Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 84
September 23, 2018
Writer’s Desk: Roald Dahl Suggests Eschewing Beastly Adjectives
In 1980, Roald Dahl was one of the world’s most famous authors. But when a young Jay Williams wrote a letter to Dahl asking for some writing advice, the author of James and the Giant Peach and The Witches, among other classics, took the time to write back. Here’s part of what Dahl said: I have read …
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September 16, 2018
Writer’s Desk: Listen to Hilary
Novelist and all-around brilliant prose crafter Hilary Mantel has great advice for writers, here’s a few tastes: Are you serious about this? Then get an accountant. Write a book you’d like to read. If you wouldn’t read it, why would anybody else? Don’t write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished …
September 15, 2018
Screening Room: ‘Museo’
In the latest movie from Mexican director Alonso Ruizpalacios, Gael Garcia Bernal plays Juan, a slacker in 1980s Mexico who comes up with a spectacularly bad idea: to rip off antiques from the National Museum of Anthropology. A heist comedy with melancholy and bite, Museo is playing now. My review is at Film Journal International: Juan is a layabout …
September 13, 2018
TV Room: Season 2 of ‘Ozark’
In the second season of Netflix’s Missouri noir Ozark, the Byrd family finds themselves being mired ever deeper in a cycle of moral compromise. My review is at The Playlist: Like almost every other show on Netflix, “Ozark” follows the “If Only BBC” rule. (Meaning things would have been a lot snappier if they’d lopped off two, …
September 9, 2018
Writer’s Desk: Don’t Move to New York…Yet
When he was starting out as a writer, Jonathan Franzen of St. Louis, Missouri (well, Webster Groves if we’re trying to be exact) figured New York was the kind of place that would demoralize and just eat him up. So he went to Somerville, Massachusetts, got an apartment for $300, and worked part-time. That’s when …
September 6, 2018
Screening Room: ‘Joy’ at the Venice Film Festival
Sudabeh Mortezai’s Joy, which screened at this year’s Venice Film Festival, is a harrowing story about a Nigerian woman trapped in a cycle of dependency as a sex worker in Austria. My review is at The Playlist: At the start of Sudadeh Mortezai’s downbeat trafficking tragedy “Joy” there’s some reason to think that one is about to see a story …
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September 2, 2018
Writer’s Desk: Don’t Be Self-Conscious
In Dorothea Brande’s classic 1934 guide, Becoming a Writer, she identified four of the key roadblocks afflicting most scriveners. Among the most serious was learning how to get out of your own way: Sometimes it is self-consciousness that stems the flow. Often it is the result of misapprehensions about writing, or it arises from an embarrassment …
August 26, 2018
Writer’s Desk: Don’t Worry About Art
Bill Hader wrote in the Hollywood Reporter that before he was on SNL he had a very specific and romantic idea of what a writer’s life was like: My high school girlfriend gave me a copy of Jill Krementz’s The Writer’s Desk — this collection of her beautiful portraits of writers — and that’s how I wanted …
August 24, 2018
Reader’s Corner: Autoptic Small Press Comics
My article on the 2018 Autoptic festival in Minneapolis ran in Publishers Weekly yesterday: Founded in 2013, Autoptic is a comics and independent print festival held August 18–19 at the Aria Event Center in downtown Minneapolis and at Moon Palace Books, an independent bookseller in the city…
August 23, 2018
Screening Room: ‘The Oslo Diaries’
The Oslo Diaries, a new Israeli documentary about the secret peace negotiations between Israel and the PLO that started in Norway in 1992 while the intifada raged back home, will be premiering on HBO September 13. It is getting a limited theatrical release as well. My review is at Film Journal International: The story of the …
