You might have been attracted to Jerry Beck and his non-profit cultural organization the Revolving Museum by one of the many strategic lures set up to summon the interaction of passersby in municipal locations. In Boston’s Downtown Crossing, a basketball hoop bolted to the side of a truck elicits an unusual exercise—the idea of playing a quick game of pick-up in a space usually… continue
A lighthouse is a structure meant to caution, to establish perimeters in limited visibility, to warn when navigating the partially unknown. The Lighthouse, the latest film by filmmaker Robert Eggers, is all of these things, and nothing short of one of the darkest films produced in the last decade, even despite a few laughs. Co-writing the screenplay with his brother, Eggers persists in… continue
To Stanley Kubrick—formalist artist, literate spiritualist, inveterate chess player, and cinematic explorer at the intersection of society, government, and technology—machines had the capacity for meaningful interaction with humans, the promise of a creative, productive synergy that manages, to this day, to be underutilized and… continue
“There’s a serenity to it and a fire,” Borochov says. “Sometimes it’s like playing as if you got punched in the gut. Sometimes, it’s like you’re seeing angels.” The music of Borochov’s quartet is a mix: contemporary jazz with Middle Eastern and North African melodies and rhythms, drawing from Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish synagogue music cultures. “I’m deeply rooted in the jazz tradition, and heavily influenced by the… continue
If nineteen sixty-seven was ground zero for a tidal shift in American cinema, thanks to the French stepping up their own New Wave game and hailing the movies as a vital and distinct art form, then 1969 took eccentric, elliptical, and experimental narrative and injected it into the veins of mainstream Hollywood filmmaking. That first… continue
In fourth grade, I borrowed from one of my classmates a series of books rumored to be banned from teachers’ reading lists: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (1981), More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (1984), and Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones (1991). To this day, I sometimes have trouble eating a meal if I think of this collection of intestine-churning folktales,… continue
In 2015, Morgan Parker published “if you are over staying woke” with Poetry magazine. I was taking a contemporary poetry seminar the summer of that year, and this was one of the poems in a stapled stack of her work we were assigned to discuss in two days. I ended up skipping class because I knew I couldn’t talk about “If you are over staying woke” without… continue
Ancient and alien, artist Huma Bhabha’s sculpted and drawn figures are currently on view through May 27th in her They Live exhibit at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art. Cumbrous, god-like prisoners of their own isolation, they loom over wasted industrial cities, openly regard their denizens and worshippers, and stare out at the lost and wandering. It’s a… continue
This month at Regis College, the famed English tale of Robin Hood and his loyal gang of thieves is set for the stage. As Marian, Or The True Tale of Robin Hood will maintain the core of the original narrative, playwright Adam Szymkowicz presents a new version. According to Director Jennifer Potts of Regis’ Fine Arts Center, “The beauty of this play is that we take the mythological story of Robin Hood and completely… continue
“Every show is different, you never know what to expect.” Those were the words of Warner Hiatt, known by his moniker, Worn-Tin, after playing an album release party at The Echo in Los Angeles for his sophomore record, Cycles. Hiatt is eccentric live, electrifying, at one point lying flat on his back on stage shredding his… continue
Film noir’s opaque shadows will fall on Boston this June when the traveling film festival Noir City slinks onto the screen of Harvard Square’s Brattle Theatre. For those who believe Billy Wilder’s nasty, lusty Double Indemnity was, in 1944, the jolt that brought noir’s patchwork monster to life (a debatable take, to be sure, especially when you… continue
