Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 147
June 19, 2015
Weekend Reading: June 19, 2015
June 18, 2015
Screening Room: ‘Eden’ Goes to the Rave
‘Eden': The party never ends (Broad Green Pictures).
Ah, to be young, French, and to care what DJs think or do. That’s the short synopsis of the new film from Mia Hansen-Love, whoseGoodbye, First Love was one of the sweeter romantic films of the last few years. This time, Hansen-Love dives into the electronic music scene of the 1990s and throws love into the mix as well.Eden opens this week, here and there.My review is atFilm Racket.
Here’s the trailer:
June 14, 2015
Writer’s Desk: Necessary Tools
People don’t often think about what they need to write. Just a great idea and 10,000 hours, right? They don’t realize that writing requires tools, always. And not the ones that all those websites have been trying to sell you, either.
See what Margaret Atwood has to say:
You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there’s no free lunch. Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit,...
June 12, 2015
Weekend Reading: June 12, 2015
June 8, 2015
Babel Tower: Of Phanariots, Googlebots, and Infidelity
Constantine Maurocordato, one of the Ottoman Empire’s dragomen, whose work as translators of the “infidels” language gave birth to the word “infidelity.”
Gideon Lewis-Kraus’s superb article “Is Translation a Language or Math Problem?” has many things to recommend it, most particularly this aside on the roots of the word “infidelity”:
Translation promises unity but entails betrayal. In his wonderful survey of the history and practice of translation, “Is That a Fish in Your Ear?” the translator...
June 7, 2015
Writer’s Desk: Harper Lee on Who to Ignore
Harper Lee, c. 1962.
There’s a lot of education that can go into being a writer. All those workshops, retreats, seminars, and conferences; there’s enough of them that just taking in a small percentage could be a full-time job.
There’s also the less-formal education, that involves just listening to what other people think of what you’ve done. That’s always necessary, because writing is nothing without its audience.
But it matters who you listen to. Notevery opinion matters, after all. Harper L...
June 5, 2015
Weekend Reading: June 5, 2015
June 3, 2015
Screening Room: ‘Entourage’ on the Big Screen
Four years after HBO’s dude wish-fulfillment seriesEntourage ground to a generally unloved conclusion, the far-from-inevitable film follow-up comes to a theater near you.
My review is atFilm Racket:
If the question of what would happen to the big-dreaming boys from Queens occupied you for one minute afterEntourage finished its eighth season in 2011, thenEntouragethe movie might be your kind of superfluous entertainment. If not, then stay far, far away. After all, this is not a film so much a...
June 2, 2015
Screening Room: ‘A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence’
(Magnolia Pictures)
If the question of what exactly isA Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence would bother you if it can’t be answered, then by all means, don’t see it. Philosophical investigation, bad joke, or just a series of modern-art video installments strung together into a “film,” it resists easy definition. That doesn’t make it a masterpiece, but it’s something different, and in a good way.
A Pigeon… opens this week in limited release, and should cause a few furrowed brows as...
May 31, 2015
Writer’s Desk: Good for Nothing
There’s an old joke about how in Irish families, the boy who can’t throw a ball, well, he’s the priest.
A similar weeding-out procedure is suggested by this line from Rachel Kushner’s brilliant 2013 novelThe Flamethrowers:
That’s what artists are, his father said, those who are useless for anything else. That might seem like an insult, he said, but it wasn’t.
So, in other words, run with it.
