Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 31
July 14, 2022
Screening Room: ‘The Gray Man’
Netflix’s next big bet to produce $200 million blockbusters to stream on the small screen is the Russo brothers’ The Gray Man, an assassin-versus-assassin thriller with Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling that shows a sharp drop-off in quality and imagination from the Russos’ MCU movies. The Gray Man streams on Netflix tomorrow. My review is …
July 10, 2022
Writer’s Desk: Try Anything
Sometimes you just cannot get started. It all feels wrong. You have a story, a poem, a whole book even, inside you. But it won’t come out. Don DeLillo was once asked by writer Kae Tempest about the accrual of a certain kind of detail: In your novels, there is a noticing of the everyday …
July 3, 2022
Writer’s Desk: Everything is Material
Gertrude Stein tended to be more known for who she was (holder of literary salons, quotable intellectual roustabout, knower of the famous) than what she wrote. This always bothered her. She would be irritated that today her profile remains primarily that of an expatriate rebel. But while much of her writing was high-minded experimentation, she …
July 1, 2022
Reader’s Corner: Of Punks, Relationships, and American Anxieties
In my latest graphic novel round-up for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, I covered three new titles which excel in very different ways: Nick Drnaso’s Acting Class is another entry in his series of blank-faced, haunting, Lynchian nightmares about American anxiety. James Spooner’s The High Desert is a thoughtful, cutting memoir about growing up a black punk …
Continue reading Reader’s Corner: Of Punks, Relationships, and American Anxieties
June 30, 2022
Screening Room: ‘The Forgiven’
The latest arch provocation from John Michael McDonagh (The Guard, Calvary), an adaptation of Lawrence Osborne’s novel The Forgiven, opens in limited release tomorrow. My review is at PopMatters: David (Ralph Fiennes) and Jo (Jessica Chastain), are a nightmarish pair who can barely see past their own privilege to stop complaining. “Very picturesque, I suppose, …
June 27, 2022
Reader’s Corner: ‘Secret City’
My review of Secret City, one of the summer’s most rewarding history titles, is at PopMatters: The difference between America’s capital and its other cities, according to James Kirchick’s densely detailed, panoramic, and eye-opening new history Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, was that life in the federal seat of power during the Cold …
June 26, 2022
Writer’s Desk: Don’t Embellish
It’s easy to write more than you need to. As we come up with stories, our minds quickly fill up with material (setting, mood, backstory, interesting tangents) and it is hard not to want to put it all down on the page. You know who does not do that? James Patterson. He’s an expert plotter …
June 19, 2022
Writer’s Desk: Embrace the Unreal
One of the trickier and continually undiscovered American writers, Percival Everett specializes in a particularly elevated satirical fiction. More than a commentator on contemporary mores, he is also funny. A hard trick to pull off. From I Am Not Sidney Poitier: People, my friend, are worse than anybody. In this interview, Everett talks about how …
June 17, 2022
TV Room: ‘Who Killed Vincent Chin?’
The documentary Who Killed Vincent Chin?, even though it was Oscar-nominated, is close to impossible to find right now. Fortunately, you can see it next Monday on most PBS stations. My review is at PopMatters: Recently restored and added to the National Film Registry, Who Killed Vincent Chin? was originally aired on PBS in 1989 and is …
June 16, 2022
Screening Room: ‘American Pain’
Darren Foster’s new documentary, American Pain, tells the story of a couple of silver-spoon bros from Florida who decided to become drug kingpins. Only, the legal kind who operated in a strip mall. My review of American Pain, which just premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, ran at The Playlist: If there hadn’t been a …
