Don’t let the title fool you: This show based around animal imagery is, if anything, more cryptic than cute. Among its nine artists are the eccentrically folky Juliette Oken, a local; New York-based Larissa Bates, whose mythological landscapes are, according to one art magazine, selling as fast as she can make them; Robert Marbury of … Read more
These annual exhibitions showcase new work from the recipients of one of the state’s most coveted grants–and keep us up to date on the doings of some of the best local photographers. Last year’s celebrated quartet was made up of Beth Dow, who made rich platinum prints of various types of manicured landscapes (pictured), and … Read more
Dropping out of school at age thirteen would seem not to set a young woman up for a life in letters, but more than sixty books later, Doris Lessing has the last laugh at the vicious nuns and finishing-school marms who made her formal education such a drag. A self-made and wickedly sharp intellect with … Read more
Windy but precise, laden with words that have no life outside the dictionary, and generously slathered with footnotes, David Foster Wallace has achieved acclaim for a kind of writing style seldom seen outside of graduate English programs. Of course, it also helps that his essays for Harper’s, the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly and other … Read more
Hero or rascal? Liberal threat or viable candidate? Could Al Franken be our next senator, really? Well, he can certainly charm his way across a room full of snakes, but when it comes right down to it, the guy can’t even pretend to be moderate about anything. Then again, neither can the folks in charge … Read more
At a preview for Brokeback Mountain, women throughout the audience gasped with pleasure when cowboys played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger started a fond embrace. Was this going to be a Mulholland Drive for ladies? Or simply a gay Western? Neither label will suffice, but this tale of a love affair between a ranch … Read more
Along with The Passenger here’s another seventies-vintage Italian film being feted with an anniversary re-release. Why spend eight bucks to see this one on the big screen? Well, when it’s a lush noir masterpiece that influenced everything from The Godfather triology to Reservoir Dogs, and was written by Marxists against fascism yet resonates with fresh … Read more
This thirtieth anniversary re-release of Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1975 suspense-thriller follows a weary reporter, played by Jack Nicholson, through Africa, Germany, Spain, and England after heÕs traded identities with a dead man. The stiff, whose identity seemed innocuous, turns out to have been a key player in an international espionage plot, and when Nicholson realizes he’s … Read more
She seems like a nice Jewish girl, for a moment, until she whips you around with some simple little line that skewers minorities, AIDS, Jesus, and beloved tragedies like the Holocaust and September 11. But if slaying sacred cows is what it takes to become one of the top comedians in a world that prefers … Read more
If all the saccharine of the seasonhas you in a surly or reclusive mood, you might find some like-minded souls at the Oak Street, where eleven of the most memorable anti-heroes of cinema run rampant through this darkly themed series. Choose from the sleek violence of Lee Marvin in Point Blank; the deceptive charms of … Read more