actor profiles
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writers gone wild!
Keep up with Bright Lights between issues by visiting our companion blog, Bright Lights After Dark.
Lesley Chow
in issue 66
After the Surge: The 2009 Melbourne International Film Festival
"An alternative agenda for the festival might be: what can we make of modernism?"
in issue 64
The Goddess in Her Element: Ruan Lingyu in Shanghai — "This is an actress who shows excitement down to the curl of her fingers, and whose face reveals every kind of mercurial change."
Books: Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy, ed. Richard Greene and K. Silem Mohammad
in issue 63
On How Things Seem: The Views of Robert Warshow — "Where Warshow distinguishes himself from Kracauer and other sociological critics is his reaction to the 'absorbing immediacy' of films."
in issue 62
Music, Morricone, and Jack Nicholson's Voice: The Soundscape of Wolf — "Suddenly my senses are all incredibly acute . . . I'm different, more alive, stronger . . ."
Music in the Making: Highlights from the 2008 Melbourne International Film Festival — "The surprise musical number can represent a facile avoidance of complexity, a moment of true strangeness, or a way of harmonizing existing, underlying themes."
in issue 60
One Culture, Two Systems: The Rules of Spanglish and Twice Upon a Time — "When talking to others, what needs to be articulated?"
in issue 59
The Double Standard: The Twins of Two-Faced Woman and Sylvia Scarlett — "She is both sentimental and shameless."
in issue 58
The Poisoned Story: The Myth of Magic in Wait 'Til You're Older — "Even the least imaginative people are incredulous about aging: surely this isn't the only story, the only body I get to inhabit."
How Did History Happen? The 2007 Melbourne International Film Festival — "Each stranger is a figure of seemingly infinite potential, pinned down to a changing series of points."
in issue 57
Secret Window: The Erotic Gaze of Tom Lazarus — "Lazarus doesn't pathologize the locked-in gaze, he lets us feel it."
in issue 56
Fashion and Dunst: The Substance of Marie Antoinette — "The Coppola ideal is a young girl trapped in fustiness: she can be an object of voyeurism without a trace of lewdness, and remain spiritually intact even when accessorized."
in issue 55
The Peculiar Kind: The Humor of Funny Ha Ha and Mutual Appreciation — "People are constantly falling back on their beds — but always in languor, never in passion . . ."
Beauties and Furies: Hong Kong's New Wave of Women Stars — "The women of To's world are not just endearingly kooky, but often unacceptably bizarre and amoral in their excited reactions to events."
in issue 54
Routes to the City: The Ways of the New Black Films — "It's independent thinking without the protection of an ‘indie' label."
What Time Now? Catching Up Hours in Tsai Ming-liang — "Despite their loneliness, Tsai's characters often appear to be living in relation to someone else: a stranger who hovers around them."
in issue 53
Mish-Mash Planet: The Cult of Rita Hayworth in You Were Never Lovelier — "Speaking of impurity: what was Rita Hayworth's image supposed to be in the '40s?"
Taking a Break in Hollywood: The Dreamers of Holiday and The Razor's Edge — "In films these days, people are hardly ever ‘taken' by others — they don't strike up sudden affinities, or become voluptuously intrigued by enemies."
in issue 52
Game On: The Gold Diggers of Heartbreakers — The screwball comedy's back, and Weaver's got it
Mystique Without Camp: The Allure of the Leading Man — Turning "the male gaze" on men
in issue 51
What the Sound Is Saying: How Music Moves in Bertolucci
"Who doesn't want to be rescued by their narrator?"
Babies Bubbling Up: David O Russell's Fertile Perversity Filigrees Flirting with Disaster
"There's always been an acute mystery attached to the body . . ."
in issue 50
Witchcraft Through the Ages: The Best of the New Bewitched
"Where do alchemy and acting meet?"
in issue 49
Pulp with a Soundtrack: Getting Elmore Leonard on Film
"My sound is the absence of me." — Elmore Leonard
