The short film about one woman’s childhood in northern Maine shines a light on widespread abuse with lasting effects.
Life & Culture
Stories about life, culture, entertainment and arts from the Portland Press Herald.
Bedside Table: Read and relax. This book offers a fascinating escape
“My perfect pandemic book is ‘Fossil Men: The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind,’ by Kermit Pattison. It is popular science/natural history at its finest. Cantankerous and feuding paleoanthropologists work in east Africa with the most fragile and hard-to-find evidence imaginable: ancient fossils that contain clues to human evolution. Pattinson is […]
Theater review: Annie Henk charms as star of ‘Bad Dates’
The warm, one-woman show from Portland Stage follows a single mom’s return to dating.
Uneven comedy-drama ‘My Wonderful Wanda’ has a dash of ‘Parasite’ and a smidgen of ‘Juno’
We meet Wanda on a bus from Poland to Germany, where she is returning to work for a prosperous family in their gracious lakeside villa. The patriarch has suffered a stroke and is bedridden; he’s sent all the other help away. He wants Wanda back. There’s also work to do preparing for his upcoming 70th […]
Art review: Maine Jewish Museum presents three disparate shows
The presentation of the works in wood, paint, paper and photography could have benefited by swapping places.
‘Sasquatch’: 3 takeaways from the new true-crime series on the folkloric beast
For the skeptics, conspiracy theorists and true-blue believers among us, monsters are everywhere. Lurking in the shadows. In closets. In the woods. In the murky depths of our waters. Maybe even living in our midst. “Sasquatch,” a new Hulu documentary series produced by brothers Mark and Jay Duplass (“Wild Wild Country”), takes America’s long fascination […]
Cape Elizabeth native up for Oscar Sunday for work on ‘Mank’
Erik Messerschmidt was nominated for his cinematography.
This year, the Oscars underscore an existential question: What do movies mean?
Does anyone need reminding that the 93rd Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday will be the weirdest ever? Or the most lackluster? We get it: No one’s seen the movies. These Oscars are going to tank. Next! Honestly, was anyone expecting rabid excitement after a year of pandemic, when theaters shuttered across America, studios postponed their […]
Deep Water: ‘journey to dc,’ by Lisa Panepinto
Maine poems edited and introduced by Megan Grumbling.
Classical thinkers profoundly shaped America’s founders, and by extension, America
In his engaging and meticulously researched new history, Thomas Ricks also investigates the cognitive dissonance that allowed the founders to argue for freedom, yet keep slaves.