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Film Review: “Portrait of Wally” — Art As ‘Holocaust Loot’

June 26, 2012
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“Portrait of Wally” makes for a wonderfully engaging documentary about art and postwar intrigue with stakes on both a personal and global scale.

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Theater Review: A Delightful Turn “Round and Round the Garden”

June 25, 2012
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British playwright Alan Ayckbourn does not build gag machines that spit out one-liners. He creates finely etched characters whose humor is rooted in their befuddled behavior and personalities.

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The Arts Fuse Turns 5: The Future of Arts Journalism is Now. Help Us Make it Happen.

June 24, 2012
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As a long time arts critic for print, broadcast, and the Web, the potential for cultural coverage online strikes me then and now as exhilarating. The challenge for The Arts Fuse is to foster dialogue that articulates the value of the arts in our lives.

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Short Fuse Film Commentary: Hello “Prometheus” — Cthulhu Calling

June 24, 2012
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There have been over twenty movie adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft stories, all nearly forgotten. And yet Lovecraft’s sensibility serves as a guide to much of today’s cinema.

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Jazz Review: Vocal Chameleon Theo Bleckmann Sings Kate Bush

June 24, 2012
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A critically acclaimed player in the New York avant-garde scene, Theo Bleckmann is clearly a Kate Bush connoisseur, and his commentary on her work was as compelling as the performances

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Fuse Theater Review: A Lame “Auld Lang Syne”

June 23, 2012
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Auld Lang Syne is the kind of poorly made play that withholds important and obvious elements of development in order to score artificial dramatic points late in the action.

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Fuse Update: The Gathering Storm

June 23, 2012
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Updated. The year 1962, the terminus of Richard Vacca’s new history of Boston jazz, marked an end to an era. Fifty years later, with the cutbacks in jazz programming at WGBH, are we approaching a similar inflection point?

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Fuse Commentary: WGBH’s Radio Theater of the Absurd

June 22, 2012
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WGBH is exploring an interesting question — how little can you invest in arts coverage and still have the chutzpah to ask for money from supporters who mistake crumbs for a loaf?

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Music Commentary: Radio Silence for Boston Jazz?

June 20, 2012
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Updated.As many Boston listeners feared, WGBH has put its jazz programming on the road to extinction. What is to be done?

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Classical CD Review: Shostakovich, Prologue to “Orango” and Symphony no. 4/Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra

June 20, 2012
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Orango is one of the tantalizing “what might have been’s” of musical history: a biting social commentary on Soviet society on the fifteenth anniversary of the October Revolution, written when Shostakovich was at the height of his musical powers and popularity.

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