Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 34
March 28, 2022
TV Room: ‘Slow Horses’
The new Apple TV series Slow Horses is an adaptation of the first entry in Mick Herron’s superbly semicomic spy novels. It stars Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas and premieres this Friday. My review is at Slant: The six-episode series at times recalls The Americans, with which it shares an executive producer, Graham Yost, and …
March 27, 2022
Writer’s Desk: Maybe Change the World?
Comics legend Alan Moore (Watchmen, From Hell, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) has a writing tutorial now on BBC Maestro, which looks absolutely fantastic. Moore is an expert at weaving together numerous characters and overlapping dramatic arcs inside complex and frequently historical settings while still maintaining clarity and momentum. Not an easy feat. On top of …
March 26, 2022
Screening Room: What’s Wrong with the Oscars?
I wrote a piece in Eyes Wide Open about how the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is ensuring that it will continue to lose relevance, with a suggestion for how they can avoid the annual hand-wringing. You can read the article here: There has been an increasing divergence between what Academy voters consider …
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March 20, 2022
Writer’s Desk: Go Easy On Yourself
The lure of the writer’s life can be hard to resist. Tabitha Blankenbiller writes movingly in Catapult about its attraction and the difficulties of giving up the dream. Here she describes the recognizable zeal that overtook her in her MFA program: I devoured the foundational texts: Bird by Bird, The Liars’ Club, The Elements of …
March 19, 2022
Screening Room: ‘Windfall’
The new semi-comedic and would-be Hitchcockian thriller keeps its premise limited, which is welcome in a time of over-busy movies, but still misses the mark. Windfall is playing now on Netflix. My review is at Slant: As cinematic criminals go, the one who starts the action rolling in Charlie McDowell’s tragicomic hostage drama Windfall takes an unusually …
March 16, 2022
Reader’s Corner: ‘We Don’t Know Ourselves’
Born in Dublin in 1958, journalist Fintan O’Toole grew up in Ireland just as the country was shaking off (or, more often, not) the bonds of pre-modern theocracy that kept them in the past. His “personal history” We Don’t Know Ourselves tells how a country tried to enter the modern world without losing its soul. …
March 15, 2022
Screening Room: ‘The Outfit’
In Graham Moore’s new Hitchcockian thriller The Outfit, a shy-seeming tailor is wrapped up in a tense game of wits with a passel of paranoid gangsters. The Outfit opens in limited release this Friday. My review is at Slant: On the surface, the film’s story couldn’t be more different than that of Morten Tyldum’s The Imitation …
March 14, 2022
Screening Room: ‘Master’
Regina Hall stars in Master, a new horror film from Mariama Diallo that adds topical layers to its frights and scares. Master will be released this Friday on Amazon Prime. My review is at PopMatters: Diallos’ film, which bolts together race-conscious academic satire and haunted-house narrative, is set at the fictional Ancaster College. A Northeast …
March 13, 2022
Screening Room: ‘America, We Have a Batman Problem’
How many Batman movies is too many? It seems like we are finding out. My article, ‘America, We Have a Batman Problem’ is at Eyes Wide Open: Batman’s appeal to artists and audiences is understandable. His immense wealth, traumatized childhood, and schizophrenic relationship with the villains he hunts provides a buffet of dramatic possibilities. Batman’s …
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Writer’s Desk: Make Things Up to Get By
Writers go through hard times like anybody else. For some, their writing can then become a slog. When things are bad, many of us like to escape from ourselves. And when you are sitting alone, hour after hour, plumbing your thoughts for new insights and plot points and similes (“The fresh-risen sun painted the sky …
