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A Eulogy for Jacques

Jacquot et Nantes, dir. Agnès Varda, 1991 The legendary French auteur, Agnès Varda, passed away in March 2019, aged 90, and what has...

Silence is Golden

The Lodger, dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1927. Silent Hitchcock Retrospective, Harvard Film Archive, 2020. I have to confess that my interest...

Portrait of the Sculptor Friedrich, 1904

Oil on canvas, 1904, by Lovis Corinth (1858 – 1925) The German artist Lovis Corinth was later to become another victim of Nazi censorship...

Notes on a Concert

The Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Andris Nelsons, Symphony Hall, Boston, January 28, 2020 1. You take the Number One bus to...

Destructive Necessities

The Souvenir, dir. Joanna Hogg, 2019 Honor Swinton Byrne is Julie, a young sensitive woman raised in a loving and supportive middle-upper...

Grazing Horses IV (The Red Horses)

Oil on canvas, 1911, by Franz Marc (1880 – 1916) There is an entire gallery at the Fogg Museum which is designated to “Art in Germany...

The Power and the Light

The Lighthouse, dir. Robert Eggers, 2019 As a psychological thriller, The Lighthouse crawls under your skin in ways many other films in...

Upper Deck

Oil on Canvas, 1929, by Charles Sheeler (1883 - 1965) I keep coming back to this painting, hanging in the modernist section of the...

In Defence of the Felines

Cats, by Andrew Lloyd-Webber and T.S. Eliot, dir. Trevor Nunn, Citizen Bank Opera House, Boston, 2020 There is no doubt about it that a...

Midsummer Madness

Midsommar, dir. Ari Aster, 2019 Hereditary, Aster's previous film, impressed me for its fine sense of characterisation and for what I...

Ignorance is Bliss

The Farewell, dir. Lulu Wang, 2019 Lulu Wang's screenplay is perhaps one of the most impeccably crafted pieces of writing I have come...

Royal Tiger

Lithograph on off-white wove paper, 1829, by Eugène Delacroix (1798 – 1863) I had heard of Delacroix mainly as one of the master painters...

Gothic Introspection

Dracula, devised by Mark Gatiss & Steven Moffat, 2019 Gatiss and Moffat's treatment of Conan-Doyle's Sherlock Holmes legacy always...

Real or Not?

Find Me, by Andre Aciman, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2019 Personally I would love to be a character in an Aciman novel. For one, his...

Nocturne in Grey and Gold: Chelsea Snow

Oil on canvas, 1876, by James Abbot McNeill Whistler (1834 – 1903) This dark, brooding, diffuse, near monochromatic canvas may seem an...

The Young Pretender

Daniel Lazokovich, violinist What right does an 18-year old, obviously comparatively inexperienced to fellow much older and seasoned...

The Devil in a Red Dress

In Fabric, dir. Peter Strictland, 2019 On first viewing, it's tempting to sum up In Fabric as a ludicrous indulgence of horror-noir...

Can We Camp-Up Hitler?

JoJo Rabbit, dir. Taika Waititi, 2019 The first thing to say is that it's stupidly outrageous that a 10 year old kid can give such a...

Compact Power

Yuja Wang, Pianist Yuja has always been known as much for her daring stage attire as her brilliance as a virtuoso. Indeed, when she took...

A drug for our times?

Serotonin, by Michel Houellebecq, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2019 While thoroughly un-PC to admit to this nowadays, I have to declare I'm a...

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