Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 144

Weekend Reading: August 21, 2015

Ferguson, St. Louis, and how it feels to be ignored while being gawked at: “We are a showcase of shame, with no end in sight.” Who’s watching the drone that almost crashed into the plane you’re on? Back in vogue: “Illegals.” New in defense: Blimps. This week in espionage: Hamas detains dolphin. Trump’s bill for Mexico. The average American life, quantified. A good reason to stop buying prawns. Print and read: Trigger warnings and the culture of intellectual infantilization of American colle...

Screening Room: ‘Mistress America’

Greta Gerwig and Lola Kirke take Manhattan in ‘Mistress America’ (Sony Pictures Classics)

For his second film of 2015, Noah Baumbach left aside the dyspepsia of his Ben Stiller aging comedyWhile We’re Young for the fizzier retro ’80s irony ofMistress America, the latest of his off-kilter comedies with his partner Greta Gerwig.

My review of Mistress America, which opens Friday,is atFilm Journal:

Like its hero-villain, Brooke,Mistress Americatries on many styles in an effort to make something st...

Writer’s Desk: Theroux on Travel Writing

For the 2011 release of his bibs-and-bobs collectionThe Tao of Travel, Paul Theroux had an interview in theAtlantic where—after noting that “Blogs look to me illiterate, they look hasty, like someone babbling”—he dispensed some advice to those in the travel-writing game:

The main shortcut is to leave out boring things. People write about getting sick, they write about tummy trouble, they write about having to wait for a bus. They write about waiting. They write three pages about how long it t...

Weekend Reading: August 14, 2015

British Museum Reading Room (Diliff)

BerkShares to Bowie pounds:The advent of artisanal currency. Remember the Columbia House mail-order record deal? (11 albums for a penny, get a 12th for free!) This is how they could afford to do that. Why is the reaction to the current heroin epidemic and the crack epidemic from decades ago so different? There’s a purge going on in North Korea that’s claimed over 70 officials. Trump’s secret gift to the GOP. Signers of the Designers’ Hippocratic Oath prom...

Writer’s Desk: The Not-So-Solitary Art

Anybody who knows anything about writing knows about that the gig requires a lot of alone-time. Unless you’re one of those people who can compose lucid prose on a crowded subway train, most writers need to have that space they can get away to in order to put their minds in the right space and put together something that won’t entirely embarrass them.

There is, though, always the problem of the outside world. It intrudes on some writers in the simple matter of making a living. The day job, wh...

Writer’s Corner: The Not-So-Solitary Art

Anybody who knows anything about writing knows about that the gig requires a lot of alone-time. Unless you’re one of those people who can compose lucid prose on a crowded subway train, most writers need to have that space they can get away to in order to put their minds in the right space and put together something that won’t entirely embarrass them.

There is, though, always the problem of the outside world. It intrudes on some writers in the simple matter of making a living. The day job, wh...

Screening Room: ‘Cop Car’

Hays Wellford and James Freedson-Jackson have a good old time in ‘Cop Car’ (Focus)

Two kids come across a police cruiser in a clearing, seemingly abandoned. They’ve already run away from home, so why not one more transgression? While they joy ride across the prairie, the car’s owner, a corrupt and drug-addled sheriff (Kevin Bacon) who’s just buried a man is coming after them.

Cop Caris playing now. My review is at PopMatters.

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘The Gift’

uncomfortable in ‘The Gift’ (STX)

When we last saw Jason Bateman, he was deadpanning his way through the reboot of Arrested Development and doing (as always) a crackerjack job of it. Now, with actor Joel Edgerton’s debut film as writer/director, Bateman is playing against type as one half of a threatened couple ina stalker story with a twist.

The Giftis playing now. My review is atFilm Journal International.

Here’s the trailer:

Weekend Reading: August 7, 2015

British Museum Reading Room (Diliff)

The kids of summer who can’t swim. Everybody agrees: Eleanor Roosevelt for the $10 bill. Corporate comic heroes of Marvel and their anti-capitalist message. The Daily Show’s greatest Jon Stewart hits; an oral history (with video!). Why women are always freezing in the office. Did you know chocolate can help you lose weight?! Well, it can’t. The story of an all-too-easy science journalism hoax. Now Tom Brady and the Patriots are learning what kids in Balti...

Writer’s Desk: Beerbohm on Writing’s Weakness

Max Beerbohm, self-caricature, c.1897.

Caricaturist of some note and essayist beyond compare, Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) was one of those serenely talented Victorian aesthetes one not only doesn’t see anymore, one can barely imagine walking the planet. He understood that one of the great rules of writing is this: Never let them see you sweat. If you make it seem easy, that relaxes the reader.

Not that it wasn’t work. Beerbohm:

Writing, as a means of expression, has to compete with talking. The...