Tag: erotic

Dept. of Literary Commerce

On By chrisbarsantiIn BooksLeave a comment

When novelist/screenwriter/storeowner Larry McMurtry announced The Last Book Sale, he didn’t really know how many people would trek down to his retail emporium in Archer City, Texas to buy up some of the 300,000+ titles that were on offer. In the end, he reported in the New York Review of Books, “everything sold but the fiction … I was irritated to discover that I still had 30,000 novels to sell.”

The auction went well, overall, particularly in regards to this title:

The star item on the first day was typescript of some twenty-nine story-ettes of an erotic nature. These had been commissioned in the 40s by the oilman in Ardmore, Oklahoma; among the writers who wrote these trifles were Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Lawrence Durrell and others. The late G. Legman knew the oil man’s name but never revealed it. I have owned this curiosity for more than twenty years; it went to Between the Covers for $2,750.

New in Theaters: ‘360’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

Fernando Meirelles’s new drama 360 looks on the surface to be another of those broad tapestry films like Babel and Crash—set as it is in multiple cities from Denver to London to Vienna and packing enough thespian firepower for one of those off-year Woody Allen misfires. But except for an unnecessary voiceover at the opening and climax, which tries to tie a loose ribbon around what we’ve just seen, it’s not nearly so self-important or desperate. Because of that, it will also (perversely) probably be much less popular than the films mentioned above, even though there’s life practically bursting out of every pristinely shot scene…

360 is opening today in limited release but should expand around the country fairly soon, given the Oscar firepower in the cast. My full, mostly positive review is at Film Journal International.

Check out the trailer here:

New in Theaters: ‘Trishna’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, Film - NewLeave a comment

It’s a shame that Michael Winterbottom thought to set his modernized Tess of the d’Urbervilles in India instead of in England, or another Western nation. This isn’t because he doesn’t know how to use South Asia as a setting (he does) or because today’s India doesn’t provide a highly relevant analogy for many of the class issues in Thomas Hardy’s novel (it does). But by shifting Hardy’s story from England 1891 to a developing nation, it lets viewers off the hook…

Trishna is playing now in limited release, and while it definitely has its faults is still an undeniably gorgeous and effective romantic melodrama of the kind that don’t seem to get made that much anymore. My review is PopMatters.