Review

Film Review: “Caligula” — Now, More Than Ever

August 16, 2024
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After 45 years, this controversial juggernaut of a film has finally arrived, in all its ambitious, hot, messy, gratuitous splendor. Do see it on the big screen if at all possible.

Book Review: Amy Leach’s “The Salt of the Universe” — Fundamentalism Is Not Fun

August 16, 2024
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Amy Leach’s book may help you understand the rewards of  Christian fundamentalism for its followers — and how much richer a non-fundamentalist life can be.

Book Review: Randy Rainbow’s “Low-Hanging Fruit” – A Mirthful Manifesto with a Gay Agenda, Sans Show Tunes  

August 16, 2024
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This collection of observational essays by online musical theater parodist and insta-celebrity Randy Rainbow is a Birkin bag full of snarky social commentary about the most pressing issues facing the US, from dancing TikTok grandmas to Donald Jessica Trump.

Theater Review: “Wish You Were Here” — Innocence Lost

August 15, 2024
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Through around 10 scenes, spanning over a decade, “Wish You Were Here” looks at political oppression through the domestic lens of lost love and friendships.

Doc Talk: Advertisements for Himself — “How to Come Alive with Norman Mailer”

August 15, 2024
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A testament to the power of benignant narcissism.

Opera Album Review: One of Saint-Saëns’s Best Operas — Finally on Disc!

August 15, 2024
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We have a recording of “Déjanire,” its first ever. And it’s splendid, with a superb cast, an insightful conductor, and the orchestra and chorus of the very city in which it was first performed a century earlier!

Film Review: Birds of Prey — Time of the “Cuckoo”

August 14, 2024
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“Cuckoo” bridges the experiences of cis and trans women together with overlapping concerns about how our bodily autonomy is increasingly controlled by patriarchal forces.

Book Review: “Unterstadt” — A Nightmare Journey Into ‘The Lower City’

August 14, 2024
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“Unterstadt” is valuable, and not only because it memorably excavates a repressed episode in Croatian history. The novel also has considerable relevance, given the savagery besieging the innocent in today’s conflagrations.

Book Review: “Beneath the Mountain” — Revealing the Links Between Enslavement and Incarceration

August 12, 2024
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This collection of essays, excerpts, letters, and a few poems is a powerful and necessary tool for educating anyone willing to learn about — and confront — the injustice and hypocrisy of our country’s monstrous system of incarceration.

Book Review: Neoliberal Soup for the Fledgling Capitalist Soul — “The Algebra of Wealth”

August 12, 2024
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Serious individuals of all stripes seeking candid yet pragmatic life, career, and financial guidance will find much to savor in this book.

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