Review

REVISED: Judicial Review #11: “The Great Gatsby” — A Great Opera?

May 20, 2013
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This Judicial Review deals with the Boston premiere of John Harbison’s opera version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby. Read the reactions and join the conversation.

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Film Review: Bert Stern — Original Madman

May 5, 2013
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What about Bert Stern, the artist? He deserves credit for bringing fashion photography into the modernist moment in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

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Film Review: In Defense of a Cinematic Masterpiece — “To the Wonder”

April 28, 2013
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To The Wonder — the best American feature by far of 2013: beautiful, compassionate, tragic, transcendent.

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Judicial Review #10: Discussing the Point of Elizabeth Graver’s “The End of the Point”

March 19, 2013
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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 session discusses Elizabeth Graver’s new novel The End of the Point, a multi-generational story about the trials and tribulations of a family that takes place between 1942 and 1999 in Ashaunt Point, a fictional beach community on Massachusetts’ seacoast.

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Book Review: “How Literature Saved My Life” — Maybe

February 1, 2013
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Notwithstanding all that David Shields writes about the books and authors he loves, both classic and contemporary, he announces that today he can’t bear to write or read novels or even short stories in their old familiar forms and structures.

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Classical Music Review: Three Autumnal Schubert Sonatas

January 14, 2013
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From the moment he began to play, pianist Paul Lewis established his authority. His performance was spellbinding and eloquent, animated by a respect for precision and rhythmic clarity.

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Theater Review: “Pippin” – A Circus of Arrested Development

January 6, 2013
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Nervous mainstream audiences could breathe easy, the messy cultural ruckus of the ’60s was over: it was ok to find yourself in the suburbs.

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Visual Arts Review: The Sounds of “Unreal Memories”

December 31, 2012
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Sound artist Tutschku employs audio selections that are briefly broadcast periodically throughout the course of the day to startle and surprise listeners, to crack the shell of our typically prosaic and hectic modern lives.

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Jazz CD Reviews: Jazzhaus Ascendant

December 23, 2012
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We should look forward, eagerly, to hearing more lost, or previously issued music, from Jazzhaus. And be grateful to the European public for supporting these concerts and broadcasts.

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Theater Review: “Memphis” Doesn’t Sing the Blues

December 14, 2012
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In Memphis, the risqué exhilaration of early rhythm and blues is airbrushed away, to the point that the show appears to argue that from its inception black music sold out to mainstream tastes.

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