A few years ago I saw a Broadway revival of “Sunday in the Park with George,” and the first act, set inside the painting, was the most magical act of theater I’ve ever seen.  So when the second act, set in contemporary London, started up, I wanted to raise my hand and shout, “Put me back in the first act!"  It’s akin to how I felt rereading the great American novel "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."  Each time Huck and Jim stepped onto the mainland I wanted to raise my hand and shout, "Get back on the raft!"  Because when Huck and Jim are together, alone, on the raft, floating down the Mississippi, unmoored from political geography and personal history, they are safe and free, and the novel is a vivid, unsentimental portrait of the friendship between two men.  As soon as they tie up the raft somewhere the novel turns into an action- and dialogue-packed satire of other genres (particularly romance), other writers (particularly Dumas), other southerners (particularly Arkansans), and other people (particularly royalty).

I’m admiring of Twain’s sense of humor, and how effortlessly he switches styles.  There’s something anarchic and irreverent in the structure of the novel that might be deeply American.  But there is nothing as joyous and lyrical as the passages when Huck and Jim are alone together on the raft, lying on their backs, staring up at the sky, and letting it take them wherever it will.  The sense of emotional and physical ease they conjure is what I’ll take with me from the book.  I spent some time in the south this summer and got a glimpse of how powerful the Mississippi River and its tributaries are, and how its seasonal risings threaten crops and roads and life.  In "Huck Finn” the river transports Huck away from an ugly childhood and Jim from slavery.  It gives them trouble, and then it gives them life.

I have a lower-than-average tolerance for art films, particularly foreign ones.  With very few exceptions, I cannot sit back and enjoy the black and white masterworks of directors like Godard, Bergman and Satyajit Ray.  I appreciate the formal beauty, the thematic depths, and the emotional clarities, but I just can’t get involved in the goings-on.  So I’m surprised that I fell so hard for “Killer of Sheep,” Charles Barnett’s 1978 movie about a family in Watts, Los Angeles.  Shot in black and white, structured like a collage, studded with too-long close-ups, and strung together with stilted dialogue, it’s basically an American-made foreign art film.  Many have compared it to Italian neo-realist cinema from the 1950’s, particularly “The Bicycle Thief.”

But this movie felt far more immediate to me.  It might be that it’s in English and that it was filmed in Los Angeles.  It reminded me of other American movies like “Mean Streets” that capture a small, personal world in great fidelity.  Everything is framed tightly, beautifully but not statically.  This gives the whole movie a low, constrained perspective that might be the perfect way to suggest the world of a child, and, perhaps, the world of a working class black family in Watts in the 1970’s.  There are hard-to-forget glimpses of everyday things: a girl playing with a doll, two men drinking tea, a husband and wife dancing together in their bedroom.  It’s not fantastically bleak (like “Precious”) and it’s not artsy either.  Even the movie’s eponymous final image, of the father leading sheep to slaughter in the abbatoir where he works, isn’t forced.  Each scene in this movie shows only and exactly what is there.

The American photographer Phyllis Galembo is especially interested in costumes.  She’s traveled through West Africa, Brazil and the Caribbean to document people dressed for ceremonies and celebrations.  And she collects vintage American Halloween costumes.  Her new book, “Maske,” surveys work from the past twenty-five years.  At first glance the color photographs fall somewhere between ethnography and art photography.  Although they have rich documentary value they’re highly composed.  Galembo crops images so that the figures fill the frame, with minimal depth, and depicts colors with a bright, crayon-box immediacy.  Her work isn’t troubled by the post-colonial tensions that Irving Penn’s portraits of Africans are, or the complications of subjectivity that Diane Arbus’ are.  Galumbo faces those she’s photographing simply; she serves them well.

The pictures are arresting.  (I’m tempted as I never have been before to bust out of this format and post more than one.)  There’s something uncomfortable about looking so closely at people whose faces are covered, because we want to know who they are.  And the clothing is mesmerizing.  It’s been executed with a couture-like purity of vision and technical finesse.  There are people here that I won’t forget: two men dressed like trees, a group of boys slathered with martian-green and blood-red body paint, three men in head-to-ankle striped, knit bodysuits.  In these photographs appearances go deep.

The New York Times used their hallowed Op Ed page on Sunday to endorse the new Apple Store planned for the mezzanine in Grand Central Station.  Some have been concerned about the crowds, and about locating such a brazenly commercial endeavor in the grand old station.  In fact the Station is already terribly crowded, and already filled with shops, including Duane Reade, Starbucks, and an excellent food court and food market.

The Times wonders why both Apple and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) are being so cagey about the store’s design, and asks them to release plans.  Apple has always been secretive about new product and store designs.  And this time, I suspect, they don’t want to face a flood of ridicule similar the one they faced earlier this year, when Steve Jobs attended a City Council meeting in Cupertino, California and presented a rendering for a ludicrously-designed new Apple headquarters building there.  The huge, glowing glass donut, set down in lush gardens, looks like some hippie’s (or some six-year-old’s) idea of what a high-tech corporate campus is.  As with the Grand Central Station store, and their new products, I’m sure Apple has a seamless, sophisticated design that they’re holding in reserve.  It’s a way that the brand builds drama, and it’s entirely successful.