Commentary

Theater Commentary: Boston Fall Theater Preview — Rinse and Repeat and Repeat and Repeat …

July 30, 2025
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My hunch is that not only theater critics but audiences will find the parade of tried and true tiresome.

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Arts Remembrance: Fanny Howe — A Poet for the Spiritually Audacious

July 25, 2025
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Fanny Howe’s writing pursued, as she put it, “bewilderment as a poetics and a politics.”

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Arts Appreciation: Ozzy Osbourne — He Was One of Us

July 23, 2025
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Ozzy also gave us all the inspiration to overcome whatever dipshit, fucked up, and idiotic things we did, because he did just that, and generated plenty of good in the process.

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Arts Appreciation: Ozzy Osbourne — A Pioneer of Heavy Metal Left on His Own Terms

July 23, 2025
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It would be hard to name another successful artist so passionately demeaned by the music press.

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The Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll — Sharing What We Know at Mid-Year

July 11, 2025
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We are all part of a community with a deep commitment to this extraordinary but way-too-often unappreciated musical art, and the late critic Francis Davis believed we should work together and share what we know. His poll was one important way to do just that

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The Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll at Mid-Year — Listomania! Confessions of a Bad Voter

July 11, 2025
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So what am I saying? That the system is imperfect, corrupted by bad voters like me (there must be a few others who didn’t listen to even close to everything on this list — show of hands?)

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Music Commentary: Analyzing the Greatness of Brian Wilson’s “God Only Knows”

July 5, 2025
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I hope this close look makes clear the exquisite craftsmanship that went into “God Only Knows.” But for many of us, the song has a magic that goes beyond the mere exercise of compositional skill, even skill of a very high order.

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Film Retrospective: “Floating Clouds … The Cinema of Naruse Mikio” — Dedicated to Women’s Passions

July 3, 2025
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Film scholars, programmers, and the many filmmakers influenced by Naruse Miko value him as having crafted well-rounded portraits of women and their lives across decades of Japanese cultural changes.

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Culture Commentary: Homemade and Despicable

July 2, 2025
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So now, along with hand-made candles, jewelry, and home goods, Etsy customers can sport tees, caps and download stickers with Alligator Alcatraz names and images.

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Arts Commentary: Essential Inquiries — “40 Questions About a Political Play”

July 1, 2025
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“A play is political if its subject is taboo and its story mirrors, exposes, and critiques the suppression and repression that interferes with the treatment of a cultural disease. A political play is a problem that is ignored, denied, maligned. A political play is, by definition, unpopular.”

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