Leslie Bridgers

Columnist

Leslie Bridgers is a columnist for the Portland Press Herald, writing about Maine culture, customs and the things we notice and wonder about in our everyday lives. Originally from Connecticut, Leslie came to Maine by way of Bowdoin College and never left. She joined the Portland Press Herald in 2011 as a reporter and spent seven years as the paper’s features editor, overseeing coverage of arts, entertainment and food.

Arts & Entertainment, Review

Documentary finds contemporary echoes in FBI’s persecution of Martin Luther King Jr.

by Ann Hornaday The Washington Post January 17, 2021January 13, 2021

In the exquisitely constructed, deeply unnerving “MLK/FBI,” filmmaker Sam Pollard takes viewers behind the looking glass into the shadowy world of governmental surveillance during the mid-century civil rights movement, a program of spying, infiltration and harassment that reached its perverse apotheosis with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s obsession with Martin Luther King, Jr. Since King’s […]

Arts & Entertainment

By forcing live events to go virtual, the pandemic may change access to entertainment forever

by Emily Yahr The Washington Post January 17, 2021January 13, 2021

Liz Locke wasn’t sure what to expect when she logged on to Twitter last April, cocktail in hand, for a virtual watch party of classic films. She was supposed to be attending the 2020 TCM Classic Film Festival, but when it was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic, organizers announced they would instead air previous […]

Arts & Entertainment

Opera is taking new forms, and its survival may depend on it

by Michael Andor Brodeur The Washington Post January 17, 2021January 13, 2021

A strange package arrived on our doorstep this month. Strange because it didn’t contain masks, or disinfectant wipes, or even another jar of that chili-crisp paste we keep blowing through. It was a box of opera. “The Beauty That Still Remains: Diaries in Song” is the latest experiment by the New York-based On Site Opera, […]

Arts & Entertainment, Review

‘The Dig’ is a movie about archaeology, but it’s also a lovely meditation on what lasts

by Michael O'Sullivan The Washington Post January 17, 2021January 13, 2021

On the eve of World War II, a self-taught English archaeologist, working at the behest of a Suffolk widow with a curiosity about what lay beneath several earthen mounds on her property, made what is considered to be one of the more significant discoveries in British archaeology. That may be the summary description of the […]

Arts & Entertainment, Review

With sophistication and restraint, ‘My Little Sister’ tells an engrossing tale of sibling love

by Ann Hornaday The Washington Post January 17, 2021January 13, 2021

In the absorbing domestic drama “My Little Sister,” Nina Hoss plays Lisa, a Berlin playwright, wife and mother who is trying to save her brother’s life. Sven (Lars Eidinger) is a renowned theater actor best known for his 300-plus renditions of “Hamlet.” As the movie opens, he is suffering from cancer and Lisa has just […]