Tuesday, February 4

Tag: arts in review

What to Watch: The 18 Best Movies and TV Shows From December
31Dec By adminNo Comments
Business

What to Watch: The 18 Best Movies and TV Shows From December

By WSJ Arts in Review Staff Here’s a roundup of the month’s most noteworthy movies and TV shows, as covered by The Wall Street Journal’s critics.Poor ThingsSumptuous, dazzling and glorious seem barely adequate as descriptors of “Poor Things,” a two-hour-and-20-minute cinematic fable of self-discovery. Writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos, the dryly weird Greek filmmaker who has mostly been forced to work on skimpy budgets before, has at last been given the resources to show off everything he can do. This film makes most of this fall’s acclaimed pictures look like, in the words of one of its characters, “signs of the conventional mind straining hard to almost touch mediocrity.”Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8 ...
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‘Elizabeth Crowell With a Dog’: Thomas Eakins’s Revelatory Realism
29Dec By adminNo Comments
World

‘Elizabeth Crowell With a Dog’: Thomas Eakins’s Revelatory Realism

The girl’s pose is so natural that you wouldn’t call it a pose. She is seated on the floor, reaching one hand toward a black poodle, signaling her attentive companion to remain still, while a biscuit balances on the dog’s nose. She has extended a single finger toward her canine playmate, her expression intense, as if a look could will the poodle to maintain its precarious upright pose indefinitely. It’s a moment of charm and intimacy, rendered with formal brilliance in Thomas Eakins’s painting “Elizabeth Crowell With a Dog.”It was completed in the early 1870s, during a highly productive decade for the artist. The works he made during the 1870s would establish him as one of the greatest American painters. His only equal among American realists of that era was Winslow Homer, whose pictures ...
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‘Extended Family’ Review: A Subversive Split From Sitcom Tropes
28Dec By adminNo Comments
World

‘Extended Family’ Review: A Subversive Split From Sitcom Tropes

A network situation comedy that is genuinely funny doesn’t come along every weeknight at 8:30, or most weeknights at 8:30, and even if the producers passed on the most obvious title—“Post-Modern Family”—their new “Extended Family” has legs. Jokes. Jon Cryer’s scrupulous comedic timing. And a premise that even 20 years ago would have had the old Legion of Decency writhing on the floor: happy divorce.Does it help that it isn’t so happy? The creation of writer-actor-producer Mike O’Malley starring Mr. Cryer and Abigail Spencer, “Extended Family” is based on two pillars of classical sitcom philosophy—people’s intentions are good and they are not as smart as they think. As we are told by Jim and Julia—directly to the camera, which is how much information is exchanged—their marriage had basical...
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‘Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc’ Review: Creativity Under Soviet Constraints
28Dec By adminNo Comments
World

‘Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc’ Review: Creativity Under Soviet Constraints

MinneapolisThe freezing half-mile walk from my hotel to the Walker Art Center on an early December morning here was a bit dreary and difficult, given that the park between me and the museum was basically one vast sheet of ice. Perhaps that was as it should have been, since the exhibition I was on my way to see was “Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc, 1960s-1980s,” a comparatively cold, gray, but occasionally lively gathering of contemporary art created under repressive political regimes. (The show is up through March 10, 2024.)Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Hank Williams at 100: A Country Crooner With Heartfelt Depth
25Dec By adminNo Comments
World

Hank Williams at 100: A Country Crooner With Heartfelt Depth

About 10 years ago, I made a pilgrimage to the Hank Williams Museum in Montgomery, Ala., about an hour’s drive from Butler County—where the country-music legend was born 100 years ago—and where Williams grew up from age 13 on. It was overwhelming to be surrounded by over a dozen of his suits and performance outfits, his 1937 Gibson, and even his 1952 Cadillac—the very car he died in, at 29 years old, on New Year’s Day 1953, essentially from heart failure related to his longtime alcoholism. The artifact that touched me the most, however, was a brightly painted, 7-foot-tall wooden statue of a Native American, what we used to call a “cigar-store Indian.” This was in honor of “Kaw-Liga,” one of Williams’s final recordings—released shortly after his death—and one of his most profound songs. Wr...
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Arts Calendar: Happenings for the Week of December 17
17Dec By adminNo Comments
World

Arts Calendar: Happenings for the Week of December 17

By WSJ Arts in Review Staff Film• “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” (Dec. 22): Jason Momoa splashes back into action as the DC superhero, protecting Atlantis from the evil Black Manta (played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). Director James Wan captains a cast that includes Amber Heard, Nicole Kidman, Dolph Lundgren, Randall Park and Patrick Wilson. • “Anyone but You” (Dec. 22): Much digital ink has been spilled regarding the chemistry between the stars of Will Gluck’s romcom about a pair of vacationers—played by Sydney Sweeney (“The White Lotus”) and Glen Powell (“Top Gun: Maverick”)—who detest each other but find themselves thrown together at a destination wedding in Australia. Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8 ...
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‘Shary Boyle: Outside the Palace of Me’ Review: A Theatrical New York Debut
17Dec By adminNo Comments
Business

‘Shary Boyle: Outside the Palace of Me’ Review: A Theatrical New York Debut

New YorkShary Boyle is a lot of things: sculptor, painter, draftsperson, performer, filmmaker. But above all she’s a storyteller. That is abundantly clear in “Outside the Palace of Me,” the Canadian artist’s solo show at the Museum of Arts and Design that warrants as many descriptions as she does: transportive, theatrical, whimsical and captivating, to name just a few.Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Samuel Morse’s Moving Portrait of the Marquis de Lafayette
16Dec By adminNo Comments
Business

Samuel Morse’s Moving Portrait of the Marquis de Lafayette

Samuel Morse came to Washington in February 1825, an ambitious but frustrated 33-year-old artist. Before the discovery of telegraphy and the code that bears his name, he was nearly as well known for his paintings as for his father, the famed geographer Jedidiah Morse. Or as the Marquis de Lafayette jested to his son Georges Washington, “this is Mr. Morse, the painter, the son of the geographer; he has come to Washington to take the topography of my face.” Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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