Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 141

Quote of the Day: Film Snob

Charles Burnett’s ‘Killer of Sheep’: A film snob’s film, in all the best ways (Milestone).

From A.O. Scott’s quasi-manifesto“Film Snob? Is That So Wrong?”

What I’m trying to say is: Yes, fine, I am a snob. I revere the formal achievement of the first and most recent “Mad Max” movies. I sneer at most biopics and costume dramas. I like my pleasures slow and difficult. I would rather watch a mediocre film from South America or Eastern Europe about the sufferings of poor people than a mediocre Ho...

Writer’s Desk: Grammar Cops

A scene from perhaps the greatest movie that will never be made:

EXT. CITY ALLEYWAY. NIGHT.
Police tape marks the scene. Red and blue lights flash. A young, nervous-looking BEAT COP sees STRUNK and WHITE approaching.

BEAT COP
It’s over here, detectives. The body was found about an hour ago.

STRUNK
Use the active voice, rookie.

BEAT COP
Oh god, it’s horrible. I feel nauseous.

STRUNK
Unless you mean you’re sickening to contemplate, you mean “nauseated.” Now get out of my crime scene before you...

Readers’ Corner: Banned Books Week

Every year this week, the good folks at the American Library Association “celebrate” Banned Books Week. It’s a way of drawing attention to all the books that are challenged for removal from libraries for various reasons, usually having to do with material deemed inappropriate for young students assigned to read them.

Though it should be noted—as Ruth Graham points out atSlate—really this should be called “Censored” or “Challenged Books Week” since you can’t really ban books in the United Sta...

Weekend Reading: October 2, 2015

It’s time: Translating Shakespeare into English. So, the idea is to…? Ikea for refugees. Unfortunately for all the Lynne Truss types out there, punctuation is, has been, and will always be frustratingly inconsistent. Is there water on Mars? If so, it’s all part of the liberal agenda. The Martian:One astronaut’s review. Diagnosis: Gay marriage derangement syndrome. 20 or 30 years ago, Americans eating and exercising exactly the same as they would today gained less weight. Print and read: “Ye...

Screening Room: ‘The Martian’

Matt Damon works on not dying in ‘The Martian’ (20th Century Fox)

Astronauts go to Marsand astorm makes them bug out early, thinking they’ve left one of their own behind dead. Only that astronaut, a botanist played by Matt Damon with Chuck Yeager panache,isn’t dead and he’s got to figure out how to stay alive on an alien planet for years while Mission Control tries to put together a rescue plan. The Martian, based on Andy Weir’s bestseller, isthe first Ridley Scott film in years that register...

Screening Room: ‘The Walk’

Philippe Petite (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) defies gravity in ‘The Walk’ (Sony Pictures)

In 1974, a lithe, clownish French tightrope artist namedPhilippe Petit strung a ropebetween the two towers of the World Trade Center anddid a death-defying 45-minute act up there in the clouds, almost too high for people on the ground to see what he was doing. InThe Walk, Robert Zemeckis translates that legendary bit of aerobatics into a 3D spectacle.

The Walkis opening this week in a limited 3D IMAX run, whic...

Screening Room: ‘Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead’

‘Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon’: Funny people (Magnolia)

Remember magazines?National Lampoonwas one of the best. Beyond serving as something of a thinking man’s Mad,it also fostered that upswell of talent coming out of the Chicago comedy improv scene in the 1970s and midwifed them to stardom atSaturday Night Live. Sure, that ultimately led toConeheads the movie, but we can probably lay that more at Lorne Michaels’ feet.

Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story o...

Screening Room: ‘Sleeping with Other People’

Alison Brie and Jason Sudeikis try to resist each other’s charms in ‘Sleeping with Other People’ (IFC Films)

AlthoughTrainwreck garnered all the headlines for this year’s explicit woman-oriented edgy romantic comedy,Leslye Headland’sSleeping with Other People fulfills a lot of the promise that that Amy Schumer/Judd Apatow collaboration couldn’t quite deliver on.

Sleeping with Other People is playing now. My review is atPopMatters:

A deconstructive sweet-and-sourball of a romantic comedy, Slee...

Screening Room: ‘Sicario’

‘Nothing will make sense to your American ears’; Benicio Del Toro in ‘Sicario’ (Lionsgate)

InDenis Villeneuve’s Sicario, an FBI agent played by Emily Blunt is roped into a murky mission targeting a Mexican drug cartel that’s been piling up bodies on the American side of the border. Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin play two of her suspiciously close-mouthed and rule-bending handlers.

Sicario is already playing in limited release and expands wider around the country this week. My review is at S...

Writer’s Desk: Working in Cafes

When the writing den or (for those lucky ones) the separate writing office don’t offer much hope and the walls start closing in, there is always the cafe. The clink and clatter of dishware, the hiss of the espresso maker, the low burble of conversation; for certain kinds of writers this outside interference focuses the imagination more than it distracts.

Per Benjamin Wurgaft in theLos Angeles Review of Books:

Hemingway once reported that in cafés he “was like a charging rhino when he wrote,”...