Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 138

Quote of the Day: ‘Between the World and Me’

In his acceptance speech at last night’s National Book Awards—where his Between the World and Me won the nonfiction prize—Ta-Nehisi Coates dedicated the award to his friend Prince Jones, who was pursued and killed by a police officer who mistook him for a criminal.

Coates went on to say this about the book, which is structured as a letter to his son:

I’m a black man in America. I can’t punish that officer; Between the World and Me comes out of that place. I can’t secure the safety of my son....

Screening Room: ‘Legend’

Tom Hardy and Tom Hardy in ‘Legend’ (Universal Pictures)

Back in the 1960s, the Kray twinswere a couple of the flashiest, most press-hungry gangsters that London’s East End had ever seen. In Brian Helgeland’s take on their story—based on John Pearson’s bookThe Profession of Violence—Tom Hardy plays both Krays because, well, he’s Tom Hardy and there’s no good reason to think he can’t.

Legendis opening this week. My review is atFilm Journal International:

By the time Legend starts, its real-lif...

Quote of the Day: Get Out There

From Rick Steves, usually known as that guy who wrote two out of every five guidebooks one sees Americans walking around Europe with:

Fear is for people who don’t get out very much. The flip side of fear is understanding and we gain understanding through travel.

Writer’s Desk: Don’t Write Anything Down

There are a couple salient moments in this interview with Stephen King. The first is when he gives some counter-intuitive advice about ideas for stories:

I don’t write anything down, any ideas ever, because that’s a good way to immortalize really bad ideas. The bad ideas fall out. It’s a natural Darwinian process. They go away somehow. It’s like throwing a bunch of crackers in a sieve. Some of those ideas shake out because the crumbs get too small, but the big ones stay…

It could make for an...

Screening Room: ‘By the Sea’

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt in ‘By the Sea’ (Universal Pictures)

Set in the 1970s,By the Sea stars Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt as a couple traveling through France as their relationship nears collapse.

Written and directed by Jolie,By the Sea opened this week. My review is atFilm Journal International:

A divertingly gorgeous mediocrity, By the Sea arrives onscreen pushing a trainload of expectations ahead of itself. After Angelina Jolie Pitt’s little-seen In the Land of Blood and Honey and...

Weekend Reading: November 13, 2015

Becausenothing in Florida makes sense, this happened. Not that anybody’s talking about it, but there are now about 16 million more Americans with health insurance than in 2013. It’s windier at night: In some parts of Texas, if you wait late enough to run your appliances, the electricity is free. Who’s responsible for gridlock in D.C.? Well, you lot, basically. The birth and slow decline of Richard Nixon’s “Soul City.” What the GOP debate looked like from this Harlem bistro. Pyramids as grai...

Screening Room: ‘In Jackson Heights’

Manhattan is just a half-hour away. (Zipporah Films)

The latest nonfiction opus from Frederick Wiseman is a portrait of the mind-bogglingly diverse Jackson Heights neighborhood in Queens (167 languages at last count). It’s a rich and endlessly fascinating study of what multicultural America really looks like.

In Jackson Heightsis playing now in limited release and should make its way to PBS within the next year or so. My review is atPopMatters:

Frederick Wiseman’s In Jackson Heights doesn’t j...

Reader’s Corner: ‘City on a Grid’

Before the grid: How 2nd Avenue and 42nd Street looked in 1861. (New York Public Library)

Not long after the Revolutionary War, New York was still just a few hundred buildings clustered at the lower end of Manhattan. But the city’s leaders knew that eventually they’d be spreading northand needed to figure out how that would look. So they put together something called theCommissioners’ Plan. It showed an imaginary city spreading north in evenly measured blocks that acted almost as a rebuke to...

Writer’s Desk: Music for Writing

In addition to politicians trotting out their newest talking points in between dodging questions, you can occasionally find writers on the Sunday talk shows flogging their newest book. This past weekend, viewers ofFace the Nation were treated to the sight of former Reagan speechwriter and current dispenser of fatuous bromides for theWall Street Journal Peggy Noonan talking about her new collection of columns. She did drop one decent piece of advice, if you need music when writing, try movie s...

Reader’s Corner: What Lemmy Reads on the Bus

So what do you do, if you’re Motörhead’s Lemmy and you need to unwind? You’re 69 years old, an aging metal icon, with a string of furiously guitar-slashing albums behind you and the status of somebody whose like will never be seen again. AsThe Atlantic‘s James Parker puts it, what you do “cannot be counterfeited or repeated“:

Lemmy once roadie’d for Jimi Hendrix; these days, retiring postshow to his tour-bus bunk, he reads P. G. Wodehouse.

We should all be so smart. Jeeves will take care of a...