HomeFront: ‘The creativity on display is phenomenal’

The documentary “Yusuf Hawkins: Storm Over Brooklyn,” about the fallout from “the August night in 1989 when a 16-year-old boy was shot to death for being a Black kid in a white neighborhood,” earns 3½ stars from Burr. “Director Muta’Ali follows the standard format of archival footage mixed with modern-day interviews, but the old stuff still has the power to shock, and the new material provides perspective, distance, and sometimes heartbreaking emotional footnotes.”Stars Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Dominique Fishback give “Project Power,” about a mysterious drug that bestows five minutes of a superpower on those who take it, a head start that the filmmakers quickly squander. It’s “the kind of action/sci-fi bone-cruncher where the cast is better than the material, the characters are more interesting than the premise, and the dialogue chugs along in the middle,” Burr says in a two-star review.The great documentarian Barbara Kopple is back with “Desert One,” about the Iranian hostage crisis and the ruinous rescue attempt that sealed then-President Jimmy Carter’s electoral fate. Kopple’s “thrilling, illuminating account” tells the story, writes Globe correspondent Peter Keough, “vividly and sometimes gruesomely recounted with archival footage and photos and the recorded communications between Carter and his generals.”SUMMER MOVIES: Seven Globe writers assemble a list of seven summer films spanning more than 35 years of thrills, spills, chills (not just from multiplex air-conditioning, either), and Brad Pitt’s pecs. Bonus: 20 movies worth watching, including two triple features, that all have the word “summer” in the title.TV: On paper, “Lovecraft Country” is sci-fi/fantasy about a Korean War vet who returns home to segregated Chicago, but in practice, it’s cultural commentary as fresh as today’s headlines. “The creativity on display is phenomenal,” Globe TV critic Matthew Gilbert says of the series, created by Misha Green and executive produced by Jordan Peele and J.J. Abrams. “The jump-scares … are fun enough if you’re a fan, but the more insidious chills are what kept me on the hook.” The HBO series launches Sunday.VISUAL ART: With some museums reopening after months of closure and social upheaval, what’s new? “[I]t’s odd how the surreal can become de rigueur,” Globe art critic Murray Whyte writes after visiting the ICA, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the Peabody Essex Museum. He found the ICA “hardly changed … But the world around it had shifted, in fits and spasms of what I hope are the beginnings of a rough rebirth.”The all-volunteer AREA CODE Art Fair is bearing fruit, and Globe correspondent Cate McQuaid hits Watertown, Somerville, and Allston in search of the new crop. It’s a good reminder that artists — in this case, Mia Fabrizio, Julian MacMillan and Scott Lerner, and Jen Mawson — will always be moved to create and share, even when “the pandemic has made for a sputtering launch.”Cardi B caused an uproar with her new “WAP” video.Steven Ferdman/Getty Images/fileMUSIC: Ty Burr can’t tell you what the title of the Cardi B song “WAP” means — this is a family newspaper! — and can’t believe the brouhaha over the lyrics and the video, which features Cardi B and “her partner-in-sin, rapper Megan Thee Stallion.” Except he can believe it: “It’s not just a woman but a Black woman — two Black women — singing about the joys of sex with unapologetic glee, reclaiming their power from all those bad boys of rap.” A lesson in both music history and double entendres.Since the pandemic hit, pianist Conrad Tao has maintained a sense of community through both music — his Tanglewood program is available Saturday — and activism. “[I]t was weird,” he says of the Tanglewood video experience in a Q&A with Zoë Madonna, who covers classical and pop music for the Globe. “It was a sort of in-between space between a recording session and a performance.”Ahead of the centennial of the 19th Amendment, Boston Landmarks Orchestra is highlighting women composers, and Globe classical music critic Jeremy Eichler is highlighting Ethel Smyth, who wrote the suffrage movement anthem “The March of the Women” but was overshadowed by her male peers. Says Smyth scholar Elizabeth Wood: ”I]f there is no context for a woman composer, they slip through, they disappear.”New England rock legend Tanya Donelly is in a cover-song groove, as evidenced by her pandemic fund-raising on her Bandcamp site and her new album (recorded pre-shutdown), “Tanya Donelly and the Parkington Sisters,” which drops Friday. It’s “a highly enjoyable love letter to pop and the people who make it,” writes Globe correspondent Maura Johnston.Janis Joplin played Harvard Stadium on Aug. 12, 1970, and Globe correspondent Ed Symkus was there, working security and “on my best behavior.” Less than two months later, the 27-year-old rock legend was dead, and at what turned out to be her final show, she burned bright. Fifty years later, Symkus recalls the long delay before the Full Tilt Boogie Band members “and Joplin took the stage. And she was taking no prisoners.”THEATER: Barrington Stage Company is a parking lot company for the season, performing with social distancing on both sides of the footlights and 35 pages of guidelines. “Live theater allows us a chance to share an experience and share our humanity,” founder and artistic director Julianne Boyd tells Globe correspondent Terry Byrne. Says one audience member: “It feels good to be seeing a live performance again.”TRAVEL: “When I think of Travel + Leisure-ranked resorts, my brain usually doesn’t head in the direction of needlepoint pillows and puzzles,” says Globe travel writer Christopher Muther. At the magazine’s top resort in the Northeast, Vermont’s Rabbit Hill Inn, the confessed B&B hater keeps an open mind and solves the mystery of how a country inn became the number 39 hotel in the world.New Dunkin’ cereal flavors.HandoutFOOD & DINING: The slogan “Now you can have your coffee and eat it, too!” unfortunately doesn’t signal a breakthrough in ice cream technology — it means Dunkin’ and Post have teamed up to produce breakfast cereal. Love Letters columnist Meredith Goldstein, “a fan of foods that taste like a bucket of sugar,” and two friends, neither of whom is Ben Affleck, try the mocha latte and caramel macchiato flavors.When the pandemic struck, Globe correspondent Urmi Bhattacharya “bunkered” with her parents in Calcutta and explored “the one avenue I hadn’t yet explored with Maa or Baba — the kitchen.” The experience gave her far more than cooking lessons: “I think in those four months Maa and I kindled a kindred sense of feminism that perhaps neither of us had thought we shared.” You can almost smell the paanch phoron.If it’s grilling season at your house, put some salmon on the fire and then atop a bowl of quinoa and vegetables, “tied together with a salty-sweet miso and ginger dressing” from Globe correspondent Sally Pasley Vargas. And if you can stand to turn on the oven (or can convince someone else to heat up their kitchen), check out this delicious-sounding blueberry cornbread recipe from Globe correspondent Lisa Yockelson.NORTH END FEASTS: The Fisherman’s Feast is the literal high point of North End feast season — it ends with the camera-ready Flight of the Angel — but public-health concerns shelved all of this year’s street festivals. This weekend’s feast will be almost all virtual, with an outdoor chapel set up to shelter the statue of the Madonna del Soccorso that’s normally the centerpiece of the celebration, reports Globe correspondent Diti Kohli.BUT REALLY: Sunset slipped ahead of 8 o’clock last week, and 3-D and virtual retail outlets are overflowing with back-to-school deals. Murray Whyte says “Boston is healing,” and he gets out a lot more than I do. Things may be changing, but some things aren’t — cover your face and wash your hands!
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