Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 140
October 23, 2015
Weekend Reading: October 23, 2015
October 21, 2015
Screening Room: ‘Steve Jobs’
Michael Fassbender as ‘Steve Jobs’ (Universal)
A few years back, Aaron Sorkin wrote a wildly one-sided account of Mark Zuckerberg’s rise to riches and infamy as the founder of Facebook,The Social Network. Now he’s (theoretically, at least) adapted Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs for another tale of a socially malformed but market-prescient innovator. It’s more even-handed about its subject, to a degree, but somehow far less interesting.
Steve Jobsis already playing in limited releas...
October 18, 2015
Writer’s Desk: Published and Discarded
Book remainders and throwaways are a boon for readers. They lead not just to new discoveries but also access sometimes to desired purchases that are now suddenly available, whether marked down to $5.98 on a bookstore table or sitting out on a Brooklyn stoop for free.
That doesn’t mean that the author has to be happy about witnessing it, as in the cover illustration that graphic novelist Adrian Tomine did for the New Yorker:
Where I live in Brooklyn, there’re always a lot of books being set o...
October 17, 2015
Screening Room: ‘Experimenter’
Stanley Milgram (Peter Sarsgaard) and his ‘shock’ machine in ‘Experimenter’ (Magnolia)
At Yale in 1961, researcher Stanley Milgram began a long-term, wide-ranging experiment on obedience and authority that would actually—and for once, this isn’t hyperbole—shock the world with its conclusions. That’s the story of Michael Almereyda’s daring and (yes) experimental filmExperimenter, opening this week.
My reviewis atPopMatters:
[Milgram]put a volunteer in a room with an officious research assistan...
October 16, 2015
Screening Room: ‘Room’
Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay in ‘Room’ (A24)
Based on Emma Donoghue’s award-winning 2010 novel,Room is the story of a young woman being held captive in a small room with her five-year-old son, who has never seen anything of the world outside the room.
Room opened this week and is looking like an early favorite Oscar favorite, at least for Brie Larson as the mother. My review is atPopMatters.
Here’s the trailer:
Weekend Reading: October 16, 2015
October 14, 2015
Quote of the Day: Books vs. Guns
Speaking at a fundraiser in California last week,President Obama mused about the “choice” that America appeared to be making:
It’s not just mass shootings. It is the daily shootings that take place in cities across America. It is easier [in some low-income neighborhoods] to buy a gun than buy a book.
October 13, 2015
Screening Room: ‘Bridge of Spies’
Mark Rylance and Tom Hanks glare like they mean it (Dreamworks)
In Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, based on a tangled and fascinating true story, Tom Hanks plays a New York lawyer who gets swept into a Cold War scandal when the CIA needs help rescuing a U-2 spy plane pilot shot down by the Soviets.
Bridge of Spies opens everywhere this week. My review is atFilm Journal International:
Bridge of Spiessits at the lit-fuse junction of Cold War paranoia, the legal ethics of treating enemy comb...
October 11, 2015
Writer’s Desk: Whiskey at Night
You see, I usually write at night. I always keep my whiskey within reach.
—William Faulkner
I always take Scotch whiskey at night as a preventive of toothache. I have never had the toothache; and what is more, I never intend to have it.
—Mark Twain
October 9, 2015
Weekend Reading: October 9, 2015
