Articles

6207 results
Page 474
Mulgrew, Letts, Joyce, Gibson: Spectacle over sense.

Mauckingbird's "Midsummer Night's Dream'

Shakespeare meets Lady Gaga

Mauckingbird's imaginative, gender-bending staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream offers a spectacle that the Facebook generation can sink its teeth right into, notwithstanding the limitations of Mauckingbird's scatterbrained approach to Shakespeare's text.
Jim Rutter

Jim Rutter

Articles 5 minute read
Travolta: More than a soundtrack.

"Saturday Night Fever,' revisited

Should you be dancin'? Saturday Night Fever, revisited

Saturday Night Fever evokes a brief moment in pop culture history: the sexual freedom between the dawn of the Pill and the advent of AIDS. To those of us born to that particular slice of the Baby Boom, this gritty 1977 movie and its buoyant songs often strike a contradictory note.
Judy Weightman

Judy Weightman

Articles 8 minute read

Julia Roberts and "Eat, Pray, Love'

Julia Roberts confronts mature womanhood

Eat Pray Love is a forgettable work of escapist fantasy. But its star, Julia Roberts, is evolving in the opposite direction: from bimbo to mature woman with real brains and real-life problems.

Marge Murray

Articles 4 minute read
Newman's 'Death of Euclid" (1947): A slightly screwed up inner core.

Why so many Jewish artists?

Why so many Jewish artists? The Holocaust connection

Why are there so many Jews in the visual arts? And why now? Is it just a coincidence? Or did the unique experience of the Holocaust engender an unequally unique psyche that looks powerfully inward for self-expression and for an outlet for hidden fears?
Joan Myerson Shrager

Joan Myerson Shrager

Articles 3 minute read

"Late Renoir' at the Art Museum (4th review)

Updating Renoir: Young Woman With Laptop, anybody?

Renoir grasped the poetry inherent in scenes of everyday life. In that case, what would he paint if he were alive today? Where is the artist who can bridge the chasm between technology and art?
Tom Purdom

Tom Purdom

Articles 4 minute read
Wolves Fairmount Park

Dennis Tafoya's "Wolves of Fairmount Park'

Crime and redemption, Philadelphia-style

Philadelphian Dennis Tafoya's second crime novel is a twisting journey into the gray, gritty urban demimonde of dope.
Bob Ingram

Bob Ingram

Articles 4 minute read
Hutten (left) and JaQuinley Kerr: True but trivial.

Iron Age Theatre's "Empress of the Moon'

Men conquer, women suffer. So what else is new?

Instead of delving into the remarkable story of a 17th-Century woman who wrote some of the most popular plays of her era, writer-director Chris Braak trots out the usual feminist complaints.
Jim Rutter

Jim Rutter

Articles 4 minute read
'Slave Market in Rome' (1884): Just short of genius.

GérÓ´me revival at the Getty in Los Angeles

Famous in his time: A GérÓ´me revival in Los Angeles

Jean-Léon GérÓ´me, once perhaps the world's most famous artist, plummeted into obscurity in the 20th Century, his work largely relegated to the domain of kitsch. The Getty Museum's revival show hides no faults but reveals a painter of exceptional talent who produced some historically significant paintings amid the dross, and who never merely pandered to his public.
Robert Zaller

Robert Zaller

Articles 8 minute read

Sign up for our newsletter

All of the week's new articles, all in one place. Sign up for the free weekly BSR newsletters, and don't miss a conversation.

"Matterhorn,' a Vietnam novel by Karl Marlantes

A not-so-distant mirror

For those of us who lived through the Vietnam War, this powerful and compelling novel triggers haunting memories.

John L. Erlich

Articles 1 minute read
Tallinn's Kunst Museum: Challenging the New York-Paris-Berlin axis.

New cultural capital: Tallinn, Estonia

Free at last: Estonia's cultural spree

After centuries of oppression by everyone from Crusaders to Nazis to Communists, Estonians are free at last to pursue their own destiny. The result is a remarkable cultural outpouring in Tallinn, the capital. I've never seen so many first-rate museums.
Patrick D. Hazard

Patrick D. Hazard

Articles 4 minute read