Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 49
February 18, 2021
Literary Birthday: Toni Morrison
Unlike many novelists who became household names, Toni Morrison (born today in 1931 as Chloe Anthony Wofford; Anthony was her confirmation name, and led to her friends calling her “Toni”) had a professional career as well. She taught at universities like Howard and Princeton, and spent nearly two decades as a fiction editor at Random …
February 14, 2021
Writer’s Desk: Don’t Deceive Yourself
When novelist Bernard Malamud (The Natural) was asked what advice he could give to young writers, this was his reply: Write your heart out. Solid advice. Giving less than all you have is rarely going to end up well for you or the reader. Asked if he had anything else to add, Malamud said: Watch …
February 11, 2021
Screening Room: ‘The Parallax View’
The Criterion Collection Blu-ray release of 1974’s The Parallax View is a fantastic way to experience this paranoid classic that still induces shivers today. My review is at PopMatters: The screenplay reads like the kind of thing that might play at the drive-in to a half-attentive Friday night crowd. But in execution, the film more …
February 10, 2021
Literary Birthday: Bertolt Brecht
German-born playwright Bertolt Brecht (born today in 1898) always intended to agitate as well as entertain. After World War I, he was denounced for the satirical poem, “The Legend of the Dead Soldier,” in which the Kaiser demands an inconveniently dead hero soldier be exhumed and marched right back to action. Brecht’s more famous plays, …
February 7, 2021
Literary Birthday: Charles Dickens
As an ambitious young man with the kind of lower-class background that limited prospects in 19th century England, Charles Dickens (born today in 1812) was not sure what he wanted to or could become. After stints as a law clerk and comic, he landed on writing. His first piece, a fairly low-key comedic sketch titled …
Writer’s Desk: Care About the Right Things
Paul Beatty, author of the incredible novel The Sellout, wrote about some things he wished he had known when he was starting out: I felt a bit of pressure that if I wanted to be an author, I’d have be relatable, tell people what they wanted to hear, what they believed to be true about …
February 4, 2021
Screening Room: ‘Passing’
One of the more surprisingly subtle movies at Sundance Film Festival this year was Rebecca Hall’s adaptation of Passing, the lauded Harlem Renaissance novel by Nella Larsen. Passing is currently seeking distribution and should open in theaters or stream later this year. My review is at Slant: Irene (Tessa Thompson) is a black Harlem homemaker …
February 2, 2021
Screening Room: ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’
One of the most gripping films to premiere at Sundance so far this year is Judas and the Black Messiah, which details the extreme lengths the FBI and Chicago police went to in order to take down Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. Judas will be in limited theatrical release and on HBO Max starting February …
Continue reading Screening Room: ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’
Literary Birthday: Ayn Rand
Born today in 1905 in St. Petersburg, Ayn Rand (birth name: Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum) came to America in 1926 and quickly decamped for Hollywood. Even though her philosophically iconoclastic novels like Atlas Shrugged (1957) would later make her a libertarian icon, Rand started her creative career knocking out scripts for Cecil B. DeMille at $25 …
February 1, 2021
Screening Room: ‘A Glitch in the Matrix’
The new documentary by Rodney Ascher (Room 237) takes a simple idea and runs with it: What if The Matrix was real and we were all living in a computer simulation? My review of the Sundance premiere of A Glitch in the Matrix ran at The Playlist: Viewers looking for a hair-splitting Talmudic dissection of …
