Michael Woods

Ruben Östlund’s 'The Square'

Square pegs, round hole

Ruben Östlund’s satirical film 'The Square' uses the rarefied Swedish art world as a funhouse-mirror reflection of social hypocrisies. Michael Woods reviews.

Michael Woods

Jan 30, 2018 · Articles · 3 minute read

Reconsidering Janet Leigh in Alfred Hitchcock's 'Psycho'

'Psycho's' better half

Norman Bates is not the best part of Hitchcock classic 'Psycho.' Watch Janet Leigh instead for the better parts of the story. Michael Woods considers.

Michael Woods

Jan 10, 2017 · Articles · 4 minute read

The Poetry of Nature at the Brandywine River Museum

Glory be!

The Hudson River School painters take the viewer to some glorious distance in which beauty, religious faith, patriotism, and luminousness all compound into the promise of a future full of progress and improvements.

Michael Woods

Apr 07, 2016 · Articles · 4 minute read

Todd Haynes's 'Carol'

Loved Carol, not Carol

Cate Blanchett fans will enjoy this vehicle, but Carol's engine misfires too often. Cate’s glowing character may be a lonely store clerk’s fantasy, but how might she have been treated in real life?

Michael Woods

Jan 12, 2016 · Articles · 4 minute read

'Words Without Music' by Philip Glass

From plumber to the gilded prizes with a ‘musical idiot’

Philip Glass's great experiment in sound helped release serious music from the grip of the serialists and academics and Aaron Copland — and opened Glass to older forms and orchestration, longer melody, and other traditions he would explore for the rest of his working life.

Michael Woods

Dec 28, 2015 · Articles · 5 minute read

Ornette Coleman: An appreciation

Time catches up to Ornette

Live long enough, as jazz innovator Ornette Coleman did, and it can help your public catch up to you — even to music like his, which was once well ahead of its time.

Michael Woods

Jun 16, 2015 · Articles · 4 minute read

'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari' and 'Goodbye to Language'

The 4K redemption

What digital cinema makes possible could not have happened with celluloid, love it as much as we wish. Dr. Caligari and Goodbye to Language show why.

Michael Woods

May 16, 2015 · Articles · 6 minute read

"The Gross Clinic' restored (2nd review)

The Gross Clinic restoration revisited: What did Thomas Eakins really want?

I feel the greatest respect for the dedication and effort that went into the Art Museum's restoration of The Gross Clinic. But the fact remains: We still don't have Thomas Eakins's painting here.

Michael Woods

Dec 21, 2010 · Articles · 5 minute read

Jurowski conducts the Orchestra (2nd review)

The Jurowski solution: Three parts mad ascetic, one part voluptuary

Vladimir Jurowski is a figure right out of the pages of Dostoevsky. What if he were leading the Philadelphia Orchestra regularly, instead of just once a year? The patrons would be lined up at the Kimmel's doors.

Michael Woods

Mar 23, 2010 · Articles · 3 minute read

Schumann Trio's debut

Do I hear a clarinet?

In its much-anticipated Philadelphia debut, the Schumann Trio demonstrated why three diverse and busy musicians have chosen to join forces.

Michael Woods

Dec 15, 2009 · Articles · 3 minute read

Nézet-Séguin conducts the Orchestra (3rd review)

A day and a night in Vivier's Paris (in just 13 minutes)

Claude Vivier's Orion took me on a sprightly 13-minute tour of Paris. In the process, it managed to make Brahms seem tedious by comparison.

Michael Woods

Dec 12, 2009 · Articles · 4 minute read

Pianist Anna Polonsky at Fleisher

Polonsky aroused

The pianist Polonsky brings a determined personality to the keyboard, and her attack is so concentrated, and so vivid, that at one point the rocking of her body brought a flashback of the New Wave band Devo to mind.

Michael Woods

Nov 28, 2009 · Articles · 2 minute read

Psychology and the stock market

From overconfidence to abject fear: An investment lesson from the ‘Elliott Wave'

Stock market gurus may be passé, but Ralph Elliott was on to something: He perceived that, regardless of the business cycle, human nature moves in repetitive emotional progressions, from fear to optimism to greed and back again. Care to guess what “Elliot Wave Theory” says about the stock market's current recovery?

Michael Woods

Aug 29, 2009 · Essays · 5 minute read

George Romney's living portraits

A forgotten painter's gift: The eroticism of respectability

Even after 200 years, George Romney's portraits exude a freshness that has outlasted his more celebrated contemporaries. So many of his women are impeccably dressed and eminently respectable, yet their femininity seems ready to explode off the canvas at any moment. Paintings by George Romney (1734-1802). On permanent display at Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gallery 278, second floor, 26th St. and Ben Franklin Parkway. (215) 763-8100 or www.philamuseum.org.

Michael Woods

Jun 30, 2009 · Articles · 10 minute read

Two pianists: Polonsky and Podgurski

There's something about Anna

Pounding, pedaling and darting like quicksilver, the slender young pianist Anna Polonsky stole the show at her duet recital with cellist Peter Wiley. At the Art Museum, by contrast, the jazz pianist Neil Podgurski showed a different, quieter side with a new band.

Michael Woods

Mar 17, 2009 · Articles · 3 minute read