Deborah Krieger

I can only imagine how impossible it must be to put together a biennial that everyone likes—to curate a group of works over the course of several years that will need to speak to the issues on everyone’s minds in the here and now, even though the news cycle moves at the speed of light.

There are several layers to Lydia Rosenberg’s highly conceptual, experimental exhibition ‘The Complete Subject’, currently on view at Napoleon, each relying upon people’s individual perceptions of meaning. What you get out of ‘The Complete Subject’ absolutely depends on your tolerance for this kind of self-perpetuating thought experiment.

Joan Wadleigh Curran’s show at the C.R. Ettinger Studio, Recombinants, is not a series of works that uses depictions of plants and other flora to make a statement about climate change, or one that places images of dead blossoms into some vanitas-style context about human nature. It’s simply about what it is–the recursive, fragile, and ultimately stubborn forms of nature that continue to appear around us in all sorts of settings.

One of only three women to have won the Oscar for Best Original Score (for The Full Monty in 1997), she’s become known for her eclectic choice of projects, which includes other ’90s hits The Crying Game (1992) and American History X (1998), as well as the Anne Hathaway/Hugh Jackman Les Misérables and last year’s Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again. I caught up with Dudley and got the scoop on her composing process, her thoughts on scoring for different genres of films, and the film score that inspires her to this day.

Diane is the sort of movie that Douglas Sirk would have directed in the 1950s—a “women’s picture,” so to speak, that centers on a female character and her trials and tribulations, often in a domestic context. While Diane’s writer-director Kent Jones works in a more muted manner than the colorful, dizzying heights of Sirk-ian melodrama, the bones of that kind of story are still there (as are retro flourishes like the slow cross-fade effect between several scenes).

One of the unexpected benefits of keeping the museum open while it’s undergoing this renovation (and therefore isn’t borrowing heavily from other institutions) is that they can really delve into their holdings and present lesser-known artists of incredible talent to their audiences. Case in point: the current exhibition Long Light: Photographs by David Lebe, in which most of the photographs are from the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s permanent collection.

The Chaperone has the problem of being about someone who is interesting-adjacent. Based on the best-selling novel by Laura Moriarty, The Chaperone is a fictionalized account of the coquettish and provocative actress Louise Brooks’ (Haley Lu Richardson) first summer in New York City, as seen through the eyes of a thoroughly ordinary wife and mother.

“My name is Aubrey Parker. I broke into my dead friend’s apartment. Who the fuck are you?” Aubrey (Virginia Gardner) says combatively to a walkie-talkie she found by her friend’s bed in a wood-paneled, cabin-like dream of a bedroom. It’s New Year’s Eve and Aubrey’s best friend Grace is dead, leaving behind a group of mourners, a tombstone with the epitaph “Always Right,” and a secret task that she expected Aubrey to be able find out about and carry out.

Sarah McEneaney’s painting technique is deceptively simple, reminiscent almost of folk art in its deliberate flatness, bright colours, elevated viewpoint, and attention to surface detail. The works of Grandma Moses come to mind, particularly in McEneaney’s bird’s-eye view renderings of the elevated Rail Park in Philadelphia’s Callowhill neighbourhood, from which this show takes its title.

The Philadelphia Photo Arts Center’s annual Contemporary Photography Exhibition has been one of my most anticipated arts events all year. I previously wrote about last year’s two-person show (or, rather, two small shows in the same gallery) and this year’s exhibitions were no less captivating.

People who know me know that I will take any opportunity to discuss my favorite movie of 2015, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Whether it’s Armie Hammer’s warbling Russian accent, Henry Cavill in a three-piece suit, delicious polyamorous shipping fodder, “It. Doesn’t. Have. To Match.,” or the scene where Cavill and Alicia Vikander zipline over the Berlin Wall, there’s nothing I don’t love about this slick, fashionable, trope-tastic miracle of a movie.

Jeff Williams’ and Letha Wilson’s two-person show at FJORD, After Cities, forces me to consider a sobering reality: what does the end of the city look like? And what does it mean for the future of humanity?

Buoyed by the audience's clear enthusiasm and by lead singer Davy Carton's pure charisma, the Saw Doctors bring their A-game, showing why they're the most beloved and enduring Irish rock outfit not led by Bono.

The problems, from an entertainment standpoint, come when Schönhaus or one of the other three will describe an event, and then we cut immediately to their respective actor, playing out that exact same event. It’s a strange combination of both showing and telling, and it comes across as incredibly repetitive.

Resist does start off on the wrong foot both musically and thematically, and it ends up coloring the experience of the album in its entirety. Perhaps it's a case of "resistance fatigue", but for a band to call an album Resist, and to have generic lyrics about tears and blood and fighting the war for freedom, rings incredibly hollow—almost on the level of creative inertia displayed by the last few Muse albums.