Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 2
October 19, 2025
Shameless Self-Promotion: ‘The Writer’s Year 2026’ on Sale Now
The second edition of my calendar for Workman, The Writer’s Year: 365 Days of Inspiration, Prompts, and Quotes is now on sale! Think of it when shopping for that friend or relative who has always talked about being a writer but needs a push. Or take a look when stalled on your own project (shopping …
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October 15, 2025
Screening Room: ‘Father Mother Sister Brother’
I reviewed Father Mother Sister Brother‘s U.S. premiere at the New York Film Festival for PopMatters: If there is a lesson Jim Jarmusch is trying to impart in his latest feature, Father Mother Sister Brother (and dear Lord, let’s hope he is not), it is this: Nobody knows anybody. Even when you are related. Maybe especially when …
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October 12, 2025
Writer’s Desk: Try Sounding Like Somebody Else
When Paul McCartney had trouble working through a song (hard to imagine, but yes it happened), he found simply invoking another songwriter helped limit the anxiety of production. Per American Songwriter: It frees you up,’ he writes. In the end, though you put on the mask of another artist (in the case of this song …
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October 11, 2025
Screening Room: ‘Is This Thing On?’
Bradley Cooper’s third film, Is This Thing On?, just closed out the New York Film Festival. I reviewed for Slant Magazine: When Alex (Will Arnett), the disgruntled protagonist of Bradley Cooper’s comic drama Is This Thing On?, first stalks onto the stage of New York’s Comedy Cellar, he doesn’t have a single joke to tell. All …
October 9, 2025
Screening Room: ‘The Woman in Cabin 10’
I reviewed the adaptation of Ruth Ware’s mystery The Woman in Cabin 10 for Slant Magazine: Simon Stone’s The Woman in Cabin 10 is a locked-room mystery in which Laura (Keira Knightley), an investigative reporter for The Guardian, is invited by mysterious billionaire couple Richard (Guy Pearce) and Anne (Lisa Loven Kongsli) onto their luxury yacht. The cruise …
October 5, 2025
Writer’s Desk: Your Life is Literature
In her classic graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (the book which, more than any other, introduced the graphic novel into the literary canon), Alison Bechdel uses numerous literary references (Proust, Henry James, Greek mythology) and allusions when describing her upbringing and members of her family. As Bechdel explains in the book, this was …
September 30, 2025
Screening Room: ‘Play Dirty’
I reviewed Play Dirty, which is starting on Amazon Prime tomorrow, for Slant Magazine: Donald Westlake’s Parker character, who he wrote about in many books under his penname Richard Stark, is a clever yet nasty machine of a criminal with a preternatural drive. That alone makes for a compelling screen character. But his brutishness doesn’t …
September 28, 2025
Writer’s Desk: Lie Well
When being interviewed by The Paris Review (as all the greats were, once upon a time), John Cheever was asked about how to be true to reality in fiction. His response: It seems to me that falsehood is a critical element in fiction. Part of the thrill of being told a story is the chance …
September 22, 2025
Reader’s Corner: ‘Murderland’
I reviewed Caroline Fraser’s new book Murderland: Crime and Bloodlist in the Time of Serial Killers for the Fall 2025 edition of Rain Taxi Review of Books: We don’t live in a time when a single book can create a galvanizing moment, but if we did, Caroline Fraser’s Murderland could be a Silent Spring for …
September 21, 2025
Writer’s Desk: Two Pages a Day
S.E. Hinton was just eighteen years old when her first novel, The Outsiders, was published. Though in some ways a dream come true, having that kind of success so young proved daunting. While in college, Hinton was hit with writer’s block. She thought she needed to produce another masterpiece, she told Writer’s Digest. “And I …
