We like sports as much as the next guy — well, the next guy who drinks cordials and reads Ronald Firbank. But why travel thousands of miles to teeter on crumbling precipices or cower in blood-drawing brambles to witness masters making magic? Readers of Bright Lights can sit in the safety of their lawn chair, La-Z-boy, or fainting couch and see the world through the jaundiced eyes of its writers. Not only the vastly overrated "real world," but those fanciful "inner worlds" that are often so much more, well, reasonable.

This issue explores a variety of exotic spaces. For the inner Austrian, there's Robert von Dassanowsky's splendid tour of The Sound of Music and the cinematic image of that much-misunderstood country. Bright Lights newbie D. L. Booth eloquently addresses "Lonesome" Leni Riefenstahl's role in inspiring the James Bond title sequences. Fans of more perverse realms can seek out Tanfer Emin-Tunc and Nichole Prescott's dazzling visit to the endlessly evocative Glen or Glenda. Equally strange, and far more irritating it seems, is the gay Jewish doc Trembling with G-d, ruthlessly unmasked by Andrew Grossman.

Those who linger in the Articles Antechamber will be well rewarded. Denmark's "star directors" get the once-over from BL virgin and Scopitone fan Jack Stevenson, who should know. Associate Editor Alan Vanneman gives it good to Spielberg via Catch Me If You Can, and lays into Fred ‘n' Bing at the Holiday Inn. Robert Keser takes us on heady romps through recent "sixties retro" movies and John Sayles' apprenticeship with Roger Corman.

Elsewhere, seekers will find Megan Ratner's finely honed prose in reviews of I Vitelloni and the documentary Stevie. Scott Thill offers a moving tribute to Gregory Peck, as well as reviews of DVDs of The Mouse That Roared and The Animatrix. BL regular Robert Ecksel thoughtfully defends Herzog's Invincible. For camp followers, there's Matt Kennedy's bitch-slapping of Die Mommie Die, while yours truly weighs in with reviews of Madame Satã, queer docs from the 2003 SFILGFF, and — for the SAS (short-attention-span) crowd, which is practically everybody at this point — a selection of brief reviews of movies new and old that, in the great Bright Lights tradition, have nothing to do with each other.