Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 181
January 30, 2014
Now Playing: ‘Like Father, Like Son’
Are You Really My Son?
Imagine you’re the parents of an adorably well-behaved six-year-old boy. Then the hospital calls and tells you that in fact, your child was switched with another family’s when they were born—your biological son has been raised by somebody else. What do you do? That’s the conversation-sparking premise behind Kore-Eda Hirokazu’s brilliant new melodramaLike Father, Like Son, playing now in limited release.
My review is atFilm Racket:
There’s a Lifetime movie lurking not far b...
New in Theaters: ’12 O’Clock Boys’
’12 O’Clock Boys’: Today, We Ride
Every so often in Baltimore, swarms of teenagers and twentysomethings will come swarming through an intersection, doing paralysis-defying tricks on their bikes or four-wheelers. They’re called “12 O’Clock Boys,” and they’re the subject of an interesting new documentary about hope (or the lack of it) and fantasy in the inner cities.
12 O’Clock Boys opens in limited release this week after playing the festival doc circuit.My review is atFilm Journal International...
January 26, 2014
Reader’s Corner: Jack London
Mostly remembered today as the man who wroteWhite Fang, in his time Jack London was one of the most popular living American authors. He was as celebrated for his wideranging command of styles (adventure stories to science fiction and political polemics) to his wildly wolfish and nomadic lifestyle. London was a heroic striver or sadistic bastard, depending on who you asked. He showed up in last year’s historical gothic horror novelThe Accursedby Joyce Carol Oates as a bullying alcoholic who ap...
January 24, 2014
Department of Weekend Reading: January 24, 2014
Discrimination; now even at Airbnb.
Time to worry?Nearly half of today’s jobs could be automated within two decades.
The positive side of gentrification.
Giving poors what they need: a good kick in the you-know.
Sean Hannity possibly to leave New York because of mean, mean governor.
The folks in Missour-ah seriously need to ramp up their smokin’ and gamblin’.
Enjoy a fine Scandinavian ale, first brewed at least 3,500 years ago.
Fake your way through the classics.
Neurotics get more work done than ext...
January 19, 2014
Reader’s Corner: Best Books of 2013
Best-of lists are particularly absurd when it comes to books, with thousands of titles being released in 2013 alone and easily hundreds of them most likely being worth forking over $25 for. But nevertheless it’s helpful to pull notable ones out of the stacks of new releases; otherwise where would you even get started?
To that end, I published a piece over atPopMatters with short writeups on my 15 favorite books of 2013. It’s a good collection with something for everybody, fantasy to military h...
January 17, 2014
Department of Weekend Reading: January 17, 2014
97 percent of scientists agree that climate change is threatening the world; only 40 percent of the American public agrees. With science.
The manly manliness of Governor Big Fella; also his not-so-hidden similarities to Nixon.
Ah, the $8 Walmart khaki, with pleats!
Joe Scarborough’s moderation pitch: will this save the GOP or does extremism work?
Another 15 years like the last 15 and yes, humanity, you are toast.
Scully is an author.
The Sacramento Kings are now accepting Bitcoins.
A quick look insi...
January 16, 2014
Small Screens: ‘Batman’ Returns!
Christian Bale in a slightly different take on Batman than Adam West’s
Once upon a time you could safely rely on being able to find a couple things somewhere on TV, if you just flipped around long enough:The Three Stoogesand the oldBatmanseries. Running in seemingly near-constant syndication long after its too-brief run (120 episodes over 3 seasons from 1966–68), its Pop Art-mad cheeky humor wastheway that most people growing up in the 1970s was introduced to the Caped Crusader. Once Frank Mil...
New in Theaters: ‘Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit’
Chris Pine exploring a post-Cold War Moscow in ‘Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit’
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan was your basic all-around Cold War fighter, able to lead men into battle and synthesize data with equal ease; an analyst who knew his way around a battlefield. Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, and Ben Affleck have played him in the four movie adaptations of Clancy’s bestselling novels. Now, just a few months after Clancy’s passing, Kenneth Branagh’s new take on the series hits screens with Star Trek‘s...
January 15, 2014
Screening Room: Armond White and ’12 Years a Slave’
Some people just can’t handle the idea of consensus. Take, for example, the average bury-your-head-in-the-sand reactionary who swears up and down that the scientific community is just plain wrong about climate change.You also have Armond White, the film critic who’s forever tilting at windmills of his own devising. White is gifted with an unerring radar for what his fellow critics are going to rally around or despise, allowing him to furiously tack in the opposite direction, bellowing “Fools!...
In Books: James Frey Goes YA
The last time James “A Million Little Pieces” Frey was heard from, he was writing a novel about Christ calledThe Final Testament of the Holy Bible. There was some chest-thumping about howshockingit was going to be (“Be moved, be enraged, be enthralled by this extraordinary masterpiece” the press material said) but then it came out and promptly dropped from sight, as though he were the anti-Salman Rushdie.
Now, he’s cropped up again, this time with a $2 million deal for a YA novel calledEndgame...
