Reviews, journalism, musings
This collection of 365 flash fictions seems like an anabasis through Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio (never Paradiso). But not always.
NY Sin Phoney IN FACE FLAT MINOR. Bart Plantenga, Sensitive Skin Books, 2017. This collection of 365 flash fictions seems like an up-to-date anabasis through Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio (never Paradiso). But not always.
Continue reading “Flash Fictions Galore: NY Sin Phoney IN FACE FLAT MINOR”
Here’s a review of a DVD recording of SCHUBERT: Hermann Prey sings The Song Cycles, as it appears in Audiophile Audition (www.audaud.com).
Continue reading “Review of SCHUBERT: Hermann Prey sings The Song Cycles”
When we visited the Florida Railroad Museum to check out some old trains, we ended up going on a 90-minute train ride.
When we visited the Florida Railroad Museum to check out some old trains, we ended up going on a 90-minute train ride. Continue reading “A Ride on the Florida Railroad Museum”
Is the Japanese film The Seven Samurai a parable of our times?
By the middle of 1945 Japan was defeated and in ruins. One hundred cities had been firebombed. Continue reading “What We Can Learn from The Seven Samurai”
This film might very well win an Best Actor oscar for Casey Affleck.
Director: Kenneth Lonergan. Starring: Casey Affleck, Michelle Williams and Luke Hedges. Distributor: Roadside Attractions. Film length: 137 min. Release date: December 16, 2016. ****
This film might very well win an Best Actor Oscar for Casey Affleck as a young janitor with a temper and strong passions. Continue reading “Manchester by the Sea”
A review by Peter Bates of the Blu-ray recording of Bellini’s opera I Capuleti e i Montecchi for Audiophile Audition.
Here’s a review of a DVD recording of Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi with Joyce DiDonato et al, as it appears in Audiophile Audition (www.audaud.com).
Continue reading “Review of Blu-ray of Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi”
Fidel Castro dead? Big deal. What about Batista?
The recent death of Cuba’s Fidel Castro has got me thinking: I am starting to miss the glorious days of Presidente Fulgencio Batista. Continue reading “Where’s Batista Now That We Need Him?”
The St. Petersburg Opera presented an Il Trovatore that met all the requirements of a classic Verdi opera production.
IL TROVATORE. Opera by Giuseppe Verdi, libretto by Salvatore Cammarano. Cast: Michael Morrow (Manrico); Alexandra Batsios (Leonora); Claudia Chapa (Azucena); Christopher Clayton (Count di Luna). Stage Director: Karl W. Hesser; Costume designer: Glenn Breed; Conductor and executive director: Mark Sforzini. Produced by St. Petersburg Opera.
If you have never seen a Verdi opera before, Continue reading “A Stirring Il Trovatore by the St. Petersburg Opera”
Poet Susan Eisenberg has published three previous books, all worth reading, all notable for their lack of pedantry and abstractions affecting so much poetry today. Her poems are immediate, dramatic, and firmly rooted in day-to-day reality. With this fourth volume, she reveals something personal you’d appreciate knowing about. She is unwell: a cancer survivor, she also has lupus, an insidious autoimmune disease you can read all about in Wikipedia. So what does she do? She writes about it. How? Astoundingly well.
Continue reading “Best Poems Ever about Illness”
Perhaps this book is too modestly titled. True, it does begin as an account of the author’s father and his struggles with failing eyesight, as he falls victim to the hereditary disease of retinitis pigmentosa. In the opening scene he takes the author, a six-year old, for a seemingly harmless ride in the family car. Soon it is revealed that he can barely see the road and almost has a traffic accident. Continue reading “An Affliction of Many Dimensions”