Review
Taken together, these four pieces showcase a composer whose handling of the orchestra is expert and whose sense of form, in these works at least, feels unerringly right.
Films like Breaking Fast introduce audiences to cultures that they may not be familiar with — that they may even be hostile to — but through conflicts and dreams that are universal, that revolve around family, love, and friendship.
This is a wicked and entertaining satire on the dizzying class conflicts roiling Indian society, a neo-Marxist story of masters and servants, money and corruption — a Horatio Alger tale with a devilish twist.
I may be in quarantine, but music can transport me back to the Middle Ages, or to the court of Catherine the Great of Russia, or, via Donizetti, to an imagined India.
Azizler is a slow burn; unfortunately, the payoff isn’t worth the wait.
Politics is not the filmmaker’s interest in this lovely, affecting documentation of non-bureaucratic, everyday life in Havana.
This is a very effective political drama, a relevant warning about what social critic Chris Hedges calls the formation of “corporate totalitarianism.”
Fans of Frank Zappa who want to know about Frank the man as well as Zappa the musical and political icon would be wise to seek out Freak Out!
Fern may be house-less, but she’s not homeless — there’s a difference, she explains; her home will be the road, and the road is full of life, love, challenges, and surprises, all there for the taking.
Book Review: Yang Jisheng’s “The World Turned Upside Down”
Those who admire Yang Jisheng’s distinguished career should pick up this book. Those searching for a solid, accessible history of Mao’s Cultural Revolution should look elsewhere.
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