Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 182

Writer’s Corner: Detroit Book City

This could be your house

Still trying to figure out how to finish that first part of a six-part series of zombie CSI novels, or maybe you need time to work on your epic poem cycle about climate change? Working the job and paying rent can definitely take time away from time spent with your laptop or quill.

Well, worry no more, because there’s a new nonprofit organization called WriteAHouse that wants to give away houses in Detroit to writers. That’s correct: Free house to write in.

If approved, w...

Department of Weekend Reading: January 10, 2014

As a youngster, Jorge Luis Borges prowled the barrios of Buenos Aries with a dagger his father gave him, looking for the city’s famous knife-fighters.
Why Al-Qaeda is about to make the same mistake the U.S. did in Fallujah.
Tufts University study: Whites now believe they are the true victims of racial discrimination.
No, we care about the poor, we really really do.
CubeSats, the new, coffee mug-sized satellites.
Reader doesn’t get quite what they wanted, author provides refund.
The upsides and (big...

Best Movies of 2013: First Take

Since it’s a brand new year already featuring its own share of miserable, do-I-have-to-go-out-there? weather, what better time to sit back and figure out what exactly was the year that was? Film-wise, that is.

I contributed to a few of those lists at different websites this month. Over atPopMatters, you can see their gargantuan Top 35 films list here; they’ve also produced similar lists broken out into DVDs and foreign/indie films. Not to mention the year’s worst films.

Sarah Polley’s ‘Stories...

Reader’s Corner: Van Gogh and ‘The Jewish Bride’

‘The Jewish Bride’ by Rembrandt (1667)

Legend has it that after Vincent Van Gogh saw Rembrandt’s paintingThe Jewish Bride in Amsterdam—where it still hangs today in the renovated Rijksmuseum—he said this:

I should be happy to give 10 years of my life if I could go on sitting here in front of this picture for a fortnight, with only a crust of dry bread for food.

The math there might be a little on the extreme side (Van Gogh wasn’t one for half-measures, after all), but still, who wouldn’t say som...

Department of Weekend Reading: January 3, 2014

The incredible trials of the .
What do the youth of the UK feel they have to live for?
So you’ve got to go to the emergency room—this will show you how long it’ll take.
British pub life.
From ignoring12 Years a Slaveto the supposed knockout game: the year in racial amnesia.
The Brazil World Cup and how it’s the ultimate in mega-inequality.
Just 6 in 10 Americans believe in evolution; that number is dropping steadily among these groups.
Print and read: Machine-gunning the staff...

Quote of the Day: Feeding the Poor

From James Carroll’s thoughtfulprofile of Pope Francis in the end-of-yearNew Yorker, discussing his coming of age politically in Argentina during the “Dirty War” of the 1970s and ’80s:

The anti-Soviet paranoia of the era made it easy to see [liberation theology] as influenced more by Karl Marx than by Jesus Christ. Archbishop Hélder Câmara, of Brazil, famously captured the tension, saying, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a...

Readers’ Corner: Every Book, Ever

You always hear people complaining about there being just not enough time to read all the books out there. Just too much on the shelves to get to in this lifetime. Not the worst thing to have to complain about, of course, but still, frustrating—even if you’re not Burgess Meredith after the apocalypse.

So here’s the question: Has that always been the case? Was there a time at which one could have actually read every single book that had been written? (For the sake of this exercise, we’re limiti...

New in Theaters: ‘Lone Survivor’

With a resume that includes everything from BattleshiptoFriday Night Lights, Peter Berg isn’t the first guy you would think of to have made one of the modern era’s great combat films. But nevertheless, there he is with a directing and writing credit onLone Survivor, a tough and emotionally draining film about a doomed Navy SEAL mission in Afghanistan in 2005.

Lone Survivor opens in limited release this week, rolling out more broadly in January. My review is atFilm Journal International:

If not...

Department of Post-Holiday Reading: December 27, 2013

‘If you really hate music, you’ll love the show.’

The holiday that never ends.
The legend of ‘The 12 Days of Christmas‘.
From Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic newsletter to the John Birch Society’s anti-UN screeds: a thumbnail history of the (fake, fake, fakey fake) “War on Christmas.”
Should we still pretend Santa’s coming?
David Mamet: A very special thanks from Chinese restaurateurs everywhere.
From 1651 to 1681, the city of Boston banned Christmas.
Too many Santas.
A Christmas Eve message from Apollo 8 ....

New in Theaters: ‘August: Osage County’

Julianne Nicholson, Meryl Streep, and Julia Roberts in ‘August: Osage County’

Tracey Letts’ playAugust: Osage County was a sprawling, Eugene O’Neill-esque slab of all-American dysfunctionality that played like gangbusters on the stage. It’s just about the last thing that you would want to see Harvey Weinstein and a pack of Oscar-festooned actors get their hands on; but somehow the truncated film adaptation plays pretty smartly. It opens up the material without lessening too much of the story’s...