All stories by Harvey Blume on BroadwayStars

Friday, July 24, 2015

Fuse Arts Interview: The Late E.L. Doctorow — Reduced to Art by Harvey Blume

"When people ask how I became interested in history, I answer it was through an interest in popular culture and disreputable genres."

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 12:06PM
Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Fuse Book Review: “Look Who’s Back” — The Second Coming by Harvey Blume

The writing in this novel depends on winks and nods. You’re invited to be in on a big joke, assuming it is one.

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 12:21PM
Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Fuse Commentary: Farewell, Hollywood Express by Harvey Blume

Hollywood Express is closing at the end of July. Movies will be distributed by Cloud. Have you ever tried talking to the Cloud?

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 01:21PM
Thursday, May 28, 2015

Fuse Book Review: No “Odd Woman” Out — Vivian Gornick’s Richly Engaging Memoir by Harvey Blume

Author Vivian Gornick's discontent is foundational, fertile, unquenchable, except by writing, and quite often funny.

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 04:27PM
Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Fuse TV Review: “Mad Men” Finale — Read the Art? by Harvey Blume

My conclusion is that Mad Men is abstract, like some of the art in the series.

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 07:56PM
Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Fuse Book Review: “Days of Rage” — Counterculture Craziness by Harvey Blume

How you act sanely when your country is brazenly committing genocide? Many of us didn't.

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 12:00PM
Saturday, January 31, 2015

Fuse Television Review: “The Americans” — Wasteland 2.0. by Harvey Blume

At every turn I sense potential in The Americans, always untapped, for a smart sitcom.

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 07:42PM
Monday, January 12, 2015

Fuse Commentary: On Michel Houellebecq, Islamophobia, and “Charlie Hebdo” by Harvey Blume

It is unlikely that those who turned automatic fire on the staff of Charlie Hebdon ever read Michel Houellebecq.

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 03:08PM
Saturday, January 3, 2015

Fuse Book Review: “The Hilltop: A Novel” — Serious Israeli Comedy by Harvey Blume

Assaf Gavron's sweeping, smart, often funny new novel spins a satiric update on Exodus.

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 12:19PM
Thursday, January 1, 2015

Fuse Feature: Quotes for the New Year by Harvey Blume

"Unlike the talent for war, the ability to make peace has always been rare."

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 10:15AM
Monday, December 8, 2014

Fuse Commentary: On Racism and World’s Fairs in the Harvard Art Museums by Harvey Blume

How African pygmies came to St. Louis has everything to do with Barnum, with freak shows, with unreconstructed racism.

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 04:59PM
Thursday, December 4, 2014

Fuse TV Commentary: Toward a Critique of “The Big Bang Theory” by Harvey Blume

On this show, thriving on caricature as it does, the chasm between Amy and Sheldon stops laughter long enough to suggest poignancy.

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 12:58PM
Sunday, November 9, 2014

Fuse Book Review: “The Betrayers” — A Powerful Vision of Jewish Life and its Contradictions by Harvey Blume

It took me until I was nearly done with The Betrayers to step back and realize that one reason I found it so absorbing is that alienation plays no part.

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 04:00PM
Monday, October 20, 2014

Fuse Book Review: Lunacy Trumps Religion When It Comes To Peace in the Middle East by Harvey Blume

Religion occupies pride of place in this volume. As Lawrence Wright says at the outset: "The struggle for peace at Camp David is a testament to the enduring force of religion in modern life"

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:53PM
Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Fuse Film Review: Meditations on “Lucy” — Scarlett Johansson and Unregretted Acid Trips by Harvey Blume

The trippiness, the nudge regarding unused powers, regarding vision, regarding the potential of our minds, are the best parts of Lucy.

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 02:47PM
Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Fuse Book Review: “The Silkworm” — The Beasts Arrive in a Lather by Harvey Blume

It's a vampire novel minus actual vampires. Evil bloodsucking editors and agents fill in very well as monsters on the loose.

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 10:17AM
Sunday, July 27, 2014

Fuse Book Review: An Evocative Biography of Zionist Agitator and Writer Vladmir Jabotinsky by Harvey Blume

There's room to wonder if Vladmir Jabotinsky would have accepted Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu as his legitimate Zionist heirs.

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:31AM
Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Fuse Book Review: “Plato at the Googleplex” — A Passionate and Thoughtful Look at Philosophy Today by Harvey Blume

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's erudition, coupled to her literary skill, makes Plato at the Googleplex inviting and readable without sacrificing complexity.

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 05:25PM
Sunday, May 4, 2014

Fuse News: “Cambridge: A Novel” — A Vision of a City and a Childhood by Harvey Blume

"Cambridge" is being marketed as a novel, which means the author has included embellishments

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 06:37PM
Thursday, April 3, 2014

Fuse Book Review: Russia’s “Vodka Politics” — An Inseparable Duo by Harvey Blume

What about today? Has Russia finally hit bottom and recovered? Is the political economy of vodka a thing of the past?

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 02:18PM
Saturday, March 29, 2014

Fuse TV Review: Simon Schama Tells His “Story of the Jews” by Harvey Blume

Simon Schama just can't stop going on about religion and the extra-special Jewish feel for beauty that has, to his mind, kept Judaism vibrant and intact through the ages.

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 03:22PM
Friday, March 14, 2014

Fuse Movie Review: “Generation War, Parts One and Two” — A Soft Core Version of Nazism? by Harvey Blume

Everyone is a bit more stupid than they need to be in this movie, both the Germans and the Jews.

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 07:17PM
Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Fuse Museum Notes: The American Folk Art Museum goes down, Harvard Art Museums go dark by Harvey Blume

Significant changes in the world of the art museum can trigger roiling controversy or transpire in problematic quiet.

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 02:30PM
Sunday, January 12, 2014

Fuse Poetry Commentary: Thoughts on Reading a New Translation of The Iliad by Harvey Blume

Powell, the translator, a respected classicist, is noted for promulgating the theory that the Greek alphabet was designed precisely in order to capture epic poetry, provide some approximatio…

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 11:47AM
Monday, November 18, 2013

Fuse News: Remembrance — Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing by Harvey Blume

Doris Lessing baffled categories and critics, except for those, like me, who were marked by her and knew her for the bold and extraordinary writer and creature that she was.

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 11:33AM
Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Fuse Remembrance: His Soapbox Was The Brillo Box — Arthur Danto, 1/1/1924 –10/25/2013 by Harvey Blume

The late Arthur Danto was open to and appreciative of all sorts of possibilities in art, as other visual arts critics were not.

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 07:10PM
Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Fuse Book Review: “The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.” — A Brooklyn Fiction That is a Breed Apart by Harvey Blume

The moral urgency and the humane distribution of Adelle Waldman's authorial sympathy are evident everywhere in "The Love Affair of Nathaniel P."

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 06:30PM
Thursday, October 24, 2013

Short Fuse News: “The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross” — A PBS Series Not to be Missed by Harvey Blume

In the first episode, Henry Louis Gates Jr. takes viewers back to Africa to talk, not as has been done before, with Africans whose forebears were lost to slavery but with descendants of Afri…

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 01:04PM
Saturday, October 19, 2013

Short Fuse Interview: The Enigma of Vo Nguyen Giap — Military Mastermind, or “Marginalized Hero”? by Harvey Blume

iIf we lift the fog hovering over the War in Vietnam what we find a story nearly unknown in the West: far from devising and launching the Tet Offensive, Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap con…

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 10:54AM
Saturday, September 21, 2013

Short Fuse Book Review: “Dissident Gardens” — Fantasy Meets Radical Politics by Harvey Blume

It's hard to grasp how Jonathan Lethem assimilated all this material — historical and fantastic — and gave it new narrative life in Dissident Gardens, except by granting, at the least, …

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 03:26PM
Thursday, August 22, 2013

Short Fuse Film Review: “The Attack” — A Compelling Look at the Conflict Between Israelis and Palestinians by Harvey Blume

The Attack is a movie that tries to get to the core of violence without dissolving into its depiction.

SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 07:36PM

All that Chat

2024-2025 BROADWAY SEASON
Jun 05, 2024: Home - Todd Haimes Theatre
Jul 11, 2024: Oh, Mary! - Lyceum Theatre
Jul 30, 2024: Job - Hayes Theater
Sep 12, 2024: The Roommate - Booth Theatre
Nov 14, 2024: Tammy Faye - Palace Theatre
Dec 12, 2024: Cult of Love - Hayes Theater
Dec 19, 2024: Gypsy - Majestic Theatre
Mar 17, 2025: Purpose - Hayes Theater
Apr 01, 2025: Glengarry Glen Ross
Apr 10, 2025: Smash - Imperial Theatre
TBA: Titanic