Film
By Justin Marble
Read MoreThe thrilling visuals in this documentary about skydiving get some things right, but the film ends up sensationalizing the sport rather than illuminating it. “Adrenaline Rush: The Science of Risk” at the Museum of Science, IMAX, through January 23, 2010. Reviewed by Kate Vander Wiede I started skydiving for a few reasons. The first was…
Read MoreBy Justin Marble Various Films at Stuart Street Playhouse This isn’t so much a ringing endorsement of the current offerings, the biopic Coco Before Chanel or the British comedy Pirate Radio, as much as it is a plug for the brand-new Stuart Street Playhouse. Located in the heart of the city, the fantastic new venue…
Read MoreBy Justin Marble “If its Halloween, it must be “‘Saw,’” claims the trailer for the latest iteration of the tired torture-horror franchise surviving more on its audience’s predilection for gooey and gruesome death scenes than coherent storytelling. “Oh yes, there will be blood,” echoes the creepy “Saw” antagonist Jigsaw, a psychotic old man who creates…
Read MoreFarber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber. Edited by Robert Polito. Library of America, 1000 pages, $40. Reviewed by Justin Marble Film critic Manny Farber’s landmark 1962 essay “White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art” champions the underground, manic, frenzied, messy “termite” films against the by-the-book, consciously significant, pompous and often critically-adored “white…
Read MoreBy Justin Marble “The Beaches of Agnes” At the Coolidge Corner Cinema If a motif exists in Agnes Varda’s sprawling new documentary, “The Beaches of Agnes,” it may just be the art of walking backwards. The 81-year-old director, famous among the art house crowd for French New Wave films like “Cleo from 5 to 7,”…
Read MoreBy Justin Marble November begins the yearly onslaught of studio-groomed Oscar bait, and the amount of coverage that these films will get will probably kill off several small forests. Yet the art house theaters in Boston have, as always, put together a varied and compelling dose of counter programming. These films probably won’t hear their…
Read MoreBy Caldwell Titcomb You might not be aware of it, but the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra (HRO) is the oldest symphony orchestra in the country, having begun as the Pierian Sodality in 1808. For the past 45 years, the group was led by composer-conductor James Yannatos, who retired last June. So the HRO on October 24 gave…
Read MoreBy Justin Marble October 1 through 3: Classic Cinema at Museum of Fine Arts: This weekend, the Museum of Fine Arts is showing two classic pieces of cinema. First up is Akira Kurosawa’s “Throne of Blood,” his reworking of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” in feudal Japan. Then it’s Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch,” a 1969 Western that…
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Arts Remembrance: In Memoriam — Tom Stoppard