Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 135

Reader’s Corner: The Best Graphic Novels of 2015

‘The Sculptor’ by Scott McCloud

Every December,Publishers Weekly surveys its reviewers— including yours truly— for an idea of what they thought were the best graphic novels of the past year. After our votes and comments were tabulated, the results were published here.

The winner was Scott McCloud’s gorgeous and adventurousThe Sculptor.

Some of the runners-up were:

Killing and Dying – Adrian Tomine SuperMutant Magic Academy –Jillian Tamaki Nimona – Noelle Stevenson

Screening Room: ‘Anomalisa’

Ableak,Up in the Air-like story about a depressed businessman’s wanderings through an anonymous American heartland, the stop-motion animated filmAnomalisa is the newest boundary-blurrer from Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). It’ll be the one that anti-Pixar Grinches in the Academy will be voting for in the animation category against theInside Outmajority.

Anomalisaopens in limited release this week and wider in January. My review is atPopMatters:

In today’s America, you...

Writer’s Desk: Working in Bookstores

It’s not a prerequisite for writers to have worked in a bookstore. But just as a director needs to occasionally watch their movie with an actual audience instead of by themselves, it’s handy for writers to have spent some time out there in the literary trenches with the folks who buy and sell these things.

Even George Orwell spent some time flogging the printed word. He wrote a decent essay on the experience, so there’s another reason to do it: Research.A few observations of note:

In a town l...

Holiday Reading: December 25, 2015

Here are some bookscoming to a movie theater near you in 2016. South Florida; nice place if you like that sort of thing. Too bad it’s only got about another half-century left. Ted Cruz doesn’t understand The Princess Bride . For the West to win, it needs to figure out what it’s fighting for. St. Louis is the murder capital of America, so of course the city is spending $150 million on a new football stadium. Rand Paul’s annual airing of Festivus grievances. “Yes, Virginia…“ Print and read: A w...

Quote of the Day: Hitch’s Humbug

Every holiday season,words reliablyflow from columnists’ keyboards about good will toward men, “this holiday season…,” and whatnot. We are also treated to an ever-increasing barrageof manufactured outrage over the supposed “War on Christmas.”

It’s the time of year for American Christians, already swaddled by a culture and government that cheerfully stomps all overthe Establishment Clause, to kvetch about how their holiday has supposedly been stripped of its religious intent and symbolism.

Bac...

Screening Room: ‘The Hateful Eight’

It’s the holiday season,which must mean one thing: Time for another Quentin Tarantino throwback genre bloodbath. This year, it’s a snowy Western—one that Tarantino almost decided not to make after the script got leaked.

The Hateful Eight opens on Christmas Day. Some theaters are showing it in glorious 70mm UltraPanavision. My review is atPopMatters:

A locked-room mystery masquerading as a Western, Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight at first looks a lot like his precious Christmas release,...

Screening Room: ‘Where to Invade Next’

For his newestfilm, agitprop documentarian Michael Moore uses the anthology approach instead of going after one problem. This time out, he’s pretending to be on a mission from Pentagon to go “conquer” various other Western nations, steal all their best ideas on topics America is having trouble with (education, health policy, law and order), and bring them home for us to profit from. This would never happen, of course, because this is America and if the idea didn’t originate here then, well,...

Writer’s Desk: Stop Waiting

We have all books we love that could have been just a little bit better. Plenty of time and energy has been wasted on arguing over how to improve an existing work of art. Marlon James, the Macalester College professor and Man Booker-winning author ofA History of Seven Killings, has been there. He told a magazine that:

I realized how sickand tired I was of arguing about whether there should be a black hobbit inLord of the Rings.

So what is James going to do about it? He’s writing his own mult...

Screening Room: ‘The Revenant’

Leonardo DiCaprio in ‘The Revenant’ (20th Century Fox)

The Revenant,the new film fromAlejandro G. Iñárritu (Gravity, Birdman), is a revenge epic based on Michael Punke’s 2002 novel andstarring Tom Hardy and Leonardo DiCaprio.

It’s opening on Christmas Day in limited release and willexpand wider in January. My review is atPopMatters:

A spiritual view of the natural world clashes with the animalistic drives of a fallen humanity in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s operatic wilderness survival tale,...

Weekend Reading: December 18, 2015

The GOP in 1952and now — same as it ever was. The jaded-sounding Mark Boal makes an interesting change forSerial‘s season 2. From shock and awe to quagmire:Jeb’s Iraq War. Of swans, tea, armor in Parliament, and other British legal silliness. The Donald and the focus group that loves, loves, loves him. Iraq turns down US offer of more equipment and advisers to help fight ISIS. What could happen to college athletes who go on strike. Where all the folks with advanced degrees tend to live. Wit...