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writers gone wild!
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Bright Lights Film Journal
Issue 39 | February 2003

from the editor

Take my planet ... please!

From our secure perch in the eyrie (the one just up the mountain from yours), we plan to watch the bombs fall. But viewing the global carnage that seems imminent — what writer M. P. Shiel once called "the worldwide majesty of the pyre" — surely won't take up all our time. So we need reading material — lots of it.

That's where the new issue of Bright Lights will prove as useful as, oh, a bomb shelter, or perhaps a much-welcome addition to one. This issue is filled with vitriol, which can be as feeding as fresh air, at least for awhile. Associate editor Alan Vanneman, in his ongoing miniseries devoted to Fred Astaire's films (with or without Ginger), cruelly surveys Second Chorus, the film Astaire himself hated the most. AV, as he's affectionately known around here, also has little good to say, but says it so well, about Chicago, though his heart was somewhat softened by the DVD of Mahagonny (not the Diana Ross movie; note the perverse spelling).

More barbs are hurled the way of About Schmidt by distinguished former editor of Film Heritage Tony Macklin. Bienvenidos, Tony! And another BL newbie, redoutable critic Robert Ecksel, does a TKO on One Hour Photo and Undisputed. Yet another writer new to Bright Lights, Gabrielle Wenig, smartly skewers The Hours, that dreary, overrated ode to female passivity.

Of course, no one can subsist only on piss and vinegar — trust me, we've tried — so to keep things humming in the eyrie or shelter (or, for you marginalized types, and you know who you are, the coming camps), we've included some more upbeat reads. Rob Bridgett knows almost too much about Burroughs, Gysin, Balch, and the much-remarked "structural film" and has been kind enough to offer his insights. This will make dandy reading while waiting for nuclear winter to pass. Also engaging are BL regular Bob Castle's two articles on the elusive Andy Kaufman and The Emerald Forest. Robert Keser does his usual expert wrap up, this time on Walsh's 1931 The Bowery. Scott Thill also finds much to love this go-round, snappily admiring Heavy Metal 2000 and Errol Morris' Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control. Joanne Bealy reminds us how much we all hoped Fidel would save us from you-know-who in her fond look at the recent documentary on him.

Not to be outdone, yours truly has thrown a couple of DVD reviews into the mix — homo-inflected Rocco and His Brothers and Basil Dearden's tasty Victim, along with mini-paeans to three creepfests featuring puppets or variants thereof: Pinocchio, Attack of the Puppet People, Black Devil Doll from Hell. At least you'll have reading material to accompany you on the long, long road to the latter locale.

Gary Morris

P.S. We've just about decided to discontinue the book reviews. Nobody really reads much anymore, and especially not books, and definitely not book reviews, it seems. BL is certainly popular (50,000 to 60,000 hits per week on average overall), but the hits are not high on book reviews despite our superhuman efforts at publicizing them, efforts that would make a mother (or a whore) proud. We'll still publish the kind of book review that uses the book as a springboard for a larger discussion, but not book reviews per se. Publishers and contributors, please note!

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Watch for new issues of Bright Lights every three months: August, November, February, and May. To be automatically notified when the next issue is posted, join our mailing list.

Visit the archives for hundreds of other articles, dear.

articles foyer

Fred Astaire Meets Artie Shaw in Second Chorus — New DVD also includes Ezio Pinza, Lena Horne, and Duke Ellington

The Mysterious Yearning Secretive Sad Lonely Troubled Confused "Talented" Mr. Kaufman — Andy Kaufman, Tony Clifton, Mr. Ripley, and the elisions of identity

Daddy and Father in The Emerald Forest — Civilization and its discontents

Brainpower: Billion Dollar Brain Reassessed — Ken Russell's bizarre cold war thriller features Harry Palmer, the anti-Bond

feature

An Appraisal of the Films of William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and Anthony Balch, in Terms of Recent Avant Garde Theory and History — Those crazy "cut ups" Burroughs, Gysin, and Balch restored to their rightful place in avant garde film history

palace of the perverts

Brotherlove and Motherlove: Rocco and His Brothers on DVD — These brothers may be a little too close

Sad, Angry Man: Basil Dearden's Victim on DVD — A landmark work in the queer film canon arrives on DVD

Ho-hum Intrigue in Barcelona: Gaudi Afternoon on DVD — It's little wonder this yawner didn't get a theatrical release

Treasures of Puppet Cinema — Wooden bottom boyz, teensy teens, and a Satanic blackface Charley McCarthy — these are just a few of the offerings from le cinema puppet

recent film roundabout

Watch Me While I Die: Stephen Daldry's The Hours — This "sensitive" film prefers its women dead — metaphorically or literally

Two Hour Movie (starring Robin Williams) — Robin Williams morphs again, and still nobody's laughing

Come Back, Jack! Why Schmidt Is Shit — Payne capsized an actor and a novel in this misfire

Fidel — Estela Bravo's documentary offers an affectionate, in-depth portrait of the enduring world leader who stood up to the U.S.

Undisputed: Wesley Snipes vs. Ving Rhames — Cinema meets the sweet science at the multiplex, and nobody gets knocked out

Chicago: Hollywood Does Bollywood — No one can steal like America can steal

revival room

The Bowery: Raoul Walsh's Gangs of New York — They spit! They swear! They smoke in bed!

temple of video

Weill & Brecht: The Rise and Fall of Mahagonny on DVD — Show us the way to the next pretty boy

"I Don't Know Dick": Heavy Metal 2000 on DVD — "The 'key' to the 'chamber' of immortality looks like a glowing white penis"

Fast, Cheap, & Out of Control on DVD — Of mole-rats and topiary, animal training and AI