Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 175

New in Theaters: ‘Transcendence’

Remember in the 1982version of Disney’sTron, where Jeff Bridges get zapped by a computer’s scanning device and somehow magically translated into bits of data that are reassembled inside the hard drive as a living, functioning being? Cool, but didn’t exactly make sense. The new Johnny Depp artificial-intelligence thriller Transcendenceis kind of like that, only without any of those cool light cycles.

Transcendence opens everywhere on Friday. My review is atFilm Journal International:

“They say t...

Reader’s Corner: Shakespeare in America

Shakespeare’s statue in Central Park (Library of Congress)

Given how many of us have happily or miserably worked through at least a couple Shakespeare plays in school, not to mention the frequency with which those plays are revived on Broadway and in touring companies everywhere, it’s amazing to think that there was a time when Shakespeare was actuallymore present in American life than today.

James Shapiro’s new book, Shakespeare in America, tells of how in the early nineteenth century, a quart...

Department of Weekend Reading: April 11, 2014

The first story on the southern California earthquake was “written” by a piece of software.
Yes, homeopathy is nonsense.
Archie (yes, Archie) will die.
New from the college scene: on-campus food pantries forhungry students.
Ten years of Facebook.
Wall Street Journal op-ed goes full anti-science.
25 years later: Heathers , aoral history.
Jim DeMint: big government didn’t free the slaves (?!).
“There’s little that interests the American public quite so much as a young woman’s body;” murdering young women...

New in Theaters: ‘Joe’

Once upon a time, Nicolas Cage was an actor of some repute, if not always solid decision-making skills. A few years of Bruckheimer extravaganzas and brooding big-budget misfires, not to mention the occasional Satanic comic-book movie, killed most of that promise. However, in David Gordon Green’s new Southern noir,Joe, Cage makes anhonest attempt to get back into that thing they call acting.

Joeis opening thisFridayin a few theaters, and should expand wider soon. My review is atFilm Journal Int...

New on DVD: ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘August: Osage County’

One of last year’s great but overlooked dramas and one of its better-than-average FX blockbusters are hitting DVD and Blu-ray today.

August: Osage County

John Wells’ star-stocked adaptation of Tracey Letts’ sprawling and brawling Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a dysfunctional Oklahoma clan is perhaps a little too truncated but mostly hits it out of the park. For once, Julia Roberts proves herself to be not only not done with acting but able to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Meryl Streep.Ful...

Reader’s Corner: Ideas Box

The Ideas Box, ready for shipping

Once upon a time, the local library’s bookmobile would stop by schools to give kids access to newer books than they had in their own school’s (usually meager) library offerings. Theoretically, that still happens, at least in the few countiesthat haven’t eviscerated their library system’s budget.

That basic idea appears to have been taken by a Paris-based group called Libraries Without Borders and morphed into a frankly cool-looking thing called the Ideas Box th...

Reader’s Corner: Gloriously Fake

Sometimes the best April’s Fool’s bits take a second or two of consideration, such as this cover from The Paris Review:

Department of Weekend Reading: April 4, 2014

The Christian argument for immigration reform.
NFL thins theline separating cheerleaders from exotic dancers just a little bit more.
Just a few centuries on, Spain’s Sephardic Jews asked to come on home.
New books of photos, iconic and unknown, from the Vietnam War.
Koch brothers, looking for ways to increase their evil quotient, now trying to make some kinds of mass transit illegal.
The panic mobs now have even less reason to cry disaster.
Houston police shoot and kill disturbed man, then sue the...

New in Theaters: ‘Under the Skin’

‘Under the Skin’: Scarlett Johansson goes hunting for a few good humans

For his last two films,Sexy Beast andBirth, Jonathan Glazer dealt with the aliens that walk amongst us, whether it was divorced-from-reality gangsters or creepy children. InUnder the Skin, though, he finally gets around to telling a story about an honest-to-God alien—in the form of Scarlett Johansson.

Under the Skin opens in limited release on Friday. My review is atFilm Journal International:

There is a searching, watching...

Now Playing: ‘The Unknown Known’

Rumsfeld: ‘The only things that are lasting are conflict, blackmail, and killing.’

Late last year, possibly in an attempt to garner an Oscar nomination, the Weinsteins’ Radius-TWC outfit gave Errol Morris’ newest documentaryThe Unknown Known a short pre-holiday run. Now,this riveting,feature-length interview with the Bush era’s greatest poetic dissembler, Donald Rumsfeld, is getting a proper release.

The Unknown Known is playing in limited release again starting this week.My review is at Short...