Month: March 2013

New in Theaters: ‘Room 237’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

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room_237-posterStanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror film The Shining is many things: Creepy, deliberate, fiendishly jokey, way over-reliant on Jack Nicholson, and perhaps the last interesting film that Kubrick did. But to some people it was far more than that. The documentary Room 237 weaves footage from the film in with interviews from its many dedicated viewers who have analyzed every single frame…and found things there you wouldn’t believe.

My full review is at Film Journal International; here’s part of it:

If it wasn’t The Shining, it would have been something else. That’s the first conclusion reached while watching Rodney Ascher’s all-enveloping head-first dive into the world of diligent obsessives who have parsed and filleted Stanley Kubrick’s horror film for deeper meaning. Many of them go so deep into each frame that it’s a wonder the many hypotheses hauled up in their nets, wriggling and wild-eyed, weren’t even further out on the fringe. “I admit,” one interviewee says in a rare sober moment, “that I am grasping at straws”…

Room 237 is playing now in limited release.

You can watch the trailer here:

 

Now Playing: ‘Oz the Great and Powerful’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - New1 Comment

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oz-poster1Since studios are always trawling for the next great public domain property they can spin into a easily lucrative franchise, it was a matter of time before a gargantuan CGI budget was thrown at L. Frank Baum’s Oz series. It was also perhaps preordained that the resulting film would be pretty and pretty unremarkable.

My review of Oz the Great and Powerful is over at Film Racket; here’s part of it:

Sam Raimi’s big and splashy but tin-eared prequel Oz the Great and Powerful turns the spirit of the 1937 The Wizard of Oz inside out. Oz is no longer the place where misguided Earth youths like Dorothy can discover how special home really is. This time, Oz — with its expensively imagined rainbow- and candy-colored vistas of cold, computer-generated wonderment — is all things to its titular human interloper. For Oz the man, he would never think to say there’s no place like home, since dreary old black-and-white Kansas offers no home for him. They never appreciated his act back there anyway. The land of Oz, on the other hand, provides the greatest audience he’s ever seen…

Oz opened a few weeks back but is still playing pretty much everywhere. You can watch the trailer here:

 

New on DVD: ‘Les Miserables’

On By chrisbarsantiIn DVD - Film1 Comment

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lesmiserables-dvdEvery few years, Hollywood decides to go back and see whether it’s worth reviving the musical. Generally it’s well received, but then instead of getting back into the genre, they wait a few more years for the next one. So it was with 2012’s Les Miserables, an adaptation of a musical that trends ponderous on stage but comes alive under Tom Hooper’s deft direction. 

It’s available now on DVD and Blu-ray. My full review is at Film Racket; here’s part of it:

Some stories are so bulletproof that even a tuneless Russell Crowe can’t deliver a mortal wound. There are also some so prone to overwrought pathos that even a fearsomely committed Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway, working every creative muscle in their bodies, can’t quite elevate to greatness. In Tom Hooper’s labor-of-love adaptation of the workhorse musical Les Miserables, nearly all the story’s strongest and most crowd-pleasing elements are passionately brought to the fore…

You can watch the trailer here:

Media Room: Farewell to the ‘Boston Phoenix’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Publishing / MediaLeave a comment

The all-too-common story comes around again: Another venerable institution of print media is going away. After its current issue, the Boston Phoenix is going the way of Saturday mail delivery. For decades, the scrappy alternative paper was an incubator of talent and an actual alternative to what was being reported in the mainstream papers (as compared to the current crop of pseudo-alt-weeklies in most cities, which are often little more than lifestyle-and-listings rags).

bostonphoenix1Like many celebrated papers, the Phoenix had been on the slide for years, hit hard as anyone by the decimation of print media ad dollars, and less able to weather it than their corporate competition. Film critic David Edelstein, who worked there for a few years in the 1980s, wrote that “it was everything I’d ever dreamed of in a place of work —loose, quirky, but with a sense of mission”; but even he admitted to not having read it in years.

The most glowingly emotive recollection came from Charles C. Pierce, currently at Esquire and author of the great Idiot America. He writes in Grantland about his time there in the 1970s and ’80s, when pieces were cranked out in the bar and occasionally you had to write 6,000 words on lobsters.

Between the staff punch-ups, being introduced to Black Flag, and writing whatever was asked for (after all: rent), Pierce recollects what was special about his fellow, Front Page-esque ink-stained wretches:

What’s the prayer of thanksgiving for a hundred days of fellowship, drunk on words, all of us, as though there were nothing more beyond the next word, the next sentence, the next paragraph locked into place? Please say that the muse is something beyond the balance sheet, something beyond technology. Tell me that she’s alive the way she once was when you’d feel her on your shoulder as one word slammed into the other, and the story got itself told, and you came to the end and realized, with wonderment and awe, that the story existed out beyond you, and that it had chosen you, and you were its vehicle, and the grinning muse had the last laugh after all.

Writing for the rent isn’t always a grind; sometimes it’s a benediction.

New in Theaters: ‘My Brother the Devil’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

My Brother the Devil

mybrother-posterSally El Hosaini’s debut film My Brother the Devil  is a drama about two brothers in an Egyptian immigrant family living in a hardscrabble part of London who have to fight everything from homophobia to the gangs on the street to each other.

My review is at Film Journal International:

As older brothers go, Rashid (James Floyd) is not so bad. Although he’s given to arbitrarily punching and berating his younger teenage brother Mo (Fady Elsayed), as would be expected, he also keeps an eye out for the kid and doesn’t want him to follow in his footsteps. The streets outside their small high-rise flat in Hackney are filled with temptations that have already lured Rashid far astray by the time the film begins.  Although the conflict that this sets up for the brothers is hardly new territory, Hosaini’s take on it veers into some unexpected complications that keep the drama crackling…

You can see the trailer here:

New in Books: ‘Invisible War’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, WorldLeave a comment

invisiblearmies1Earlier this year, up-and-coming military writer and think-tank-er (if that’s a term) Max Boot published a pretty incredible piece of writing. Invisible Wars: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present is one of the best, most thoughtful books on military history for a general readership to come along in some time. (Even if calling itself “epic” in the subtitle seems a touch hubristic, though correct.)

Don’t let its length and breadth of scope throw you, this is as readable as any magazine essay, and definitely worth your time. My review is available at PopMatters:

In this grand survey of what one could term irregular warfare, spanning from the Jewish revolt against the Romans in 66 AD and earlier to the present day, Boot shows that a good reading of the historical record leaves little room for old stereotypes. He has no truck with the romantic heavy-breathing that writers of his ilk can slip into when talking about generals and battles. He also doesn’t waste time in this book repeating the old army-groupie saw about how some particular war might have been won if only the media/politicians/concerned civilians had just gotten out of the way and let the guys with guns take care of the problem…

You can read an excerpt from the book here.

New on DVD: ‘Zero Dark Thirty’

On By chrisbarsantiIn DVD - Film, WorldLeave a comment

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zerodarkthirtydvdBetween the various Navy SEAL books and films flooding the market, Mark Bowden’s riveting The Finish, and the all the video games crafted around Special Ops strike teams, you’d think commando fatigue would be setting in. That wasn’t the case with Zero Dark Thirty, which comes out on DVD and Blu-ray today.

My full review is at Film Journal International:

Zero Dark Thirty (military jargon for a half-hour after midnight) is an epic take on the Central Intelligence Agency’s hunt for the 9/11 mastermind. Working on a dusty Afghanistan forward operating base, Maya (Jessica Chastain) then shifts to analyzing the intelligence from the American embassy in Islamabad… As the casualties mount and the years tick by, the shell-shocked Maya’s worldview narrows down to a millimeter-wide slit that recognizes only her quarry. The film recounts the agonizingly particular step-by-step analysis of baffling and contradictory information. It just as convincingly relays the sickening sense of urgency in the hunt, a fear that after all the bombings and rhetoric and fear and war, their quarry may simply get away. “We are failing… Bring me people to kill,” seethes Maya’s CIA superior…

You can see the trailer here:

New in Theaters: ‘Spring Breakers’

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spring-breakers-poster-1The new Harmony Korine film takes his kids-on-the-edge theme from Kids and updates it for the new millennium, with a batch of former Disney Channel actors playing college girls who go wild in Florida before falling in with a rapper/drug lord played by James Franco.

Spring Breakers opened in limited release Friday; my review is at PopMatters:

At first, it looks like Korine is angling for a subversive take on the Girls Gone Wild and MTV spring-break subgenre of long-form videos where barely dressed girls and jock dudes dance on beaches or boats. But as the film toggles between raucous Skrillex-scored party footage and moodier scenes with woozy voiceovers and thrumming music by Cliff Martinez, we see the aim is not so deep. We see instead, what we know from every other youth-in-bloom saga: there’s a void of nihilistic appetite beneath the loudly appealing surfaces…

You can watch the trailer here:

 

New in Theaters: ‘Ginger and Rosa’

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In Sally Potter’s new film, a pair of teenage girls navigate the complexities of love, poetry, jazz, boys, bad dads, and The Bomb in 1962 London bohemia. Ginger and Rosa opened in limited release on Friday; my full review is at PopMatters:

The setting is 1962, London. It’s a grey place, where Ginger (Elle Fanning) and Rosa (Alice Englert) find solace in one another and in jazz records. These bohemians have been best friends since childhood. Their mothers gave birth in adjoining hospital beds just as an atomic bomb was blasting Hiroshima off the planet’s surface. As the film juxtaposes the mushroom cloud and its aftermath with the mothers screaming in childbirth, we get the idea that the girls are born into a world of destruction…

You can watch the trailer here:

Writer’s Room: Neil Gaiman’s ‘Secret Freelancer Knowledge’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, Omnicultural2 Comments

Gaiman_MakeGoodArtOne day we’ll get to a world where all writers make their living by delivering killer commencement speeches and then publishing said talks as nifty little standalone editions that might be considered self-help-y where it not for the name attached. Case in point: Neil Gaiman.

Last May, Gaiman gave the commencement address at Philadelphia’s The University of the Arts. He was everything one could hope for: wistful, self-deprecating, helpful, and occasionally inspirational. He also understood that what all those soon-to-graduate artists wanted is help and advice that would tell them: How Do I Do What It Is That I Want To Do?

A few notes from Gaiman’s speech where he lays out the attractions and trials of the freelance life, along with some “secret freelancer knowledge”:

  • “A freelance life, a life in the arts, is sometimes like putting messages in bottles, on a desert island, and hoping that someone will find one of your bottles and open it and read it, and put something in a bottle that will wash its way back to you: appreciation, or a commission, or money, or love. And you have to accept that you may put out a hundred things for every bottle that winds up coming back.“
  • “And when things get tough, this is what you should do. Make good art. I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before? Make good art.“
  • “People keep working, in a freelance world, and more and more of today’s world is freelance, because their work is good, and because they are easy to get along with, and because they deliver the work on time. And you don’t even need all three. Two out of three is fine. People will tolerate how unpleasant you are if your work is good and you deliver it on time. They’ll forgive the lateness of the work if it’s good, and if they like you. And you don’t have to be as good as the others if you’re on time and it’s always a pleasure to hear from you.“

Full transcript here.

The speech is going to be published this May in an edition designed by Chip Kidd.

Reader’s Corner: The David Foster Wallace Syllabus

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books2 Comments

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What gift did the Internets just deliver? A 1994 syllabus from the late, great David Foster Wallace that will make you wish the man had taught at your college. From my post over at Re:Print:

Wallace_Syllabus_001_large[Wallace’s] syllabus for the Fall 1994 intro class “English 102-Literary Analysis: Prose Fiction” eschews the books we’re all used to from college English lit classes (Zora Neale Hurston, Gabriel Garcia Marquez) in favor of an eclectic mix of mass-market fiction, ranging from Stephen King’s Carrie to Jackie Collins’ Rock Star…

New in Theaters: ‘Greedy Lying Bastards’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - New, WorldLeave a comment

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It’s hard to think of a richer subject for these anti-scientific, fear-mongering times. So there was hope that the new documentary Greedy Lying Bastards, which opened yesterday in limited release, would be going for the jugular. Does it? Yes and no.

My full review is at Film Journal International:

As Craig Scott Rosebraugh’s film ably shows, there are many “charlatans” and deniers who make a decent living confusing the issue of climate change, with surprisingly receptive audiences. One of the stranger moments in Greedy Lying Bastards is footage of Tim Philips, president of the oil-industry-funded lobbying group Americans for Prosperity and seemingly just another bland Beltway spokesman in a suit, being greeted at a speaking engagement like a reanimated Elvis. No such excitement will be waiting for Rosebraugh’s film, an earnest but wholly unimpressive bit of advocacy cinema which fails to tap into the dark seam of anger that its title implies…

You can watch the trailer here:

 

Reader’s Corner: When Burroughs Wrote to Capote

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Poloroids of William S. Burroughs and Truman Capote, taken by Andy Warhol.

The last few years have seen a continuing Truman Capote renaissance, with two competing movies on how he wrote In Cold Blood, and new Modern Library editions of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Complete Stories, and Other Voices, Other Rooms.

Next to all the celebration, though, there is also a reexamination of Capote both as crime writer (many of In Cold Blood‘s assertions having now been brought into question or completely debunked) and as a fictionalist.

capotestoriesMichael Bourne has a perceptive take on Capote’s sad legacy at The Millions. His viewpoint on the the early promise and sparkle of Capote’s (calling him “American literature’s beautiful child”) that later fizzled out in self-parody (much as the man himself seemed to), has the man’s legacy dead to rights.

More curiously damning is this letter that Capote received in 1970 from William S. Burroughs (included in the letters collection Rub Out the Words and dug up by the good people at Letters of Note). The two men may have shared a few things—being openly gay writers in a much more homophobic time and possessed of a certain aristocratic disdain—but it’s clear that Old Bull Lee had little but contempt for Capote, then still being showered in praise for In Cold Blood, while the murderous surrealist from St. Louis toiled away on the margins:

…I have in line of duty read all your published work. The early work was in some respects promising—I refer particularly to the short stories. You were granted an area for psychic development. It seemed for a while as if you would make good use of this grant. You choose instead to sell out a talent that is not yours to sell. You have written a dull unreadable book which could have been written by any staff writer on the New Yorker—(an undercover reactionary periodical dedicated to the interests of vested American wealth)…

You have betrayed and sold out the talent that was granted you by this department. That talent is now officially withdrawn. Enjoy your dirty money. You will never have anything else. You will never write another sentence above the level of In Cold Blood. As a writer you are finished. Over and out. Are you tracking me? Know who I am? You know me, Truman. You have known me for a long time. This is my last visit.

It was prophetic. Capote never finished another book after In Cold Blood. He dabbled with Answered Prayers for almost two decades but never finished it.

Note also this line from Burroughs, which evinces a surprising attitude of creative romanticism from the old buzzard: “You choose instead to sell out a talent that is not yours to sell.” This is a warning that should be given to every young writer about their gift: Use it well and wisely when you have the chance, because the world doesn’t look kindly on those who squander such things.

Writer’s Room: Getting Hunter to Work

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, Nota BeneLeave a comment

greatsharkhuntMost writers know the drill: Get an assignment, turn it in roughly on time and in generally the shape that it was desired. If not: kill fee, if you’re lucky. This is how it works.

Unless you were Hunter S. Thompson. In 1970, Hunter convinced the long-defunct Scanlan’s Monthly that “somebody” needed to cover the Kentucky Derby, dammit. S0 off he went to the races, with an expense account and a vision.  In Michael McCambridge’s excellent piece for Grantland on the epochal article that resulted, he provides a few illustrative details of what was required for Scanlan’s afterward for editor Warren Hinckle to actually get any workable copy out of Hunter. To wit:

… [according to Hinckle] within a couple of days (“as soon as he could walk”), Thompson flew to Manhattan, “where we locked him down for five days in a room in the Royalton Hotel, just up 44th Street from the Scanlan’s office in an abandoned ballroom above an Irish bar a block from Times Square.”

The story didn’t come easily. “I would lie in the bathtub at this weird hotel,” said Thompson. “I had a suite with everything I wanted — except I couldn’t leave…. They were sending copy boys and copy girls and people down every hour to see what I had done, and the pressure began to silently build like a dog whistle kind of scream. You couldn’t hear it but it was everywhere.”

… [Scanlan’s copy boy Harvey Cohen] kept Thompson “supplied with cigarettes, Heinekens and Chivas. When production slowed, Harvey would seize the time and rip pages out of Hunter’s notebook” and relay them to the Scanlan’s office, where they were read by managing editor Donald Goddard, and then sent by fax to Hinckle in San Francisco.

We should all be so lucky.