Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 185

Department of Weekend Reading: December 20, 2013

Is Kim Stanley Robinson our greatest political writer? And what does that even mean?
When drone strikes go wrong.
Trying to readMoby-Dick; and other Google Glass misadventures.
Have a drink, swipe a mug.
Here’s where the uninsured live; mostly Texas, it appears.
India’s likely new prime minister has some very nasty skeletons in that closet.
Turning rednecks into greenbacks; the cultural divides of reality TV.
Back in 2011, tens of thousands signed a petition to cancel the Kardashians.
One spooky Scot...

In Movies: National Film Registry

‘Decasia’; now, and for eternity

Every year, the Library of Congress selects another 25 films “deemed to be culturally, aesthetically or historically important” for adding to the National Film Registry, in order to preserve them for future generations. The 2013 list is nice and eclectic, ranging from Tarantino (Pulp Fiction) to musicals (Mary Poppins), short documentaries, and experimental one-offs (Decasia, a found-footage compilation showing the decay of film stock over time).

Here’s the new...

New in Theaters: ‘Her’

Joaquin Phoenix in ‘Her’: Loving what’s not there

Everyone always says that they justlovethis phone or that gadget. So it makes sense that Spike Jonze’s visionary but powerfully naive new sci-fi rom-comHer would take that romantic displacement to its ultimate conclusion by having a guy (Joaquin Phoenix) fall in love with his new operating system (voiced by Scarlett Johansson).

Her opens this week. My review is atFilm Racket:

In the future, computers will be not only our friends and lovers, they’...

New in Theaters: ‘Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues’

‘Anchorman 2′! Is back!

The rule of comedy sequels is not a strong one; witness everything fromGhostbusters 2 to The Hangover 3. Nevertheless, Adam McKay and Will Ferrell dared the fates by going back to their 2004 cult oddityAnchorman, the single most surreal comedy to hit American theaters since Monty Python, and seeing if they could resuscitate the magic. This time, instead of 1970s local-news, they’re doing an extended riff on early CNN.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues opens everywhere to...

Department of Awards: Online Film Critics Society

Chiwetel Ejiofor in ’12 Years a Slave’

The Online Film Critics Society, an international group of cinematic scriveners who are kind enough to count me in their number, today announced our awards for the best films of 2013. Not surprisingly, Steve McQueen’s12 Years a Slaveand Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravitytook the lead, with five and three wins, respectively, and Cate Blanchett deservedly took another best actress win for her work in Blue Jasmine.Variety reported it here.

Cate Blanchett in ‘Blue Jasmi...

Writers’ Corner: James Baldwin and Preaching

James Baldwin didn’t start out as a writer; but then, none of us do. Before he put pen to paper, he had a different calling: preacher.

In this interview fromThe Paris Review, he explains the difference:

When you are standing in the pulpit, you must sound as though you know what you’re talking about. When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But s...

Department of Weekend Reading: December 13, 2013

Utility spokesman says new clean-air push will “kill thousands of jobs“, as compared to the thousands of actual lives it will save.
Living in a cul-de-sac is the worst.
When gutless wins.
Boehner’s sick of it.
Planned vs. organic urban cores in the Central Florida downtown smackdown.
How to get ahead in school: be attractive.
How Sweden ruined a perfectly good school system through privatization.
Julie Ruin and the return of Kathleen Hanna (aka Mrs. Ad Rock).
It begins with the Golden Globes: 12 Year...

New in Theaters: ‘American Hustle’

Christian Bale, Amy Adams, and Bradley Cooper strut in ‘American Hustle’

After last year’s wildly popular but kinda underwhelming mental-illness romantic comedySilver Linings Playbook, David O. Russell changes things up with the sprawling, polyestered, multi-Golden Globe-nominated, 1970s scam flickAmerican Hustle. Not a bad switchup, all things considered

American Hustle opens this weekend in limited release. My review is atFilm Racket:

Somehow there’s never been a big movie about Abscam, the am...

New in Theaters: ‘Saving Mr. Banks’

Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) cajoles ‘Mary Poppins’ author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) in ‘Saving Mr. Banks’

It’s been a while since Emma Thompson has been a fixture at the Academy Awards; her last win was in 1996 for writing the screenplay of Ang Lee’sSense and Sensibility. That might change now, with her incomparable work in the new Disney biopicSaving Mr. Banks, where Thompson plays the icyMary Poppins author P.L. Travers as she gets humbugged by Walt Disney (Tom Hanks), who’s intent on making...

Writer’s Corner: Doris Lessing (1919-2013)

Born in Iran, raised in Rhodesia, and schooled in London, novelist Doris Lessing was a Nobel Prize-winner, inescapably brilliant, unclassifiable, and a world-class grump. Lessing passed away in mid-November and would have hated all the fuss being made about it. Not because she was necessarily modest, she just didn’t see the point.

There are many writers, particularly those who have received as many plaudits as she had over the years, who would have reacted with much more self-puffery than she...