Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 157
January 12, 2015
Quote of the Day: Golden Globes edition
Recreating the march in ‘Selma’ (Paramount Pictures)
InTina Fey and Amy Poehler’s monologue at the startof last night’s more anti-climactic than usual Golden Globe Awards, they referenced the filmSelma(which, again, tells the story ofMartin Luther King Jr.’s leading the dramaticcivil rights march through what was essentially enemy territory in Alabamain 1965).
It starts with a mediocre gag and follows up with one of the most pointed lines of any recent awards show:
…in the 1960s, thousands of bl...
January 11, 2015
Writer’s Corner: Finding Out What You Don’t Want to Know
By the time James Baldwin gave this interview to The Paris Review in 1984, his time was past as one of the writers whose voice was loudest in the great postwar arguments over what America would and should be. He was living in semi-exile in France at the time of the interview, heading into his 60s, but still full of burnt truthsand hard-fought advice. Such as:
“The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces...
January 10, 2015
In Books: The Best Nonfiction of 2014
(image by pepo)
After PopMatters published their best fiction of 2014 feature earlier in the week, they ran the (perhaps more serious in tone, but still somehow more fun) compilation of the awesomest (yes, that’s a word) nonfiction titles that came out last year.
Doing my part, I wrote about:
Against Football: One Fan’s Reluctant Manifesto, Steve Almond
Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Pikkety
The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ten Songs, Greil Marcus
The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon...
January 9, 2015
Department of Weekend Reading: January 2, 2015
That’s it! I finally caught up on everything you guys have been telling me to watch, read, and listen to.
Get rid of the mortgage deduction; it doesn’t even help the people it’s supposed to.
Racism in Ukraine: At least it’s out in the open.
Most overlooked books of 2014.
What happened at the end of the NAACP march to Jefferson City after the Michael Brown killing: “Shoot thieves.”
Movies to look forward to (or not, see:Chappie) in the coming year.
When the Beatles were the greatest threat imaginabl...
January 8, 2015
In Books: The Best Fiction of 2014
Now that we’re fully into January 2015, it’s time to think about all the books we never got around to reading in 2014. To that end, the book staffatPopMattershave compiled their annual list of the Best Fiction of 2014, with short writeups of all the year’s most notable novels and collections of poetry and short fiction.
I wrote about:
The Peripheral, William Gibson
The Book of Strange New Things, Michael Faber
Redployment, Phil Klay
You can find the feature here.
January 4, 2015
Writer’s Corner: The Patterson Factory
James Patterson is seen at times as more machine than writer. There’s good reason for this. His advertising background; thosecouple dozen credited co-writers; a happy malleability when it comes to genre (romance, YA, mystery, whatever); multiple books a year; nearly $100 million in annualrevenue.
All that being said, it’s helpful to remember that at one point even Patterson was a wannabe, just another unpublished novelist trying to get his book out there. From Todd Purdum’s profile forVanity F...
January 3, 2015
New in Theaters: ‘A Most Violent Year’
Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain plot in ‘A Most Violent Year’ (A24)
Sneaking into theaters after the great Christmas rush is J.C. Chandor’sA Most Violent Year. A low-key drama about warring heating-oil firms set in 1981 New York, when murders and violent crime had the city on the verge of collapse, the film and its characters are as controlled and tightly-wound as its setting is chaotic.
A Most Violent Year is playing now in limited release, with some hopes for Oscar nominations to give it mor...
January 2, 2015
Department of Weekend Reading: January 2, 2015
Letting Cuban ball players sign to the MLB without having to use drug smugglers.
Thomas Piketty offered France’s Legion of Honor, refuses.
Central Park at 4 a.m., between the carousers and thedog-walkers, with only the racoons for company.
All too common: Scratch a southern conservative, find a neo-Nazi.
New Pope: Fighting modern slavery also means avoiding low-cost goods made by coerced labor.
IsSelma fair to LBJ?
Could Idris Elba finally end up as the new Bond?
Print and read: American chickenhawk...
January 1, 2015
2014: The Year in Movies
(cinema image by Sailko)
Now that 2014 has drawn to a close, the theaters are full of all the films that opened in November and December that nobody has had any chance to get to. It’s not a bad thing, given the too-crowdedflurry of awards-scrapping releases trying to make it in before the end of the year, mixed in with the occasional counter-programming piece of dross. But it’s also a useful time to think about how the year shaped up, film-wise.
My essay, “2014: A Most Mediocre Year,” ran this...
December 28, 2014
Writer’s Corner: Hints from Lovecraft
(LibriVox)
H.P. Lovecraft was the Stephen King of his day, if King had been a depressive type with a thing for turning horror fiction into fantasies of existential dread. He’s remembered these days almost exclusively for his Cthulhu mythos, in which unlucky humans occasionally run afoul of the ancient deities whose foul existence predates known history and any sense of modern morality.
But Lovecraft was also a student of the form, and not just horror (though his writings on “weird” and supernat...
