Commentary

Visual Arts Review: Cyberarts’s Art on the Marquee — Digital Game Shorts for Now People

March 30, 2014
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Whether art can comfortably exist in this thoroughly commercial frame is a question for the ages. Let’s say that whether this show succeeds is firmly in the eye of the beholder.

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Classical Music Commentary: Boston Symphony Orchestra Season 2014-15 — A Jolt of Energy and Stability

March 9, 2014
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Most of the programs during BSO conductor Andris Nelsons’ ten subscription weeks look fresh and, if not outright adventurous, on paper they at least look more exciting than not.

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Fuse Views: This is What We Look Like — On “Selfies” and Self-Image

March 6, 2014
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Sometimes using the Twitter handle #itsokKimNovak, at other times just linking to Laura Lipmann’s Facebook page, women – primarily writers and our friends – have started posting our own “raw” photos.

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Music Commentary: Vinyl Resting Place – How To Love LPs Not Too Much But Well

March 1, 2014
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The LP format has had mobs of claims made about it over the years, some silly, some solid. As an old platter-flipper pro, here’s my take on some of them.

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Music Remembrance: February 9th, 1964 — “Hey, You Kids Want Tickets to See the Beatles?”

February 6, 2014
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Arts Fuse writer Tim Jackson recalls the impact of being in the audience of the “Ed Sullivan Show” fifty years ago.

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Fuse Appreciation: The Late Pete Seeger — Creating Music on a Human Scale

February 1, 2014
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One of the more fascinating contributions Pete Seeger made to our collective musical sensibility was the effortless way in which he introduced what we now call “world music” to his audiences.

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Fuse Film Commentary: The Decimation of the Independents — Some Solutions

January 30, 2014
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The major film companies must divest themselves of their independent arms (which are anything but independent) and allow a return to the system that was in place for decades until greed and cinematic carpet bagging crushed it.

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Movie Commentary: Handicapping the Oscars

January 17, 2014
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The nominees for Best Picture are a deserving lot, except for “The Wolf of Wall Street,” which is a bloated mess of a movie that is an hour too long .

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CriticIsm Commentary: The Welcome Buccaneers of Arts Criticism

January 13, 2014
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“Criticism will always have the force of the child in the story about the emperor’s new clothes, because there will always be naked emperors who everybody says are wearing today’s Crown Jewels.” — Eric Bentley

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Jazz Review / Commentary: Brian Carpenter’s Ghost Train Orchestra and Some Notes on “Irony”

December 27, 2013
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Brian Carpenter and the Ghost Train Orchestra are not about re-creating either hot jazz from the ’20s or novelty works from the ’30s and ’40s. They’re interested in capturing the spirit that they perceive to be inside these almost-forgotten pieces and using that spirit to make original new music.

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