem began. As a teenager I worshipped the guy, and still recall a blistering 1977 show…
Read MoreBy Debra Cash From the hype, you’d think that ten years ago British choreographer/director Matthew Bourne was the first person to develop a post-Freudian “Swan Lake” or cross-dress a ballet production, and you’d be wrong. You’d be right, however, to call Matthew Bourne’s “Swan Lake” a phenomenon. In 1996-97 the work became the longest running…
Read MoreWell-crafted fiction about the politics and psychosis of the sixties is becoming a growing industry. The Last of Her Kind, by Sigrid Nunez (Farrar Straus and Giroux); “Eat the Document: A Novel” by Dana Spiotta (Scribner) By Harvey Blume The legacy of the sixties keeps coming at us. By now, even President Bush might have…
Read MoreBy Adrienne LaFrance Picture an alternate 2006 in which the internet slave trade in America is an integral part of the economy, only white men have the right to vote, and culture is devoid of jazz, rock ‘n’ roll and countless other things. Head to Fenway and you’ll hear the national anthem, “Dixie,” played before…
Read MoreThe current kings of sly-clown fox-rock, Eagles of Death Metal and Electric Six know how to put the fun back into rock and roll. The Eagles of Death Metal, “Death by Sexy” (Downtown); Electric Six, “Senor Smoke” (Metropolis Records) By Milo Miles Rock and roll used to be a joke. The most dangerous joke in…
Read More“Hello, I’m Special: How Individuality Became the New Conformity” by Hal Niedzviecki. (City Lights) By Adrienne LaFrance A word to the mohawked and tattooed, to those who reject cell phones and popular music. Yes, you, the self-proclaimed non-conformists: You’re not special. Or maybe more aptly, you’re just as unique as the droves of people trying…
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Book Commentary: The Scam of Mobster Memoirs
Crime memoirs about Irish mobster Whitey Bulger have become a corrupt and pathetic cottage industry. By Jay Atkinson A large, jowly, humorless man of 49, Kevin Weeks, the one-time go-fer and strong arm for the notorious Boston crime boss, James Whitey Bulger, hurt and maimed people for a living. While his boss ran most of…
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