Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 60
June 28, 2020
Writer’s Desk: Move to Paris
Sometimes you just want to chuck it all and move to Paris. That’s how travel writer Edwina Hart ended up there after reading Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast in her twenties (a dangerous thing to do when young and unmoored from adult responsibilities). She got an attic studio apartment in Montemarte and proceeded to fall in …
June 27, 2020
Reader’s Corner: Faulkner and the Trumps
Late next month, Simon & Schuster will publish Too Much and Never Enough, the inside story of the creation of Donald Trump from a close source: his niece Mary. Unlike her uncle, Mary seemed to enjoy school, earning several degrees in psychology. While attending Tufts University, she studied William Faulkner, whose novels became a favorite. …
June 26, 2020
Screening Room: Docs to Watch Out For
Last week’s online edition of the AFI DOCS film festival featured premieres of several documentaries that will be worth keeping your eyes peeled for later in the year when they hit broader release. I reviewed two of them for The Playlist. 9to5: The Story of a Movement (pictured above): “Even in our supposedly more enlightened …
June 23, 2020
Screening Room: ‘Irresistible’
In Jon Stewart’s new political comedy, two high-powered political consultants turn a tiny mayoral race in Wisconsin into an absurd battle for national attention. Irresistible opens this week in VOD. My review is at Slant: The film doesn’t focus its ire on Trump, conservatives, and the like, but rather on the cable news and consultant …
June 21, 2020
Writer’s Desk: Give It Time
In 1948, Evelyn Waugh sent a letter to Thomas Merton in which he offered the following bit of advice from one writer to another: Never send off any piece of writing the moment it is finished. Put it aside. Take on something else. Go back to it a month later and re-read it. Examine each …
June 19, 2020
Screening Room: ‘John Lewis: Good Trouble’
To celebrate Juneteenth, and also to act as a kind of counter-programming for tomorrow’s Trump rally, Dawn Porter’s new documentary about civil rights legend John Lewis (who will be also the subject of a new biography by Jon Meacham coming out this fall) is having a free screening in Tulsa today. John Lewis: Good Trouble …
Screening Room: ‘Wasp Network’
In the 1990s, the Castro regime sent several operatives to infiltrate the Cuban-American emigre community in Miami. Olivier Assayas’ Wasp Network is a fictionalization of that somewhat forgotten sidenote of the post-Cold War years. Wasp Network is available on Netflix today. My review is at Slant: Based on Fernando Morais’s 2011 book The Last Soldiers of …
June 15, 2020
Screening Room: ‘Babyteeth’
Shannon Murphy’s stylized melodrama captures a terminally ill teenager raging against the dying of the light. Babyteeth opens this week. My review is at Slant: Babyteeth neatly threads the needle between tragedy and comedy. The film follows Milla (Eliza Scanlen), a teenage cancer patient who’s mostly given up on life when Moses (Toby Wallace), a …
June 14, 2020
Writer’s Desk: Speaking Out Loud
When David Sedaris is trying to determine what works or not in his writing, he test-drives it in front of an audience: Sedaris says that he has usually rewritten a story about eight times before he tries it in front of an audience, where he ends up reading it and making tweaks up to 40 …
June 8, 2020
Screening Room: Human Rights Watch Film Festival
The 2020 edition of the always worthwhile Human Rights Watch Film Festival is going virtual this year, like everything else. It’s a shorter than normal list of documentaries, but still contains some sharp and unforgettable work. The movies range from Coded Bias (pictured above), which studies the ways white male coders can embed prejudice in …
Continue reading Screening Room: Human Rights Watch Film Festival
