Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 105
May 26, 2017
Weekend Reading: May 26, 2017
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The butterfly that eats crocodile tears. Getting the Fox News makeup treatment. It’s still not entirely clear whether the president can be charged with a crime. How come Guy Ritchie keeps getting hired? So what’s going on with conservative intellectuals these days, anyway? Criticism of religious extremism ends at the nation’s borders, it would appear. A sea of red stippled with blue: the complete precinct-by-precinct 2016 election voting map. Print and read: “We called her Lola” – growing u...
May 24, 2017
Screening Room: The New Canadian Wave
My article “Les Auteurs: Quebec Directors Make Their Mark in World Cinema” was published in Film Journal International:
Excepting Toronto’s avant-horror maestro David Cronenberg, the Canadian directors making waves outside their home provinces have tended to be art-house auteurs like Sarah Polley (Toronto), Guy Maddin (Winnipeg) and Atom Egoyan (British Columbia).
That is starting to change now, however, with a growing cadre of filmmakers from Montreal making their marks in world cinema...
May 23, 2017
Screening Room: ‘War Machine’
One of the biggest feature film plays yet attempted by Netflix, War Machine is an Afghanistan War satire based in part on Michael Hastings’ nonfiction book The Operators. Brad Pitt (who also produced) plays a hard-charging general loosely based on Gen. Stanley McChrystal, though reportedly his character was eventually fictionalized to avoid legal hassles.
War Machine debuts this week on Netflix and in select theaters. My review is at PopMatters:
Things kick off in 2009, when McMahon, aka “Th...
May 22, 2017
Reader’s Corner: ‘Shake it Up’
As part of the Library of America’s attempt to reach beyond their authoritative bind-ups of great American writers, here comes Shake It Up: Great American Writing on Rock and Pop from Elvis to Jay Z, edited by Jonathan Lethem and Kevin Dettmar.
[image error]It’s in stores now and a necessary addition to your bookshelf. My review is at PopMatters:
…stuffed with everyone from Robert Christgau to Nick Tosches and Nelson George, this anthology is like some steam-powered hurdy-gurdy of sound and vision....
May 21, 2017
Writer’s Desk: Nora Ephron on Getting Paid
[image error]The salty yet ever-cherubic Nora Ephron was born this week in 1941 in New York, the city that she chronicled as well as just about any other writer of the century.
She started out as an ink-stained wretch at Newsweek and the New York Post before moving on to books (Heartburn) and writing and sometimes directing romantic comedies (When Harry Met Sally).
In 1974, before any of that came about, she was interviewed by Writer’s Digest—here’s some of what she had to say to young writers:
First of a...
May 20, 2017
Shameless Self-Promotion: ‘The Handy New York City Answer Book’ is On Sale Now
When you think of cities, there is no other place on Earth that better exemplifies what that word means than New York City. Incubator of pretty much every important cultural genre or trend, nerve center of world capitalism, melting pot of ethnicities and religions, New York City, as they say, has it all.
In my newest book, The Handy New York City Answer Book, on sale now from Visible Ink Press, you’ll get an all-in-one reference that covers everything from the city’s complicated and dramatic...
May 19, 2017
Weekend Reading: May 19, 2017
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Can’t get healthcare? According to this guy, it’s your own dang fault. What is sophistication, or, how come Japanese audiences know when to laugh at Woody Allen movies? Anybody thinking that maybe another Afghanistan surge is not the best idea right now? And in Syria, the U.S. and Turkey are heading toward a possible shooting war … with each other. Pyramids of the tech giants: Apple has a new $5 billion building. Note to staff: Please stop passing Internet hoaxes to the president, it just g...May 17, 2017
Screening Room: ‘The Commune’
In the 1970s, communal living was all the rage in parts of Scandinavia. That’s the backdrop for The Commune, a drama about the ensuing entanglements and confusions from Danish director and Dogme 95 co-founder Thomas Vinterberg (The Hunt).
The Commune opens this week in limited release. My review is at Film Journal International:
I’m bored,” Anna (the superb Trine Dyrholm) says to her husband Erik (Ulrich Thomsen). “I need to hear someone else speak.” There are subtler ways to communicate mid...
Screening Room: ‘Abacus: Small Enough to Jail’
The newest documentary from Steve James (Hoop Dreams), Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, opens this week in limited release and should be running soon on PBS. My review is at Film Journal International:
For his first feature-length documentary since Life Itself, Steve James takes on one of the great unknown stories of the housing market crash. Following the detonation in 2007 and 2008 of the toxic subprime mortgages that had been inflating the profits of financial institutions and the subsequent...
May 14, 2017
Writer’s Desk: Enjoy It
In 1958, Daphne Du Maurier, author of gothic treats like Rebecca, Jamaica Inn, and the story that inspired Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” wrote an essay about her fame called “.” Du Maurier, born this week in 1930, had advice what to do when you have just done something right:
There come moments in the life of every artist, whether he be a writer, actor, painter, composer, when he stands back, detached, and looks at what he has done … This is the supreme moment. It cannot be repeat...
