Arts
The Arts
Featuring Steve Earle’s Music, ‘Coal Country’ Play Recounts Deadly West Virginia Mine Explosion
A new play tells the story of the 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine disaster in West Virginia. Songwriter Steve Earle used it as a creative challenge to write his forthcoming album, Ghosts of West Virginia.
BOOK REVIEW: With A Legacy Of Colonization, ‘Postcolonial Love Poem’ Empowers Native Voice
Poet Natalie Diaz returns, interrogating the lasting effects of colonization asking: If a colonizer’s influence can’t be eradicated from a culture, how can you push back against violence and erasure?
FILM REVIEW: Mysterious Events Disturb A Small Brazilian Town In Genre-Busting ‘Bacurau’
First the town disappears from Google Maps. Then a UFO appears — and a water truck is riddled with bullet holes. Bacurau is a community portrait, a horror thriller and a work of political filmmaking.
In New Book, A Father Recounts His Search For The Son Who Vanished In Costa Rican Wilderness
Roman Dial hoped his son would be his outdoor partner for life. But that dream ended when his son disappeared in a Central American wilderness. Dial’s new book is The Adventurer’s Son.
How A Graphic Novel Resurrected A Forgotten Part Of American History At The Conestoga Massacre
In Ghost River: The Fall and Rise of the Conestoga, Native artists retell the events of a brutal massacre in pre-Revolutionary Pennsylvania and bring a painful history to life on the page.
FILM REVIEW: New ‘Emma’ Is A Frosted Cupcake Come To Life (In A Good Way)
Autumn de Wilde’s adaptation of the Jane Austen classic is as clever and rich as its famous heroine — in part, because its actors are so good at finding fresh nuances in this timeless material.
In ‘Counterpoint’ Bach Helps An Art Critic Mourn A Mother Whose Criticism Lingers
The Washington Post’s Philip Kennicott suffered his mother’s harsh words and actions throughout childhood. His book is partly a need to acknowledge her “sadness and anger and unaccountable rages.”
Documentary Shows How ‘Black Patriots’ Were Heroes Of The Revolution, But Not History Books
Basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the executive producer of a new documentary focusing on the lives of black Americans on both sides of the Revolutionary War, whose stories aren’t often told.
In ‘Downhill,’ Julia Louis-Dreyfus And Will Ferrell Are ‘Not Here To Play It Safe’
In the film Donwhill starring Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, a married couple barely escapes an avalanche during a family ski vacation and are forced to reevaluate their lives.
How A College Prank Turned Into A Public Art Tradition
The inflatable replica that rests on the lake’s solid surface isn’t a political statement, nor a throwback to the ending of 1969’s “Planet of the Apes,” but a decades-long tradition founded on a good laugh. The University of Wisconsin-Madison has staged the display at different times for more than four decades, starting in 1979 as a campaign stunt.
In An Age Of Streaming, ‘Oscar Bounce’ At The Box Office Is … Less Bouncy
Films used to get a boost at the box office from Academy Award nominations — and the bounce still exists for films hanging on at the multiplex. But changes in the industry are altering the calculus.
Author L.L. McKinney Says Barnes & Noble ‘Diverse Editions’ Are ‘Literary Blackface’
Barnes & Noble suspended its campaign to reissue classic books with covers depicting protagonists as people of color after many authors, including McKinney, criticized the initiative.
