Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 177
March 20, 2014
New in Theaters: ‘Jodorowsky’s Dune’
The poster for the ‘Dune’ that never happened
Back in the 1970s, when midnight movies were still a potent cultural phenomenon, Alejandro Jodorowsky was the king of them. In 1974, after blowing the minds of cult cinephiles withEl TopoandThe Holy Mountain, Jodorowsky took on another project: adapting Frank Herbert’sDune. Eventually he gave up.
The documentaryJodorowsky’s Dune is opening in limited release tomorrow. My review is atFilm Journal International:
As Jodorowsky—84 and still impeccably sp...
March 19, 2014
Now Playing: ‘Le Week-End’
Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan do Paris in ‘Le Week-End’
In the surprisingly spry comedy Le Week-End,Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan head to Paris for a romantic anniversary weekend to kickstart their chaotic, verging-on-retirement lives. Things don’t go as planned.
Le Week-End is playing now in a few theaters and should expand more over the next several weeks. My review is atFilm Racket:
Like many movies about couples who treat their relationship as a sparring ring, Roger Michell’sLe Week-En...
March 16, 2014
Quote of the Day: St. Patrick’s Edition
Belfast, where learning the Irish language was a sign of solidarity with the anti-British cause.
For tomorrow’s celebration of St. Patrick’s Day, a note on the Irish, language, and stubbornness:
If you want to make any sort of Irishman do something, the surest way is to tell him it is forbidden; and if the learning of the Irish language is a bad thing (I’m not sure that it is…) … forbidden it under pressure will stimulate it to such an extent that the very dogs in Belfast … will bark in Irish.
—...
March 14, 2014
Department of Weekend Reading: March 14, 2014
The state of literature, to put it bluntly, is a mess.
Once again, Michele Bachmann (something called the “Polar Vortex-Mex Hotdish”) didnot win Sen. Al Franken’s annual hot dish cookoff.
Life as a distraction—Joan Didion’s 1979 review of Woody Allen’s cinema of self-absorption.
Disney knows what you’re doing, and where.
Georgia: Guns everywhere, everywhere!
More reasons why San Francisco is in the middle of an unsustainable tech-yuppie-jerkface bubble.
“Our lazy embrace of [Jon] Stewart and [Steph...
March 13, 2014
The Beat Report: New Kerouac Novella
Not long after Jack Kerouac and his friends were wrapped up in the David Kammerer murder, he started work on a World War II novel calledThe Haunted Life. He only made it a little ways into the story (which was to have been a multi-volume work) before losing it, supposedly in a cab. The pages were rediscovered a few years back and have just been published; here’s a few lines:
“You’’ve been reading John Dewey.”
Dick moved off down the hall: “It’s fact. What the hell good is life if you don’t live...
March 11, 2014
In Books: ‘The Trip to Echo Springs: On Writers and Drinking’
Ernest Hemingway at the bar – again
Late last year, the British writer Olivia Laing publishedThe Trip to Echo Springs: On Writers and Drinking. It’s a rambling and discursive but smart portrait of a half-dozen writers and their struggles with the devil’s brew (Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, Raymond Carver, F. Scott Fitzgerald). Laing takes her title from a line inCat on a Hot Tin Roofand indulges in more than a few Williams-ian flights of writerly fancy alon...
March 9, 2014
Reader’s Corner: Algren’s Rules
Nelson Algren, somewhere in Chicago (Library of Congress)
There was always plenty to be learned in the Chicago novels of the great Nelson Algren—particularly in a negative sense, as in whatnotto do. One of Algren’s more memorable passages comes from 1956′sA Walk on the Wild Side:
But blow wise to this, buddy, blow wise to this: Never playcardswith a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom’s. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own. Never let nobody talk you into...
March 7, 2014
Department of Weekend Reading: March 7, 2014
Here’s what Putin doesn’t understand.
Current record for a New York City taxi medallion: just under $1 million.
When empires retreat: The new new world order.
The hunt for the lost white male Democratic voter.
James Ellroy: “I hate hipsters, I hate liberals, I hate rock’n’rollers, I hate the counter-culture, I hate movie people. I want to go somewhere quiet, peaceful and decorous, and be radical in my mind.”
Adam Driver as Boris, and other casting ideas for The Goldfinch: The Movie .
Print and read:...
March 6, 2014
New in Theaters: ‘Bethlehem’
Tsahi Halevy and Shadi Mar’i in ‘Bethlehem’
In Yuval Adler’s West Bank thriller, a Palestinian teenager whose older brother is a high-ranking terrorist finds his loyalties divided between family and the Israeli intelligence agent who he’s feeding information to.
Bethlehemis opening this week in limited release. My review is atFilm Journal International:
Nothing in Yuval Adler’s tangled-up thrillerBethlehemis far removed from anything else. It’s a crowded film, with agendas, rivalries and frustra...
March 4, 2014
New in Theaters: ‘Interior. Leather Bar.’
‘Cruising’. Again.
Back in 1980, William Friedkin’sCruising became the biggest mainstream film sinceThe Boys in the Band to be set almost entirely in the gay community. A punishingly physical and creepy story about a straight cop (Al Pacino) who goes undercover in the New York leather-bar scene to track a serial killer, it was controversial at the time for its supposed homophobia. So when James Franco decided to co-direct an art project/movie that “reimagined” the infamous 40 minutes of possib...
