Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 170
June 27, 2014
New in Theaters: ‘Whitey’ Gives its Subject Too Much Credit
‘Whitey’ Bulger in his younger years (Magnolia Pictures)
Joe Berlinger has worked onsome amazing true-crime documentaries over the years, not least the ground-breaking Paradise Lost trilogy. With Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger, though, he (inadvertently or not) buoys the facetious mythology of Southie crime boss ‘Whitey’ Bulger as some noble gangster.
Whiteyopens todayin limited release and will probably show up on cable later in the year. My review is atFilm Racket:
Fortuit...
June 22, 2014
Reader’s Corner: The Uses of Poetry, If Any
Poetry mosaic at the Library of Congress’s Thomas Jefferson building (Library of Congress)
William Logan is poet, though we shouldn’t hold that against him. He wrote with good-natured verve last week for theTimes on his chosen metier and whether or not it really serves any purpose. In “Poetry: Who Needs It?” Logan’s summation of the current state of verse is notable for its directness, not to mention being just plain right:
The dirty secret of poetry is that it is loved by some, loathed by many...
June 21, 2014
New in Theaters: The Non-Musical ‘Jersey Boys’
The ‘Jersey Boys’ sing, sing, sing (Warner Bros.)
If the touring productionhasn’t played at a downtown theater near you yet, it soon will. The story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons,Jersey Boys was already one of the most successful of the jukebox musicals that have plagued enriched Broadway over the past few years; and that was before Clint Eastwood (having a week or two off, apparently) decided to make it into a movie. One point for hisunaccountably dull and strangely non-musicalversion...
June 20, 2014
Department of Weekend Reading: June 20, 2014
Hey, maybe we shouldn’t have backed those guys.
The 1980s might have had bad fashion, but the ’90s had none.
Gorgeous infographic art of yesteryear.
From inspecting biscuits to fending off sobbing female soldiers, Kim Jong Un has had a busy year.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch dumps George Will.
Is Chicago going bust?
In Richmond, Virginia, paying the worst criminalsnot to commit crimes.
In San Francisco, Airbnb is awesome—except that it reduces the housing supply in an already overcrowded, expensive city....
June 19, 2014
Book Flashback: The Iraq War ‘Gamble’
American tanks patrol Baghdad on April 14th, 2003 (U.S. Marine Corps)
As the ISIS campaign to topple Iraq’s government roars on,it seemed worthwhile to look back at the many books written on Iraq to see what predictions had been made about what couldhappen after the last American unit moved out.
I posted “The 2009 Book that Foretold the (Possible) Collapse of Post-American Iraq” at Re:Print:
For years, especially after the American troop drawdown, it seemed as though Iraq would muddle along in a...
June 18, 2014
New in Theaters: ‘Coherence’
Puzzling out the impossible from the improbable in ‘Coherence’ (Oscilloscope)
In what could have been another apocalypse-is-nigh freakout, James Ward Byrkit’s highly coolCoherencedrops a dinner-party full of yuppies into a hard-to-define sci-fi mystery after a comet passes over Earth and starts causing curious anomalies.
Coherenceopens in limited release Friday. My review is atFilm Journal International:
There are eight people in the dinner party, but the film is focused on Em (Emily Foxler) and...
June 15, 2014
Soundbooth: Dimension X
Ray Bradbury (NASA)
Once upon a time, before science fiction (in the form of monster movies and comic-book franchises) took over the cineplex, anthology shows on radio and television provided a steady diet of short tales of the fantastic.
Case in point was the short-lived NBC radio programDimension X, which ran from 1950 to 1951 and advertised itself as “adventures in time and space, told in future tense.”
During the show’s tenure, they broadcast work by some of the genre’s greatest practitioner...
June 13, 2014
Department of Weekend Reading: June 13, 2014
This is what a CIA coloring book looks like.
Even George Will should have known better.
There is nothing medieval, really, about Game of Thrones .
“There are plenty of “fully functioning” scientists who believe in God;” The new Cosmos vs. Creationists.
Shale, Mexico, and drug gangs in homemade tanks.
How the raid on bin Laden is helping to bring back polio.
Does Israel even need a president?
The new translation of Camus’The Strangertitles itThe Outsider.
Annals of fantasy realtime: Armored and armed “hi...
June 12, 2014
New in Theaters: ‘The Rover’
Robert Pattinson in ‘The Rover’ (A24)
The latest movie aboutwhat happens after society falls apart isThe Rover, a bloody and spare Australian revenge Westernset in a burnt-up stretch of the outback where a gun is the law.
The Rover opens in limited release Friday and then goes wider on June 20. My review is atFilm Racket:
Most post-apocalyptic vengeance stories likeThe Roverat least flirt with nihilism. But this is normally just window-dressing there to throw a little grit under the wheels of so...
Now Playing: ‘Night Moves’
Dakota Fanning, Jesse Eisenberg, and Peter Sarsgaard in ‘Night Moves’ (Cinedigm)
A trio of environmental conspirators try to blow up a Pacific Northwest dam in Kelly Reichardt’s superbly quiet but tension-laced new film,Night Moves, which is playing now in limited release.
My review is at Film Racket:
The green activists plotting to blow up a dam in Kelly Reichardt’s sublimely nervy new film don’t talk about why they’re doing it. By the time the film catches up with them, the trio has already se...
