This week, two titans of filmmaking — Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola — have slammed superhero movies as “not cinema.” Jared Bowen and Joe Mathieu break down the criticism after diving into this week’s must-see exhibitions and performances.
“J.M.W. Turner: Watercolors from Tate,” on view at the Mystic Seaport Museum through Feb. 23, 2020
Your only chance to see the watercolors of J.M.W. Turner in North America is at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut. “J.M.W. Turner: Watercolors from Tate” features 92 watercolors, four oil paintings, and one of Turner’s largest sketchbooks in an exhibition that encompasses the breadth of the artist’s prolific career — from a gorge he painted at age 17 to the studies for his last exhibited watercolor.
“The marvelous thing about so many of the works in this exhibition is that they're not fully finished,” said Tate Britain senior curator David Blayney Brown, who organized the exhibition from the Tate’s Turner Bequest. “They are private, experimental works that he didn't show, he didn’t exhibit, he didn’t sell, and that he kept.”
Due to the delicate nature of watercolors, these works can only be shown about once in a generation.
“Marie and Rosetta,” presented by Greater Boston Stage Company and The Front Porch Arts Collective through Nov. 10
Discover the often-overlooked life of the Godmother of rock’n’roll at Greater Boston Stage Company. Co-produced by The Front Porch Arts Collective, “Marie and Rosetta” is a rocking play about the meeting of groundbreaking musician Sister Rosetta Tharpe and her protegee Marie Knight. The pair became pioneers of gospel and rhythm-and-blues music and precursors to the rock and roll genre, influencing future stars like Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis Presley.
“When we often think of history, we do not think about the black woman behind the white man,” says Lovely Hofmann, who stars as Tharpe.
“Go for the regrettably under-told story and be transported by the music,” says Jared. “Lovely Hoffman, like Tharpe, belongs on the biggest of stages.”
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