Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 66
February 25, 2020
Screening Room: ‘Greed’
In Michael Winterbottom’s new satire, Steve Coogan plays a morality-challenged fast-fashion billionaire whose sixtieth birthday bash becomes a Felliniesque disaster. Greed is opening this week in limited release. My review is atSlant: Steve Coogan plays the discount billionaire villain as a more malevolent variation on the smarmy selfish bastard he’s polished to a sheen in …
February 23, 2020
Writer’s Desk: Be Organized
We all know the stereotype of the absent-minded artist. Brilliant at illuminating the furthest reaches of the human soul but can’t remember where she put her glasses. It is a stereotype but a true one, nonetheless. Some think that artists have to be absent-minded because they have to keep space in their mind and their …
February 16, 2020
Writer’s Desk: Find a Safe Space
The life of a writer is usually a precarious one, for those of us who make their living solely on their wits and their pen. The lucky ones do not have to hustle all day and night from one assignment and check to the next, but are actually employed to write as part of their …
February 9, 2020
Writer’s Desk: Don’t Just Write Your Story, Live Your Story
Molly Antopol, author ofThe UnAmericans, once said that to her writing and reading can be acts of generosity: One of the main reasons I read—and definitely why Iwrite—is to try to see the world through someone else’s eyes. To try to imagine what life is like for someone who’s different from myself … I’m forced …
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February 7, 2020
Screening Room: ‘Birds of Prey’
My review of the new DC Comics movieBirds of Prey, which is playing now everywhere, was published at Slant Magazine: The self-consciously ornate subtitle for Birds of Prey—And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn—lays out the reason for this film’s existence far better than the first 45 minutes or so of jumbled exposition that …
February 4, 2020
Reader’s Corner: ‘The Ballot Box’
Call it karma. The day after the pundit class wrapped itself in feverish discussion of Iowa’s Democratic primary and a malfunctioning vote-tabulating app (the hanging chad of the new decade), my new book was published. The Ballot Box: 10 Presidential Elections That Changed American Historyhas one of those self-explanatory titles. You get the gist. It’s …
February 2, 2020
Writer’s Desk: Have No Fear
In the speech that he gave accepting the Christopher Hitchens award, George Packer noted how he and Hitch didn’t always get along and actually disagreed quite violently on the Iraq War. Hitch thought it was a noble cause, while Packer (as covered in his incredible bookThe Assassin’s Gate) knew from on-the-ground reporting that it was …
January 29, 2020
Reader’s Corner: William Gibson’s ‘Agency’
In William Gibson’s latest novelAgency, a prequel / sequel toThe Peripheral (there are multi-dimensional timelines, it gets complicated), there is an alternate world where Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election. But that’s not even the main story. My review is atPopMatters: It is no insult to William Gibson to say that some of his best …
January 26, 2020
Writer’s Desk: Always Have a Project
In his latest dispatch for theNew Yorker, John McPhee ruminated on all the many many projects he had taken up and never gotten to over the course of his (what looks like to the rest of us mortals) wildly productive writing life. Trying to put a more positive gloss on a situation that had long …
January 25, 2020
Screening Room: ‘Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets’
My review of the Ross brothers’ awesome new quasi-documentary (docufiction?) Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, which just screened at the Sundance Film Festival, ran atThe Playlist: An improvised Eugene O’Neill ensemble barfly riff wrapped in the construct of a seemingly fly-on-the-wall documentary about the last day at an off-Strip Las Vegas bar, “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets” …
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