Looking over this fall’s films for Oscar potential, there’s the usual crop of nice, medium-ambitious dramas, handsome literary adaptations, Meryl Streep, and the rare truly unique potential masterpiece that, in a place I like to call Perfect World, would leave all the safer challengers in the dust. Unfortunately, we live in this world, but here […]

“Two Loves: Sex, Art and the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name” at Kymara Gallery in Biddeford is not for everyone. It’s a show, after all, of gay and lesbian art that has unblinkingly explicit roots in boudoir imagery. With the forthcoming vote about legalizing same-sex marriage in Maine, this is a very timely subject. […]

Dining al fresco at The Well might be thought of as poetry: A simple truth, sparely told in a new language and offering a distinct pleasure and atmosphere, perhaps even an “aha” moment. The rustic eatery is on the grounds of Jordan’s Farm in Cape Elizabeth, but it is a separate business. Although the food […]

Mike Bowditch can’t seem to help himself. Bowditch, a Maine game warden, is the protagonist of “Bad Little Falls.” He has a gift for getting himself in trouble with his superiors — mostly for overstepping his jurisdictional bounds. At one point in “Bad Little Falls,” the third in Paul Doiron’s engaging mystery series featuring the […]

NEW YORK —The “Fifty Shades” phenomenon may only get hotter this fall. Booksellers and publishers expect at least a dozen novels to benefit from E L James’ multimillion-selling erotic trilogy. Just in the past two weeks, St. Martin’s Press took on Sara Fawkes’ self-published hit, “Anything He Wants (Dominated by the Billionaire),” and Gallery Books […]

Art Duane Paluska, new paintings and sculpture, Icon Contemporary Art, Brunswick. 725-8157. Through Saturday. “The Draw of the Normandy Coast (1860–1960),” European and American paintings and works on paper, Portland Museum of Art. 775-6148; portlandmuseum.org. Through Monday. “Maine Sublime: Frederic Edwin Church’s Landscapes of Mount Desert and Mount Katahdin,” Portland Museum of Art. portlandmuseum.org. Through […]

“Hello Nature” is an elaborate production dedicated to reinventing William Wegman. It is an artistic midlife crisis writ large. First appearing as a 1970s deadpan-punning conceptual artist, Wegman is best known for photographs of Weimaraner dogs.  “Hello Nature” is an ode to the artist’s connections to Maine through photos, paintings and drawings. It is a […]

“Two of the most remarkable aspects of the maritime war of 1812 were the extraordinarily high casualty rate among officers on both sides of the conflict and the mass of recorded anecdotal evidence pointing toward an equally high incidence of magnanimous behavior on the part of the same officers toward their opposite numbers in the […]

This week • From 4 to 7 p.m. Friday, the Brick Store Museum, 117 Main St., Kennebunk, will host Heartwood College of Art’s “Paint the Bunk” art sale. A large group of artists, including DeWitt Hardy, Susan Wilder and Claudette Gamache, have painted or otherwise created original artwork depicting the beaches, blueberry plains, homes, churches […]