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Jacob's Pillow Taps New Deputy Director| 01:11PM / Friday, October 12, 2018 | |
 BECKET, Mass. — A.J. Pietrantone, vice president for Finance and Administration at the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, will join Jacob's Pillow as deputy director beginning on Oct. 22.
Jacob's Pillow is a National Historic Landmark, a National Medal of the Arts recipient, home to America's longest-running dance festival, and has recently expanded to become a year-round center for dance research and development.
"A.J.'s deep experience in nonprofit management will greatly support this institution at a pivotal time in its development. His collaborative spirit and commitment to community partnership will thrive here. As an avid Pillow subscriber and active
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'A Star is Born': Yet AgainBy Michael S. Goldberger, iBerkshires Film Critic
04:21PM / Thursday, October 11, 2018 | |
 With four "A Star is Born" iterations in the books and probably many more to come — expect one every ensuing generation — the universality of the tale is a given. Until some bold director makes a woman the established star, and the up-and-comer a male, the formula remains the same. He's a major star flirting with the decadence that comes of success, with booze and/or substance abuse the tell-tale sign of his looming, downward spiral. She's the talented, innocent and grateful ingénue he discovers. I remember how surprised I was in my youth when I found there was an earlier version of another, oft-remade movie of which I was particularly enamored. I 0 Comments
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'Fahrenheit 11/9': It's Worse Than you ThinkBy Michael S. Goldberger, iBerkshires Film Critic
03:00PM / Friday, October 05, 2018 | |
 Walk down almost any street USA and ask 10 people if they know who Mike Pence is. You'd be surprised how few do. But I betcha bunches of them know where Miley Cyrus is playing this Friday night. Such is the complacent folly of a citizenry entirely certain that the Founding Fathers put our democracy on automatic pilot. And therefore, no amount of selfish incursion from greedy forces within should tear us away from munching Fritos and gulping mass quantities of beer while we watch today's version of the gladiators do their best to sustain brain injuries. But hark, good citizen, there are, alas, true patriots in the land, and not the kind that simply wrap themselves in the flag 0 Comments
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'The Wife': Anatomy of a MarriageBy Michael S. Goldberger, iBerkshires Film Critic
04:14PM / Thursday, October 04, 2018 | |
 We all know one or more couples who confound us entirely; folks who appear to be tragically immersed in a marriage made in Hell, and yet, for none of the usual rationalizations, like kids money or religion, persevere in their obviously troubled plight. But don't you dare voice your criticism and pretend to know something about their arrangement. For there is pride of ownership in marital dysfunction. And as my never-married Aunt Millie was always so readily fond of informing, odd glint in her eye, "No one knows what goes on behind closed doors." You will read all of this and more into the emotive-rich facial expressions of Glenn Close as Joan Castleman, the 0 Comments
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'White Boy Rick': The Wild, Wild MidwestBy Michael S. Goldberger, iBerkshires Film Critic
12:12PM / Friday, September 21, 2018 | |
 My dad was a bench seat philosopher who, while a man of measured words, occasionally liked to opine from behind the wheel of our '51 Buick Roadmaster, the one with the Fireball 8 engine. I look back at it as our quality time. Maybe it was a quick trip to Sears to buy some roofing material, or to get me some White Castle sliders on a night when my mom was just too tired to cook. Or perhaps it was my tutelage entirely planned. Looking through the windshield, Daniel Goldberger explained the passing pageant of humanity. It could be a little man walking with a very tall woman: "See, there's someone for everyone." And in a similar point of positivism that 0 Comments
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'Juliet, Naked': Anatomy of a TriangleBy Michael S. Goldberger, iBerkshires Film Critic
06:06PM / Thursday, September 13, 2018 | |
 Ethan Hawke's Tucker Crowe in Jesse Peretz's intelligent, seriocomic "Juliet, Naked," had me thinking back to 1969 when, during a hiccup in my education, I visited my best friend, rock 'n' roller Howard "Richard" Tepp, in Malibu. It was the era of free love and, like the fictitious Tucker Crowe, Howie, through the cooperation of some enthusiastic groupies, had strewn the landscape with several progenies. The other similarity between the two is the cult following that grew out of their brief stardom. Fact is, throughout history, there have been many such multi-pollinating troubadours who, intentionally or not, have substituted legacies of their DNA 0 Comments
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'Operation Finale': Crime & PunishmentBy Michael S. Goldberger, iBerkshires Film Critic
01:44PM / Thursday, September 06, 2018 | |
 Director Chris Weitz's "Operation Finale," a tension-filled historical drama about the Israeli Mossad's 1960 capture of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, reminded me of a turning point. In my house when I was little, you didn't hear the actual word Holocaust. More often, the tragedy that had annihilated half of my family was referred to, in hushed tones, in terms of Hitler: before Hitler, during Hitler and after Hitler. Before was good, a seeming Heaven on Earth that maybe only we children would one day again realize. It was the unspoken hope. But word that Eichmann, the architect of the Final Solution, had been captured, seemed to change 0 Comments
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'Puzzle': She's Come A Long Way, MaybeBy Michael S. Goldberger, iBerkshires film critic
07:38PM / Thursday, August 30, 2018 | |
 We are reminded in Marc Turtletaub's "Puzzle," about an unappreciated housewife who finds meaning and identity in doing jigsaw puzzles, that if you want to find truth, look to fiction. We Homo sapiens have been doing it since time immemorial. No one's feelings get hurt, at least not until their misdeeds are exposed for what they are. So bless the metaphors — purveyors of honesty by illustration. Civilizations rise and fall by them, proving in their finest example that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword. Building his case from a sensitively adept script Polly Mann and Owen Moverman adapted from the Argentinian film "Rompecabezas," 0 Comments
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Tanglewood's Bernstein Celebration Was a Spectacular TributeBy Stephen Dankner, Guest Column
11:32AM / Monday, August 27, 2018 | |
 Certainly by now, lovers of classical music know that this summer marked Leonard Bernstein's 100th birthday. Celebrations throughout the world are legion, with Tanglewood at the epicenter for performances of the maestro's music – both his own and of the signature compositions of others for which he is beloved as America's greatest conductor.
And on the anniversary of the actual date of his birth - Aug. 25 - Tanglewood created a singular, spectacular event celebrating all the aspects of the musical life of the man known to all as "Lenny."
From "Fancy Free" to "On the Town" to the "Jeremiah' Symphony No. 1" and "The Age of
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'Crazy Rich Asians': Poor Little Rich MillennialsBy Michael S. Goldberger, iBerkshires film critic
01:53PM / Friday, August 24, 2018 | |
 There you are, standing on your porch, looking for either a pickup truck or a van to pull up, something a handyman might drive. It's just a little job: the repair and painting of the front steps. Twenty minutes pass, as do numerous workmen — none of them looking for your house. "He said he'd be here," you grumble, steaming about the déjà vu of it all. More time passes. Finally, as it becomes apparent he isn't showing, you issue the bourgeoisie lament: "If I were crazy rich he'd sure be here." I mulled this example of class-influenced helplessness following a viewing of director Jon M. Chu's moderately 0 Comments
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