Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 142

Weekend Reading: September 25, 2015

Is your ad-blocking app destroying journalism? Yes, it could happen. The doomsday seed vault is opened for Syria. Coming soon to a drone near you: Lasers . Ignoring new Pope when theyfeel like it. Refugees and fragile states as the century’s defining issue. A fewScandinavians are responsible for pretty much all hit music; Or, how to get from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs to Kelly Clarkson in one chorus change. Making the classics all smutty. Print and read: The “Forgotten Battalion” fights to save the...

Screening Room: ‘The Keeping Room’

General Sherman is coming, with fire and musket: ‘The Keeping Room’ (Drafthouse Films)

In the neo-feminist WesternThe Keeping Room, three women must defend themselves against marauding soldiers at the end of the Civil War.

The Keeping Room is opening this week in limited release. My review is atFilm Journal International:

Somewhere in the American South in the last year of the Civil War, a black woman, presumably a slave, hauling wood down an empty country road meets a fierce-looking dog. Whe...

Reader’s Corner: David Foster Wallace Predicted Netflix

Plenty of us have fallen down the new TV-binge rabbit hole more than once in the past few years. It’s a nice change of pace every now and again, instead of patiently waiting for the next installment just plowing through 5, 6, or 10 episodes on a weekend. Adult life? Eh, it’ll still be there on Monday.

What goes by the wayside in the meantime, though? James Pearson’s essay on coming back to America and the media deluge that awaits him provides some answer:

When I left Uganda this winter I had...

Writer’s Desk: Gaming the System

Somesay publishing is rigged. These are oftenthe people who have been shopping their work—whether misery memoir, cozy murder mystery, 11-part zombie erotica series, or finely etched literary short story about quiet people with quiet problems—without success for years and don’t getwhat they’re doing wrong. Unable to get an agent ormagazine to give them the time of day,their conclusion that it’s all a closed loop for insiders is not hard to fault; especially when one considers the quality of m...

Weekend Reading: September 18, 2015

Here’s what to do about St. Louis; the full report. The billionaires who wanna be president. When trying to make yourself a martyr ends up hurting your cause. The surprising millennial fastidiousness when it comes to grammar and spelling. Which candidate thinks African Americans are not actually (legally speaking) citizens? The glorious weirdness of Soviet bus stops. “Complaining about book prices: $20.00” and other great bookstore signage. Print and read: When Ted Bundy’s mother talked...

Screening Room: ‘The New Girlfriend’

In Francois Ozon’sThe New Girlfriend, after a woman’s childhood friend dies, she discovers that her friend’s husband has a secret. Complications of a romantic and gender-blurring nature ensue.

My review of The New Girlfriend, which opens this week in limited release, atPopMatters:

There is a sharp, sublime Almodóvar film trapped inside the blurry outlines of François Ozon’s The New Girlfriend (Une nouvelle amie), as if aching to get out. You can see this in The New Girlfriend‘s sly opening,...

Writer’s Desk: Writing Too Much

For the average writer, turning out new pages and finishing stories, articles, or (if we’re so lucky) books isn’t a problem. It’s the whole reason they’re doing it. Productivity counts. Quality, too, of course. But in the end, finished pages are nicer. Since the best way for most of us to be better writers is to do it as much as possible (feedback, feedback, please), then the more the better.

For some writers, though, being prolific is seen as a problem. As in: If they’re so good, why are th...

Writer’s Corner: Writing Too Much

For the average writer, turning out new pages and finishing stories, articles, or (if we’re so lucky) books isn’t a problem. It’s the whole reason they’re doing it. Productivity counts. Quality, too, of course. But in the end, finished pages are nicer. Since the best way for most of us to be better writers is to do it as much as possible (feedback, feedback, please), then the more the better.

For some writers, though, being prolific is seen as a problem. As in: If they’re so good, why are th...

Weekend Reading: September 11, 2015

Political pundits on the (maybe) verge of extinction. Scarlett Johannson’s attempt to stop the publication of a French novel about a woman who appears to be Scarlett Johannson, fails. And the cycle of evil is now complete. A chart of where in Europe the refugees are going. New language: American. Print and read: The banlieues of France, where bleak postwar architecture meets alienation, religious fanaticism, and occasionally hope.

Screening Room: ‘Welcome to Leith’

‘Welcome to Leith’: The day the Nazis came to town. (First Run Features)

In 2012, a white supremacist named Craig Cobb decided to buy up land in the small town of Leith, North Dakota. His plan was to create his own Aryan enclave. However, the neo-Nazis failed to heed Cobb’s call and ultimately he went to jail for terrorizing his neighbors. However, as this stunning new documentary shows, that’s not the whole story.

Welcome to Leith is playing now in limited release and will be expanding aroun...