actor profiles

animation

book reviews

director profiles

documentaries

experimental &
avant garde

exploitation

film festivals

film noir

film reviews

gay & lesbian

hong kong films

horror

interviews

japanese cinema

music & musicals

silent film

tranny cinema
 
- - - - - -
To be automatically notified when the next issue is posted, join our mailing list.

writers gone wild!
Keep up with Bright Lights between issues by visiting our companion blog, Bright Lights After Dark.

Bright Lights Film Journal
Issue 45 | August 2004

Out of the bomb shelters, into the streets!

We take back everything we said last issue — you know, build the bomb shelter, hide from the zeitgeist (and the neighbors), polish your shotguns, etc.

How to explain our decision to strike a match in a sea of dark? It isn't as if anything's changed, not really; it's just that it seems to be different now. In a culture where surface is all, seems is surely sufficient. Even the possibility of booting out the boy-king, repairing our relationships with Europe (Old and New), dumping Florida's crooked election computers, nuking the neocons, etc. is cause enough for celebration.

So, giddy with glee, we offer Bright Lights' biggest, brightest issue yet, a veritable happy face of movie maunderings. Who says the cup's half-empty? (Ignore that if you have no cup.)

Visitors to the sparkling features foyer will find zeitgeist-chaser and occasional BL-er A. Jay Adler thoughtfully contemplating the war movie, the longing for home, and related riffs. BL vet and associate editor Alan Vanneman sweetly scopes out Chaplin's heady Essanay and Keystone period. Longtime pal and historian Mark Vieira kindly let us reprint a chapter from his wonderful book Hollywood Horror: From Gothic to Cosmic (Abrams, 2003). Here Mr. V. lays the lorgnette on the giant bugs, monstrous women, and burly beasts of ‘50s drive-in cinema. If that isn't creepy enough, how about the toilets of Tarantino as seen by BL virgin Robin Gleason? Cultural appropriation and subversion and, well, toilets are on scintillating view here.

A quick dash into the shower and it's off to the articles antechamber. Here Dogville gets the once-over twice. T. L. Putterman cannily examines the religious resonances, while BL newbie Justin Clark tackles the set design, of von Trier's curio. BL regular Bob Castle richly reflects on two Welles movies, Citizen Kane and F for Fake and takes a side trip to Full Metal Jacket via Joseph Campbell. Vanneman begs someone, anyone, to "take, please" Minnelli's overwrought Yolanda and the Thief. Do get in touch if you're interested. Meanwhile Scott Thill, master of the estimable Morphizm mag, gives a swift kick to Hidalgo and Disney. (Scott also reviews the Agatha Christie Megaset on DVD in the vale of video.) Also here, BL buddy Richard Armstrong shows where "all the lonely people" went — to Britain, apparently — in an insightful piece on bereavement in Brit cinema. Wrapping up is a fine article by two fresh faces at Casa BL: A. Zubatov and Yaniv Eyny offer a striking close reading of Bertolucci's much-misunderstood The Dreamers.

A fast scrubdown and we're on to the documentary dormer. BL stalwart Megan Ratner puts the pedal to two major docs wafting through the fest circuit: The Corporation and the Howard Zinn doc You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train. And Omar Odeh, another BL newbie, handily downsizes Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me. The recent cinema roundabout finds Vanneman stepping out of the wayback machine into 2004 with brief views of Harry Potter and Mean Girls. (Vanneman also confronts the TV show Freaks & Geeks in the vale of video.)

We've found two people eminently worth talking to for this issue. Tony Macklin gets the Goddess Known as Stella Stevens to speak her mind, while your editor spoke with the redoubtable Jenni Olson about her fabulous new book The Queer Movie Poster Book. Also by yours truly are the Little Stabs of Happiness (and Horror) capsule reviews that have become a regular feature, despite the pleas of world leaders to stop; and reviews of DVDs of Kurosawa's Stray Dog, Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest, Aldrich's The Grissom Gang, and the Survival Research Laboratories collection Ten Years of Robotic Mayhem.

We know how loyal our readership is, and would like to reward that loyalty. So, the first 5,000 people to prove to us (via a long, complicated, impossible test) that they've read the entire issue get a colorful "I've Been to Bright Lights!" button. As always, it's all about you, reader!

Gary Morris

- - - - - -
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 antechamber

Millions Like Us: Bereavement in British Cinema — "All the lonely people, where do they all come from?"

All the Citizen's Men — Kane as Welles, also America

Dogville, or Lars von Trier's New Old Testament — On the seventh day ... he should have kept working

Dogville, or How Not to Discover America — Von Trier's America may be too cartoonish for its own good

Above the Revolution: The Dreamers and Alienation — "With my memories I have lit a fire."

F for Fake: The Ultimate Mirror of Orson Welles — In which Welles deflates expectations of greatness — and transcends them

Don't Follow Leaders: Animal Mother in Full Metal Jacket — Kubrick's shaman/artist takes on "the leaders"

Want Fact with That? Disney's Hidalgo and the Commodification of Myth — Enjoy your myths — that's what they're there for

Steal This Picture . . . Please! — Fred almost suffocates in Minnelli's Yolanda and the Thief

features foyer

The Altered State of War: Heaven, Hell, and the Structure of the Combat Film — "The duality of man. The Jungian thing, sir."

Looking at Charlie: Keystone and Essanay Days — The first in an occasional series of articles on the life and work of Charlie Chaplin

Don't Step on It! Killer Bugs, Babes, and Beasts in 1950s Drive-in Cinema — Not that you could

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Cool: Appropriation & Prospects of Subversion in the Works of Quentin Tarantino — Overthrowing the patriarchy, one flush at a time

documentary dormer

Do the Wrong Thing: Confronting The Corporation — Corporations, go to the head of the line; everyone else, wait

A Succession of Presents: Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train — Pay attention to that man behind the curtain

Jack-Ass II: Downsizing Morgan Spurlock's Supersize Me — Spurlock's no Sherlock

recent film roundabout

Harry Potter and the Valley of the Mysterious Female — When Harry got laid

Welcome to the Chest Club: Tina Fey's Mean Girls — Freaks and Geeks redux

interrogation alcove

The Ballad of Stella Stevens: An Interview — In which Stella tells all — or at least most

"I Changed My Socially Constructed Sexual Identity!": Jenni Olson on The Queer Movie Poster Book — "The butler did it ... to everyone!"

cornucopia corner

Little Stabs of Happiness (and Horror): Random Reviews of the Worthy and the Worthless in Recent and Old-School Cinema — "Old fruit, you've got IT!"

the vale of video

Upper-Lip Stiffs: The Agatha Christie Megaset Collection — A DVD feast for Christie fanatics

"God Has Already Broken Me!" Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest:on DVD — Nowhere man

Oh, the, You Know, Humanity — Freaks and Geeks is on DVD. Why?

They Can't Give You Anything But Love: Robert Aldrich's Grissom Gang on DVD — Of course, it'll cost you

Ai, Robot!: Survival Research Laboratories: Ten Years of Robotic Mayhem on DVD — A Cruel and Rebellious Plot to Pervert the Minds of Viewers to Unholy Uses

Stray Man: Kurosawa's Stray Dog on DVD — Tokyo steams, Mifune screams, Shimura beams