Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 148

Weekend Reading: May 29, 2015

New candidate Rick Santorum and his old Google problem. Pentagon funds well-spent at casinos and “adult entertainment establishments.” You know: for the troops. Third-party eavesdropping: We are always listening. Babes in Toyland: back torock. Montreal: First Jackie Robinson, then Michael Sam. No more casual Christians? Back to being okay with the “l” word. Sometimes your book ends up in bin Laden’s library and there’s nothing you can do about it. A short history of military braggarts...

Screening Room: ‘Gueros’ – French New Wave in Mexico City

‘Gueros’ (Kino Lorber)

Style doesn’t go out of style. That’s why directors around the world are still aping the French New Wave, in good and bad ways.

Güeros is a grab-bag of the right and wrong ways to appropriate the Nouvelle Vague’s stream-of-conscious plotting and jazzy rhythms. It did the festival circuit last year and is now getting a limited release. My review from the Tribeca Film Festival is atPopMatters:

[Güeros]gets a lot of traction from its mainly directionless young protagonists....

Bookmark: Neal Stephenson’s ‘Seveneves’

In ‘Seveneves,’ this blows up … and everything changes. (NASA)

Last week, Neal Stephenson released his latest novel, a big-thinking plot about the end of the world and a possible new start for the human race. Seveneves isanother doorstopper of a piece, so in that sense right in line with just about everything he’s written since the 1990s. In many other ways, however—particularly in being a return to full-fledged science fiction and also curiously (for him) devoid of humor—this is an entirely n...

Quote of the Day: Memorial Day Edition

A casualty is readied for transport from the front line during the battle for Guadalcanal. (Library of Congress)

For this Memorial Day, a reminder from one of our great novelists of warfare and what it does to the men who take part in it, willingly or not:

This book is cheerfully dedicated to those greatest and most heroic of all human endeavors, WAR and WARFARE; may they never cease to give us the pleasure, excitement and adrenal stimulation that we need, or provide us with the heroes, the p...

Writer’s Desk: Going Your Own Way

So, your book is done. Awesome. Now you’ve got to make sure it gets sold. It’s not an easy thing these days,with thinner marketing budgets, digital clamor, and thousands upon thousands of books blooding the marketplace every year. As many authors have discovered, getting your book noticed often falls on their shoulders, even if they were lucky enough to bepicked up by a real publisher.

Social media marketing helps, among other things. But all that time spent marketing your way takes away from...

Reader’s Corner: Speakeasy Bookstore is No More

Once upon a time, you could stroll to 84th Street on the Upper East Side, ring the right doorbell at the right hour of day, and find yourself ina magical little place: Michael Seidenberg’s Brazenhead Books. Technically a rent-controlled apartment, Seidenberg ran the secretive book-stuffed space as a hybrid literary hangout, multipurpose salon, and (occasional) bookstore.

Like all such ephemeral joys, Brazenhead is coming to an end, a victim of its increasing popularity and an itchy landlord.

...

Weekend Reading: May 22, 2015

Most cars might be driverless as early as 2025, which could destroy tens of thousands of jobs. What if you built a utopian commune and nobody came? “Wear good shoes in a thumbtack factory” and other advice from Bill Nye. Ramadi’s fall as the canary in the Iraqi coal mine. Ethan Coen: “I haven’t watched a television show in decades.“ Baltimore and Ferguson are one thing, but Waco apparently deserves a different standard. Print and read:Regime-friendly journalists, 9/11 truther conspiracies,...

Screening Room: Chaos Reigns in ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’

Vroom, vroom – ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ (Warner Bros.)

It’s been three decades since George Miller’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Things have changed. No more Mel Gibson, for one. Also, the postapocalyptic subgenre that Miller’s series helped sparked off has practically gone full mainstream. Sadly, no Tina Turner. Now, here comesMad Max: Fury Road, with Tom Hardy in the driver’s seat.

Mad Max: Fury Road (aka, the fourth one) is playing pretty much everywhere now. My review is atShort Ends & Leader:...

Now Playing: ‘Every Secret Thing’

Diane Lane and Danielle Macdonald in ‘Every Secret Thing’ (Starz Digital)

In Amy Berg’s adaptation of the Laura Lippman domestic thrillerEvery Secret Thing, a pair of teenaged girls are suspected of abducting a small child years after they were convicted of stealing and murdering a baby of strikingly similar looks.

Every Secret Thing is out now in limited release. My review is atFilm Journal International:

Alice (Danielle Macdonald) is both a ball of cheer and a pit of frustrated desires. She...

Writer’s Desk: Posterity and the Lack Thereof

Yes, Nebraska has writers.

Used to be, once a writer’s books went out of print, that was it for most of them. There might be a few copies moldering in a library’s backshelves somewhere, but generally not being out there in a bookstore or taught in a classroom meant that your work was going to be forgotten.

It would be nice to think that in the era of digital publishing, that nobody’s work will ever be forgotten. It will just sit there in the cloud, each bundle of bytes ready for download just...