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Book Review: “The Turncoat” and “Marrow and Bone” — Two Revealing Looks at World War II

June 12, 2020
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For each of these major, prize-honored writers — Siegfried Lenz and Walter Kempowski– birth = destiny = art.

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Film Review: Three Early Classics of Gay Love and Desire

June 12, 2020
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It is an apt time to honor these pioneers: to recognize that we are here, and have always been here, making compelling art from under the shadow of oppression.

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Book Review: “The Talking Drum” – Gentrification From A to B

June 11, 2020
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Despite her story’s potential for uncomfortable confrontations and revelations, the author chooses to pack the vicissitudes of her novel’s changing neighborhoods and their inhabitants’ lives into a neat and tidy package.

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Television Review: “Laurel Canyon” — Journey Back to a Tiny Fortunate Universe

June 11, 2020
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From the mid-’60s to around 1972, Laurel Canyon became the epicenter of a magical musical interlude that gave birth to some of the most iconic and timeless music of a generation.

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Theater Commentary: A Modest Proposal — Boston Theaters, Junk Your Seasons!

June 10, 2020
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Today’s spirit of protest calls for risk and innovation, dissent and defiance. Our timid stages fall disgracefully short of reflecting that iconoclasm.

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Book Review: “Parakeet” — A Wild Constellation

June 10, 2020
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Parakeet is a virtuosic, perplexing, challenging trip. If it’s too disturbing a tale for this particular moment (it shouldn’t be), it may be a great work to explore in a year to come.

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Rap Album Review: “Run the Jewels 4” — Heart, Wit, and Rage

June 10, 2020
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Too many hip-hop artists stick to defined lanes, but Run the Jewels aspire to run rampant, with a growing sophistication as well as heart, wit, and rage.

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Opera CD Review: Spontini’s Wacky Comic Opera, in Which Nothing Is as It Seems

June 9, 2020
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Metamorfosi is a marvelously effective and amusing one-act opera that would suit college opera workshops splendidly.

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Jazz CD Review: Cory Smythe’s “Accelerate Every Voice” — Densely Layered; Simultaneously Music and Cryptic Puzzle

June 9, 2020
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This is virtuosity-driven chamber music with fluctuating levels of oxygen, shadows, and light.

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Book Review: “The Fallen” — Probing Cuban Paralysis

June 9, 2020
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The Fallen artfully diagnoses the spiritual and material maladies of contemporary Cuban life through the lens of a single family, a household threatened by decay, exterior and interior.

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