Tag: Donald Trump

Screening Room: ‘Where’s My Roy Cohn?’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - New, Film-Documentary, politicsLeave a comment
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Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn (Sony Pictures Classics)

How do you get from the McCarthy era to the Trump presidency via one black-hearted individual? Find out in the new documentary Where’s My Roy Cohn?, opening next week.

My review is at Slant:

For those wanting to stare into the face of misery personified, look no further than Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary about “legal executioner” Roy Cohn. From the opening scenes of Cohn whispering in Joseph McCarthy’s ear in 1954 to clips of him denying his homosexuality and AIDS diagnosis not long before his death in 1986, the man’s hollow eyes show nothing but rancor. His mouth is pursed tight, waiting to launch the next poisoned barb. He looks like a man devoured by hate, a third-string movie villain transported to real life…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘The Brink’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - New, Film-Documentary, politicsLeave a comment

In Alison Klayman’s new documentary The Brink, she follows ex-Trump strategist and burgeoning nationalist power broker as he trots the globe fomenting populist revolt.

The Brink just opened in limited release and should be expanding soon. My review is at Slant:

To paraphrase Fran Lebowitz on Donald Trump, conservative firebrand Steve Bannon is a nitwit’s idea of an intellectual. A semi-book-smart gadfly with a decent sense of humor, the vainglorious Bannon thinks in century-spanning terms that always involve him and his cohorts standing heroically at the barricades defending Western civilization. This portrait of Bannon comes through with sharp clarity in Alison Klayman’s immersive documentary on the Republican party’s new Lee Atwater—or maybe their Sun-Tzu, as Bannon would likely prefer…

Screening Room: ‘Monsters’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - RepertoryLeave a comment

My essay “Monsters Built the Mexico Wall Trump Never Will” was published at Eyes Wide Open:

What kind of movie will best describe the Trump presidency for future generations? Will it be high-minded drama replete with sarcastic asides, soaring speeches, and a grand view of the arc of history ala Aaron Sorkin? Maybe trashy overkill gutter-punk in the vein of John Waters or Bobcat Goldthwait would be more appropriate. How about a monster movie? Better yet, one with an extremely obvious yet potent visual metaphor that predated the current catastrophe? If the latter, then 2010’s Monsters might be a good place to start…

Reader’s Corner: LeVar Burton Has No Time for Trump, Kanye

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, Publishing / MediaLeave a comment
LeVar Burton has a podcast, too

LeVar Burton, who taught–and continues to teach–generations of kids and adults about the importance of literacy through Reading Rainbow and now LeVar Burton Reads, had something to tell Vice about certain celebrities who proudly proclaim their ignorance of books:

I got something to say about those people like Donald Trump and Kanye West who self profess themselves as non-readers … I ain’t got time for anyone like that anymore. I ain’t got time for the Kaynes or the Trumps who don’t read … Go somewhere else with that nonsense and take that bullshit someplace else. For as long as people like that will continue to publicly profess this idea to a generation of people, I’ll be standing here for literature until my very last breath. I repeat, until my last very dying breath. I’ll stand for it always in the living world. That’s where I’m at right now as far as those two and anyone like them.

Reader’s Corner: Defend Your Bookstore

On By chrisbarsantiIn BooksLeave a comment
I hate London Nazis.

This past weekend was business as usual at Bookmarks, Britain’s “largest socialist bookshop.” Then the fascists showed up.

According to The Guardian, “the store was attacked by far-right protesters wearing masks who wrecked displays and ripped up books and magazines.”

Also:

The campaign group Stand Up To Racism, speaking on behalf of Bookmarks, said some of the attackers carried placards reading “British Bolshevik Cult” and that one of those involved wore a Donald Trump mask.

Nobody was hurt. This time.

Per Shelf Awareness, “The store will host a free, open-to-the-public ‘solidarity event’ next Saturday, with several authors slated to appear.” Anybody who is in or nearby London, loves books and free discourse, and hates Nazis would be well-served to stop by and show support.

Nota Bene: Impeaching the People

On By chrisbarsantiIn BooksLeave a comment

From Andrew Sullivan’s essay on two new books about the impeachment process:

The founders knew that without a virtuous citizenry, the Constitution was a mere piece of paper and, in Madison’s words, “no theoretical checks — no form of government can render us secure.” Franklin was blunter in forecasting the moment we are now in: He believed that the American experiment in self-government “can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.” You can impeach a president, but you can’t, alas, impeach the people. They voted for the kind of monarchy the American republic was designed, above all else, to resist; and they have gotten one…

Screening Room: ‘The Final Year’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - Festivals, Film-DocumentaryLeave a comment

The Final Year, which tracks Barack Obama’s foreign policy team in his presidency’s pell-mell final year as the shadow of the Trump victory looms darkly, is opening in wider release this week.

My review is at Film Journal International:

…[Director Greg Barker] highlights three key players: chief speechwriter Ben Rhodes, United Nations ambassador Samantha Powers and Secretary of State John Kerry. Although Obama offers a few to-the-camera remarks, for the most part he remains in the background as the leader whose policies these three power players need to mesh with their own beliefs and wrestle into some coherent and actionable policy. Powers and Kerry perform their jobs with such a sense of can-do urgency that even when the frequently hubristic Rhodes says that they “felt like a pickup team…to change the world,” one’s eyes don’t even necessarily roll…

Here’s the trailer:

 

Reader’s Corner: ‘Fire and Fury’

On By chrisbarsantiIn BooksLeave a comment

My review of Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, currently on backorder at bookstores around the country and potentially turning into the president’s Harvey Weinstein moment, is up now at PopMatters:

Here we are, just 12 months into the presidency of Donald J. Trump and already just about every writer in the nation has sharpened their pens into knives. But despite the reams of Trump denunciations that have hit screens and bookshelves, none will probably be seen to have cut as deep as Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury…

Screening Room: ‘The Final Year’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - Festivals, Film-DocumentaryLeave a comment

The documentary The Final Year, which tracks Barack Obama’s foreign policy team in the pell-mell last year of his presidency, opens this week in limited release for Oscar consideration.

My review is at Film Journal International:

…[Director Greg Barker] highlights three key players: chief speechwriter Ben Rhodes, United Nations ambassador Samantha Powers and Secretary of State John Kerry. Although Obama offers a few to-the-camera remarks, for the most part he remains in the background as the leader whose policies these three power players need to mesh with their own beliefs and wrestle into some coherent and actionable policy. Powers and Kerry perform their jobs with such a sense of can-do urgency that even when the frequently hubristic Rhodes says that they “felt like a pickup team…to change the world,” one’s eyes don’t even necessarily roll…

Here’s the trailer:

 

Reader’s Corner: Bannon, Trump, and the ‘Devil’s Bargain’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, politicsLeave a comment

As the D.C. news circuit scrambles to dissect the court turmoil in the White House to see how long Steve Bannon may or may not survive, it’s instructive to read Joshua Green’s Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency.

My review is at PopMatters:

Years from now—assuming that books are still being published and we aren’t just wandering dazedly through a burnt-out cultural void of screaming memes—the books written about the 2016 US Presidential election will fill even more shelves than those written about Watergate. They will discuss the strategies, the major players, and the trendlines that led to this decision or that. Some books will also analyze how, in 2016, a fury-fueled flim-flam man broke almost every rule about presidential campaigns and became the most powerful man in the world. Those authors will argue with good reason that 2016 was the election that changed everything…

Weekend Reading: March 10, 2017

On By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

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Reader’s Corner: Orwell and Trump

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My article “Forget Orwell: No Book Will Prepare You for the Trump Years” was published earlier this week at Medium:

After Donald Trump’s human smokescreen Kellyanne Conway announced that the president was simply presenting the world with “alternative facts,” the connection was quickly made to George Orwell’s 1984. There is good reason for this. (And while one should be happy for any resulting increase in sales of the book, we shouldn’t presume that it will be any guide to the remaining years of the Trump presidency. More on that below.)…

Reading for 2017

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Screening Room: ’13th’ and Trump

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13th-poster

Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th lays out in stark terms the history of black oppression in America after emancipation, from Klan terrorism to the modern carceral state. It also places this history in very current terms, tying the reactionary racism of Donald Trump’s movement to the segregationist battle against the civil rights movement.

13th is playing in some theaters and is also available on Netflix. My review is at Eyes Wide Open:

Slavery was outlawed by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Even though America spent its early centuries underpinning its economy with slavery in the South (captive labor) and the North (trading in both those slaves and the goods they produced), after the nations bloodiest conflict, it finally listened to Lincolns better angels and made forced labor a thing of the past. That remains true except, as Ava Duvernay’s spring-coiled and crucial documentary 13th makes painfully clear, for one exception…

Here’s the trailer:

Weekend Reading: November 11, 2016

On By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium Gatherum, politics, World1 Comment

 

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