Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 13
July 27, 2024
Screening Room: ‘War Game’
I reviewed the new documentary War Game for Slant: Much of the criticism thrown at Alex Garland’s Civil War centered on it presenting the titular conflict without really explaining its origins. Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss’s documentary War Game goes the other way by showing in very specific ways not how a modern-day American civil war might be fought …
July 21, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Imagine Your Reader
When asked by The Paris Review to describe the ideal reader of his works, Anthony Burgess came up with a highly specific characterization: The ideal reader of my novels is a lapsed Catholic and failed musician, short-sighted, color-blind, auditorily biased, who has read the books that I have read. He should also be about my …
July 19, 2024
Reader’s Corner: ‘American Gothic’
I wrote about the exhibition and book “American Gothic: Gordon Parks and Ella Watson” for Rain Taxi Review of Books: Like many great collaborations, the iconic partnership of Gordon Parks and Ella Watson was an accident. In 1942, only a couple of years after the Kansas-born and Minnesota-seasoned Parks had left the Twin Cities, he …
July 15, 2024
Reader’s Corner: Charles Burns and ‘Final Cut’
I interviewed cartoonist Charles Burns (Black Hole) about his new graphic novel Final Cut and the creative block that led up to it for Publishers Weekly: Whenever he tried to start a new project, it fizzled out. “I went for months and years,” Burns, 68, says via phone from Philadelphia. “This is shit,” he remembers …
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July 14, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Read Somebody Better
Kathryn Schulz writes in the New Yorker about “all the other options” of coping when stuck on a piece of writing: …ignoring the problem, staring blankly at the problem, moving the problem around to see if it’s less annoying in some other location, eating all the chocolate in the house… Then she delivers this crucial …
July 8, 2024
Screening Room: ‘Made in England’
My review of the new documentary Made in England: The Films of Powell & Pressburger ran in Slant: Given the sense of wonder and promotion of emotion over reason that courses through Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s work, it’s appropriate that David Hinton’s Made in England: The Films of Powell & Pressburger starts with a recollection of …
July 7, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Grammar, Schrammar
As a general rule, the last person you should be consulting while writing is a grammarian. Usage guides? Certainly. But grammar? If you haven’t learned it by the time you’re starting your novel, chances are it’s too late. One goes to war with the army one has. But in case you are still anxious about …
June 30, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Snoopy Kept Trying
When we think of Snoopy and writing, we think of that determined beagle hammering away at his sentences, trying to figure out how to follow his opening line, “It was a dark and stormy night.” Not an easy task. But he also had to face rejection. One of the great Peanuts strips showed Snoopy writing …
June 28, 2024
Reader’s Corner: ‘When the Clock Broke’
I wrote about the great new John Ganz book, When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s, for The Millions: Americans are good talkers these days. Prodigious at least. Our screens and links and tabs are filled with it. Talk, talk, talk. Streams of mouthy TikTokers and …
June 24, 2024
Screening Room: ‘The Accountant 2’ Anybody?
After 2016’s extremely baffling action flick The Accountant found new life on Netflix and has a sequel on the way, I took a look back at the original. An updated version of my first review is at Eyes Wide Open: Back in April, the most popular film on Netflix was The Accountant. Subscribers were not clicking on new …
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