Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 126

Weekend Reading: June 10, 2016

From Singapore: Rise of the book machines! Who’s been ? Leather, chains, and noise at the Metal Mania festival in the Kalahari Desert. How likely is it that a robot is going to steal your job? Perhaps a reason to stop reading Dilbert. Golden State Warriors as metaphor for how Silicon Valley ruins everything. Here’s what happened when Judicial Watch tried to get a judge tossed from a case because he was Asian. Here’s how classy John McCain was when Barack Obama...

Screening Room: ‘De Palma’

Brian De Palma isn’t the kind of director who usually gets his own appreciative documentary. For one, he’s still alive and making films. For another, those films are usually twisted psychodramas just barely this side of exploitation thrillers.

Directed by filmmakers Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow, De Palmaopens this week. My review is atFilm Journal International:

Baumbach and Paltrow’s approach is simple: Put a camera on De Palma as he walks us through his oeuvre, inserting strategic clips...

Screening Room: ‘Hooligan Sparrow’

This year’s Human Rights Watch Festival opens with a strong indictment of the institutional and moral corruption of modern-day China, as laid bare by a tiny insurgent bandof determined women activists.

My review ofHooligan Sparrow, whose footage had to be smuggled out of China and which opens the festival this Friday in New York, is atLittle While Lies.

Here’s the trailer:

Quote of the Day: Knowledge vs. Sleep

Given the ever-accelerating slide into surreality that is the current election season, one has to wonder whether Otto von Bismarck was right when he opined:

The less people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they’ll sleep at night.

Writer’s Desk: Larry McMurtry

Cowboy novels, screenplays, weepies, Larry McMurtry’s written them all. It’s a tossup as to what’s going to lead his obituary,Lonesome Dove orBrokeback Mountain, but either one is the kind of big-hearted and deeply-felt work most writers would kill to be associated with. He also runs his own bookstore, which is the sort of thing more writers should do.

A few years back, McMurtry—whose birthday was this past Friday—gave some writing advice toThe Daily Beast; herewith a few selections:

“If yo...

Weekend Reading: June 3, 2016

Trump as the guy who, when he wants to show off, will “tell you something is worth a bazillion dollars. But when he wants to get taxes reduced, he’ll tell you it’s worth $2.95.“ Sometimes, flying business class is just plain stupid. Millions of art works, including a thousand Picassos, are sitting in warehouses outside Geneva. A better way for the Navy to blow up just about anything it wants. So who’s going to pick up the mantle of Pat Buchanan’s Great Angry White Crusade? Pat knows. So...

Screening Room: ‘The Witness’

When 28-year-old Kitty Genovese was raped and murdered while walkinghome in Kew Gardens, Queens one night in 1964, the story spread that many of her neighbors heard the assault take place but did nothing to stop it.

Her case became a totemic story of the apparent moral lassitude spreading across the country. James Solomon’s documentary about Genovese opens the case back up, to see what really happened.

The Witness is opening this week in limited release. My review is atFilm Journal Internati...

Reader’s Corner: Getting Rid of Books

There’s an idea going around these days—well, for some time, really—that everybody needs to pare down their possessions. Nothing wrong with getting ready of excess clutter, of course. We could all stand to take an extra look around the ranch every couple of months and think, “Do Ineedthat?” or “Will I ever use this?”

But many of us apply the brakes when the idea comes to getting rid of our books. Sure, there are some on the shelves that we’ve either read to pieces, read half of once, plan to...

Weekend Reading: May 27, 2016

Some reasons that Nikola Tesla might have been the greatest geek in history; and that’s a good (if unrecognized) thing. Maybe a ham sandwich would work. Why robot cars could create an amoral world on the road. Coming soon: the Electric Dreams of Philip K. Dick . How guys drag down the ratings of shows about women. An Open Letter to White People Who Like to Sleep Around (Anna Karenina) and other classic book titles redone as clickbait. A few years ago there was a hops shortage; here’s what Sam...

Writer’s Desk: Freedom to Offend

It’s an intolerant world. All writers know this. There’s nary a one of us that hasn’t been on the receiving end of some kind of attack based on what we’ve written. The hate comes in all forms, from a simple “you idiot” screed to something more devious, hate-filled, and agenda-based.

That doesn’t mean that we censor ourselves.

It also doesn’t mean that we try and censor others.

When J.K. Rowling, who used to work for Amnesty International, spoke at the PEN America Literary Gala earlier this we...