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Judicial Review #4: What Is This Thing Called Food?

March 8, 2011
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What is a Judicial Review? It is a fresh approach to creating a conversational, critical space about the arts and culture. This is our fourth session, this time deliberating on the relationship between science and food. It could be foam or gel, popcorn cloud or liquid ham, in the hands of the chefs of avant-garde…

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Movie Review: The Adjustment Bureau — A Posse of Dangerous Angels

March 8, 2011
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The Adjustment Bureau is a surprisingly good, romantic movie considering that angels are determining the fate of star-crossed lovers and the plot is driven by such lines as “if you stay together, you will not only ruin your dreams, you will also ruin hers.” The Adjustment Bureau. Directed by George Nolfi. The cast includes Matt…

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Culture Vulture: Reflections on the Jewish Film Festival

March 7, 2011
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Running through March 14, the Jewish Film Festival is a thinking person’s cinema experience with provocative introductions and post-film Q and As.

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Book Review: Poetry, Prose, and Politics — Elizabeth Bishop at 100

March 3, 2011
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No new edition of Bishop’s poetry, which she created with such loving-care and sent to publishers with such restraint, not to say stinginess, could advance her current reputation. She is America’s flagship, 20th-century poet, leaving the straight men (Eliot, Frost, Stevens, and Lowell) in her wake. (Expect a Bishop backlash by 2020.) Yet many poetry…

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Culture Vulture in New York: Three Museums, Three Ways to Reject the Past

March 3, 2011
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The snow is gone, daffodils are coming up in Central Park, and there are terrific shows in all of the major New York museums. The three I saw—at the Guggenheim, the Neue Galerie, and the Whitney —all draw on the early part of the twentieth century when artists in Europe and the United States were…

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Music Commentary: What Are the BSO Trustees Thinking?

February 24, 2011
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I’ve been going to BSO Open Rehearsal for some 50 years at Tanglewood and can’t remember ever having as alienating an experience as I and over one thousand other attendees had Wednesday night at Symphony Hall.

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Classical Music Interview: Franz Liszt’s 200th Birthday Bash

February 17, 2011
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It’s the 200th birthday of Franz Liszt, and there are concerts, conferences, and projects devoted to the pianist/composer going on all over the world this year. Lisztomania at New England Conservatory is one of a number of parties in the Boston area. The Boston Conservatory is also puttin’ on the Liszt. By Bill Marx In…

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Short Fuse Fiction: Boomer — part 1

February 14, 2011
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Boomers: part 1 By Harvey Blume. ** He lay there watching names scroll by in his head. Credits on screen, white on black background. Last Waltz Boomers Class Reunion Names. He thinks of names of dogs he had known, also cats, goats, ex-lovers. Most things ex by now, most everything ex. Ex-bladder control. Ex-cardiac tissue.…

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Opera Review: “Nixon in China” at The Shalin Liu Performance Center

February 14, 2011
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Although its interior says 21st century, the Shalin Liu Performance Center has a homespun, American 19th-century facade that made me think of Mark Twain and the provincial opera houses of the California Gold Rush. Care was taken to reference the original Haskins Building that once housed a clothing store called Madras and the local yacht…

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Book Review: Two Old Men Singing of Wisdom

February 8, 2011
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These novels by the young, Indian writers Natacha Appanah, who identifies herself as French-Mauritian, and Rana Dasgupta take the form of memoirs of old men who look back on their lives, searching for the truth and the peace that comes with an understanding of the past. The Last Brother by Natacha Appanah. Translated from the…

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