Arts

Arts

Rethinking Mother's Day

By Lea Epstein | October 10

An amusing, largely unsupported statistic circulates every year around May: Crime rates, supposedly, drop on Mother’s Day. Quite obviously, mothers are too busy with flowers and gifts to embark on their usual spree of robbery and arson. Alternatively, some suggest it’s because everyone — mothers, children and even hardened criminals — collectively decides to behave for 24 hours out of reverence. Whatever the reason for the widespread circulation of this myth, it’s telling of how we’ve learned to compartmentalize affection into a singular commercialized holiday — and how the performance of love has replaced its practice.

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Arts

Somerville’s Bow Market finds beauty in the small

By Annika Pillai | October 9

Tucked into Somerville’s Union Square, Bow Market is proof that good things really do come in small spaces. Part open-air mall, part food court, part art experiment, it’s built inside a converted storage building. What started in 2018 as a vision to turn an underused lot into something better has since grown into a thriving center for over 30 small, local businesses — many of them artist, chef or independently-owned. Their motto is simple: “Small is beautiful, with the belief that the small businesses run by individuals in a community are beautiful.”

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Columns

High Fidelity: The 10 best album openers of all time

By Kasra Salehi | October 9

“High Fidelity” by Nick Hornby is a book about the music-obsessed — about the kinds of guys who spend their free time making desert-island mix tapes. The main character, Rob, spends hours reorganizing his record collection based on different themes and aesthetics. I’ve decided to start the column that Rob wishes he could have had. I’ll review new albums, write about some of my favorite albums with upcoming anniversaries and, most importantly, I’ll make lists.

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Arts

‘A House Of Dynamite’ threatens to blow

By Noah Goldstein | October 8

No event unites Americans like one that provokes fear. A prominent historical example of this came on the morning of Jan. 13, 2018, when thousands of Hawaiians received a harrowing message: “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.” As we know now, this was simply a false alarm — no such missile existed, and everything was fine.

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Arts

Jane Fonda heads celebrity-organized Committee for the First Amendment

By Max Lerner | October 8

On Oct. 1, Jane Fonda helped relaunch the Committee for the First Amendment, standing alongside many members of the entertainment industry in an open letter condemning the federal government for being “engaged in a coordinated campaign to silence critics in the government, the media, the judiciary, academia, and the entertainment industry.”

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Arts

The people’s artist: Qi Baishi

By Isabella Jin | October 7

Situated among the Boston MFA’s proud Asian collection is a dimly lit exhibition hall whose inconspicuous presence belies the crowds of visitors frequenting its displays. To protect the fragility of the Xuan paper and silk scrolls, as well as to ensure the ink doesn’t fade, each work is spotlighted under a single warm light. However, these soft beige and brown illuminations do not dull the vibrancy of Qi’s colors nor detract from the eccentricity of his brushstrokes.

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Arts

Change, curation and collecting: Who gets to shape the museum?

By Isadora Alexis | October 6

In these times of turbulent change in our government, our communities and our homes, why does it continue to matter so fervently what is seen in our institutions? Why is it important for these familiar institutions to evolve now?

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Arts

The 24-Hour musical irreverently romps through Oz

By Spring LaRose | October 3

The 24-hour musical: where silence on the Cohen Auditorium stage is rewarded with raucous laughter and applause from the audience. We’re not in some polished, rehearsed Kansas anymore — we have landed in a raucous, occasionally ad-libbed Oz.

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Arts

Unpacking Kamala Harris’ political memoir: ‘107 Days’

By Olivia Bye | October 3

In the late hours of Nov. 5, 2024, former Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, called with news that put a decisive and devastating cap on her past 107 days: “I don’t think you’re going to get there.”

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Arts

‘One Battle After Another’ is another masterstroke on revolution and autocratic paranoia from one of the great creatives of our time

By Ethan Essner | October 2

To accurately describe the scene of something as modern as the new Paul Thomas Anderson film, it’s necessary to tap the rewind button to early leftist, revolutionary politics. During the ’70s, we heard rallying cries, people holding onto any form of comfort so as to make the bad times less trying. In Gil-Scott Heron’s 1971’s black liberation anthem, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” he exclaims, “Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction will no longer be so damn relevant.” The metaphor here hinges on Heron citing these 1960s television programs (“Green Acres,” “Beverly Hillbillies”), and their themes — rooted in hoisting wealth and perseverance in white America — as no longer relevant. These people, and their glorified existence, are still living beneath the corrupt government. While “One Battle After Another” takes Heron’s comedic jabs at the 1960s government, it contrarily applies it under the dome of a Trumpist agenda. The movie turns into something beaming with dimension and intelligence while also delivering those laughworthy moments via outrageous allusion and mockery, much akin to Heron.

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Theater

The Hollywood-ification of Broadway

By Claire LeCates | October 2

Recently, strolling down Broadway has felt more like scrolling through Netflix. Names like Daniel Craig, Keanu Reeves, Sarah Paulson, Eddie Redmayne, Kieran Culkin, Elle Fanning, Daniel Radcliffe, Rachel McAdams, Lola Tung, Nick Jonas and countless others have all been written in Broadway’s flashing lights over the past few years. MTA subway advertisements urge commuters not to miss Steve Carell in “Uncle Vanya” or George Clooney in “Good Night, and Good Luck” while Sandra Oh waltzes around the stage of a star-studded Shakespeare in the Park production for those lucky enough to possess coveted tickets.

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Arts

Microdramas are taking over the television landscape

By Annika Pillai | October 2

If you don’t have TikTok downloaded, you might not know what “His Nerd” is. But if you’ve doom-scrolled long enough, chances are you’ve stumbled across an ad for a microdrama. Titles like “His Nerd” and “Loving My Brother’s Best Friend” have become ubiquitous online, enticing viewers with quick romance and melodramatic twists.

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Columns

Elephant Yoga? A Jumbo Guide to Boston’s Yoga Spots: Down Under School of Yoga

By Fiona Hinrichsen | October 2

Founded by Justine Wiltshire Cohen in 2004 in a church basement in Newton Highlands, the Down Under School of Yoga stands as one of Boston’s most esteemed yoga studios. Cohen’s yoga journey began at a very young age. Her parents, both journalists, worked with the Dalai Lama’s community in India, teaching English to Tibetan monks. Cohen’s own teaching career has now spanned over two decades. Notably, while working in Washington, D.C., as an international human rights lawyer, she combined her passion for law and classical yoga to become the yoga teacher to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

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Columns

An Everyday Art Tour: Monument to progress

By Sophie Herron | October 1

Joseph Strauss, chief engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge, said: “Bridges are a monument to progress.” Such is the case of the recently completed William Fenton ‘Bill’ Russell Bridge, named after the Celtics player and civil rights activist, which honors Boston’s past changemakers while innovating for its future. The bridge was designed by Miguel Rosales, a Boston-based architect and president of the architecture firm Rosales+ Partners. Rosales has designed some of the most well-known bridges in the country, including the Zakim and Charlestown Bridges in Boston, the Woodrow Wilson Bridge in DC and the Puente Centenario Bridge across the Panama Canal. Born to a middle-class family in Guatemala, Rosales earned an architecture degree from University Francisco Marroquín before continuing his studies at MIT, earning a Masters of Science in Architecture Studies. Rosales credits his education in architecture, urban planning and engineering for his unique designs saying, “I think I combined all of those disciplines into one person, and I think that makes me special and be able to do the work I do.”

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Arts

‘No Other Choice’ is a mesmerizingly ruthless rendering of capitalism in the modern era

By Noah Goldstein | September 30

The job hunt is never easy. In today’s world of LinkedIn connections, coffee chats and endless interviews, the search for work can drive even a modest family man to madness — or worse. At least that’s the opinion of Park Chan-wook, the visionary behind “Oldboy” (2003) and “The Handmaiden” (2016), whose latest work, “No Other Choice” (2025), proves to be a hysterical, scathing portrait of modern capitalism.

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Arts

Geese’s ‘Getting Killed’ is a sacred mess

By Sam Stearns | September 30

To understand why Geese’s new record “Getting Killed” — released Friday via Partisan Records — sounds the way it does, you must understand what came before.

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Arts

‘The Hills of California’ is a tortured and beautiful dream

By Spring LaRose | September 25

A play is isolated from reality, forever fixed in its own little pocket of space and time. “The Hills of California” is distinctly aware of this fact, presenting the house the story unfolds in as both a sanctuary and a prison, where dreams are expressed and reminisced on but never able to come to fruition. 

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Arts

What creatives can learn from kintsugi

By Lea Epstein | September 25

In our dining halls, plates are merely vessels of utility. Students stack them high with Dewick-MacPhie Dining Center fries or Fresh at Carmichael Dining Center pancakes, slam them down on plastic trays beside their friends, and later let them rattle down a conveyor belt to be stripped of ketchup stains and congealed maple syrup residue by custodial staff. For those living off campus, Amazon boxes or Target bags deliver inexpensive, replaceable dishware, valued for durability. Beauty here is an afterthought, or not a thought at all — a convenience that disappears into the dishwasher before a 9 a.m. class.

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Arts

The death of the 22-episode season

By Annika Pillai | September 24

For decades, American television followed a rigid formula: around 22-episode seasons running from September to May. But in the past decade, this model has nearly disappeared. In its place are shorter runs of six to ten episodes, as well as one-off limited series that feel more like long films than open-ended serials. What changed?

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Arts

‘Frankenstein’ reanimated, yet not fully alive

By Noah Goldstein | September 23

There comes a point in many directors’ careers when making a sprawling passion project seems to be the natural progression. For Francis Ford Coppola, it was the tumultuous “Megalopolis.” For Steven Spielberg, it was the autobiographical “The Fabelmans.” And now, for three-time Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro, that career-defining victory lap arrives with “Frankenstein” (2025). The most recent entry into a canon of adaptations that ranges from James Whale’s 1931 original to Mel Brooks’ 1974 comedic spin, Del Toro’s version is a sturdy yet relatively risk-averse take on Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel.

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