Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 179
February 19, 2014
New in Theaters: ‘Child’s Pose’
Luminita Gheorghiu schemes in ‘Child’s Pose’
Winner of the Golden Bear at last year’s Berlin Film Festival, Child’s Pose is playing now in limited release, and is worth seeking out. My review is atFilm Racket:
“A mother’s love” has rarely felt more dagger-like or malevolent than in the chilling morality thrillerChild’s Pose. Part anatomy of a villain and part crime procedural, Calin Peter Netzer’s film follows what happens after a domineering upper-class Bucharest mother finds out her coddled s...
February 18, 2014
Reader’s Corner: Ice-T Goes Fantasy
After having gone from being the rare gangsta rapper who had actually lived the life instead of just rapping about it to loud monotone fixture onLaw & Order: SVUand too many horrendous movies to count, Ice-T has a new gig: Recording audiobooks. It makes sense, given his clear, bottom-heavy voice. But according to Paste, he talked on a recent podcast about running into some trouble recording an unnamed Dungeons & Dragons novel. Just realizing the depths of nerd-dom that he’d gotten into (“They...
Department of Shameless Self-Promotion: ‘Eyes Wide Open 2013′ new editions
The Year’s Worst Movie, ‘Man of Steel’: “…overblown, overlong, and overdone.”
The brave new world of publishing being all about access, it seemed appropriate to make Eyes Wide Open 2013: The Year’s 25 Greatest Movies (and 5 Worst)as widely available as possible. Otherwise, how else would you find out what the year’s best movies (yes, Gravitywas one of them, but it wasn’t number one) and worst were (bothMan of SteelandThe Great Gatsbymade the cut).
So now you can also buy Eyes Wide Open 2013 in...
February 17, 2014
Now Playing: ‘Gloria’
The sublime daffiness of Paulina García in ‘Gloria’
Chile’s submission for this year’s Foreign Film Academy Award,Gloria, doesn’t have the most instantly engaging of storylines: single woman tries to find love. But with deftly rambunctious storytelling and one of the greatest, most soulful performances you’re likely to see all year, it achieves tragicomic greatness.
Gloria is playing around the country right now in limited release. My review is atPopMatters:
…[The film]is shaded with both a dark...
February 16, 2014
Readers’ Corner: Vasconcelos Library
The Jose Vasconcelos Library
One of the most amazing libraries in the world isn’t in some European capital and it doesn’t date from the 18th century. The 125,000-square footVasconcelos Library was built in Mexico City in 2006 and resembles nothing less than a space-age ark for reading.
As you can see in the images here, it’s an astonishing space with an atrium several stories high and about a block long, with blocks of shelves arranged like cubes and all of it cross-sectioned by frosted glass.
O...
February 15, 2014
New in Books: Roddy Doyle’s ‘The Guts’
Roddy Doyle’sThe Commitments was one of the great music novels of the past few decades. Published in 1989 and serving as the start for Doyle’s unofficial “Barrytown Trilogy” (also comprisingThe Van and The Snapper), it followed knockabout Dubliner Jimmy Rabbitte’s attempt to put together a great soul/R&B band with nothing but Irishmen. Doyle’s newest novel, The Guts, picks up with Jimmy many years on, still working with music but saddled with middle-aged responsibilities and a new problem: C...
February 14, 2014
Department of Weekend Reading: February 14, 2014
In the 1920s, Soviet athletic competitions(they were barred from the Olympics until 1952) featured no winners or losers, but equality between the genders and cool modernist outfits.
Western Catholics still think the Catholic Church is wrong on just about everything, but African and Asian Catholics are more amenable.
Zirin: NFL owners “sound like scared children when they talk about the prospect of drafting a player of the character of Michael Sam.”
Nap-time to weddings: IKEA in China.
Marco Rubio...
February 13, 2014
Quote of the Day: The Six Great Paintings
‘Soir Bleu’ by Edward Hopper (1914)
“It’s crazy,” she’d said, “but I’d be perfectly happy if I could sit looking at the same half dozen paintings for the rest of my life. I can’t think of a better way to go insane.”
—The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
Think about what six paintings you wouldn’t mind looking at forever.
February 11, 2014
New in Theaters: ‘The Monuments Men’
Matt Damon and George Clooney in ‘The Monuments Men’
During the latter part of World War II, as the Allies were advancing across Western Europe, special detachments of experts known as the Monuments Men fanned out with lists and a mandate to keep their own soldiers from demolishing cultural artifacts and finding those works that the Nazis had tried to keep for themselves. George Clooney’s attempt at turning that sliver of history into a cool, guys-on-a-mission film sadly falls apart almost bef...
February 10, 2014
Writer’s Corner: Poetry vs. Congress
Pundits who want examples of how America’s school system is failing can easily point to any number of metrics: How the kids are faring in math versus Singapore, or how few of them can locate their own country on a map. One other way might just be to listen to our politicians.
The right honorable Representative Trey Gowdy (R-South Carolina) went on the teevee over the weekend to talk politics. According to the Dumbest Man on the Internet(Missouri’s own!), Gowdy “hit it out of the park.” Judge f...
