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Theater Commentary: Tennessee Williams at 100 — A Few Personal Thoughts

March 24, 2011
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Director and woman as I am, I would love to see A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, even The Rose Tattoo, cast with all men. Then I would push some courageous director to attempt to prove on stage that Williams’s final plays are not the work of a declining talent, but…

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Book Review: Time, Beautiful and Cruel — The Story of Composer George Russell

March 23, 2011
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In the best of all possible worlds, Duncan Heining’s biography will be the cornerstone of the edifice that time will erect to the memory of George Russell and his gift to music. Whether that will happen or not remains to be seen. In some ways, because of the vagaries of the book business, it’s up…

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Movie Review: A Gorgeous but Air-Headed “Jane Eyre”

March 22, 2011
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It may be beautifully photographed, but this attempt to capture Charlotte Bronte’s literary classic on screen doesn’t bring anything new to the table, aside from playing up the hooking up in the manor. Jane Eyre should be more than a simple country romance.

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Theater Review: A Superb “Educating Rita”

March 21, 2011
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Willy Russell’s play is a keeper. It’s tightly-crafted, emotionally generous, and—most of all—FUN! It provides one hell of a dramatic vehicle for a director attuned to the comedy of “higher” education. Educating Rita by Willy Russell. Staged by the Huntington Theatre Company at the Boston University Theater, Boston, MA, through April 10. By Helen Epstein…

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Poetry Review: Valerio Magrelli’s “Vanishing Points”

March 19, 2011
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Magrelli’s is a reserved, critical intelligence, and his poems do not issue from a position of knowledge, but rather from a doubt that stands, and dances, slowly on a profound respect for ambiguity.

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Coming Attractions in Jazz: Late March 2011

March 18, 2011
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UpdatedA celebratory month: Pianist Nando Michelin honors one of his native Uruguay’s greatest poets, a legendary Ethiopian vocalist rejoins the Either/Orchestra, a stellar Jazz Piano Summit comes to Connecticut, and much, much more.

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Music Review: DeVotchKa — Indie Rock Gone Eclectic

March 18, 2011
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Listeners expect global diversity from DeVotchKa and in its latest album the group delivers on its exhilarating efforts to make indie rock with plenty of exotic flair.

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Book Review: Exploring “The Memory of Love” in postwar Sierra Leone

March 17, 2011
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In her second novel, Aminatta Forna gives us a moving story of the toll that the terrible civil war in Sierra Leone has taken and is still taking, years after it supposedly ended.

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Book Review: The Greatest Horror Novel of the 20th Century

March 16, 2011
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German author Ernst Weiss’s nightmarish vision of science gone mad in his 1931 novel Georg Letham is not rote Freudian; it is firmly in the social critique/ apocalyptic Darwinian mode.

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Movie Review: A Toothless “Red Riding Hood”

March 15, 2011
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In their understandable haste to cash in on the success of the Twilight series, director Catherine Hardwicke and writer David Johnson threw attractive people on a set without bothering to come up with a plot that makes them worth watching. Red Riding Hood. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke. The cast includes Amanda Seyfried, Gary Oldman, Billy…

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