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Bright Sights: Recent DVDs — A look at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

Little Stabs of Happiness (and Horror) — Random short reviews of the worthy and worthless in recent and old-school cinema

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Retro Virus

Did AIDS perform Nensha?

"Be aware: there are forces at work here of which we have no knowledge." — Queen Elizabeth 2

from the editor

Funny ha-ha or funny weird?

features foyer

Tex Avery: Arch-Radicalizer of the Hollywood Cartoon — "Avery's pics confirm an always-lingering suspicion that the many radical plays with movie syntax and the numerous distancing techniques employed in '60s live-action films, of 'New Wave Cinema' extraction, were, in fact, first invented, and used for purely comic effect, in animated cartoons."

Fifteen Years of French Cinema: By André Bazin — "If French cinema was no longer down in the dumps, so the reasoning went, its palette should duly adorn itself with all the colors of the intellectual rainbow. And this is exactly what happened."

Retro Virus: Did AIDS perform Nensha? — "Be aware: there are forces at work here of which we have no knowledge." — Queen Elizabeth 2

articles antechamber

"Monsieur Hulot and Time": By André Bazin — "In their blend of social satire, wry charm, imaginative physical gags, and ingenious aural as well as visual devices, Jacques Tati's movies have not been surpassed by those of any other postwar cinematic comic — French or otherwise."

Busby Berkeley's Hollywood Hotel: Bring on the dancing girls! Oh, wait! There aren't any! — Thank God for the Benny Goodman Quartet

Let's Dance? Must We? Fred Astaire Collides with Betty Hutton — Ouch!

The Complete A of Altruism: In Which the Selfish Gene Explains Everything  — Except whether to laugh or cry

Between Nudist Morality and Freudian Realism! Denuding Fleshly Hypocrisies, Cinematic and Otherwise — "Nude on the Moon's exploitation is as innocent as the Good Christo-Nudist's reclaiming of a pre-figleafed (albeit non-recreational) Eden."

recent cinema roundabout

"Just Another Man": On James Toback's Tyson — "Toback, to his credit, and despite the empathy he feels toward his subject, doesn't pull his punches."

avant-garde atelier

Opposition Compositions: Treasures IV: American Avant Garde Film 1947-1986 on DVD — "Avant garde filmmaking has been defined almost entirely in opposition to the Hollywood mainstream."

film festival flying buttress

Screening Hong Kong: The 33rd Hong Kong International Film Festival — One of the world's largest cinema events is also one of the most ambitious

The View from Here: Middle Eastern Cinema at the 49th Thessaloniki International Film Festival — "What happens when the gaze is returned?"

bright sights

Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Hobson's Choice, Murnau, Divorce Iranian Style/Runaway, Poil de Carotte, Celia — An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

- - - - - -
Issue 64 | May 2009
Next issue: August 2009
www.brightlightsfilm.com
Online since 1996

horror haven

The Child Is Father to the Child: On the Friday the 13th Series — "You can depend on Jason."

the empty guest room

Ida Lupino: Demon Mother Night — "[H]er favorite expression of strained intensity would be less quickly relieved by a merciful death than by Ex-Lax." — James Agee, 1943

James Mason: Odd Man Out — Mason was "equally at home playing small, brooding anti-heroes, camping it up in a toga, or doing a nice line in late career self-parody."

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."

Lee Tracy: "A Manic, Scalding Passion for Success" — "With his impish grin, twinkling eyes, and boyish blond hair, he looks like Tom Sawyer crossed with a Tammany Hall fixer."

the palace of program notes

Women Larger Than Life: Program Notes 1: Allan Dwan's Woman They Almost Lynched (1953)/Slightly Scarlet (1956) — "Within the confines of the action genres, Dwan is, like Jean Renoir, a classical humanist."

interrogation alcove

"Strong, Righteous, and Rustic": An Interview with Joel McCrea — "I told Hitchcock, 'I do miss my horse.'"

Impressions of an Auteur, Tehran Today: Talking with Iranian Director Khosrow Sinai — "This situation requires the filmmakers to be more creative in handling their mostly simple stories, which sometimes are so simple as to seem very modern and minimalistic."

Return of the Obsessed: James Toback Steps into the Ring Again with Tyson — "And then he said, 'It's like a Greek tragedy. The only problem is, I'm the subject.'"

pre-code parapet

Desperation and Divinity: "Help us, Mae!" — Hazy thoughts on the transition from real sex to digital hallucinations

Wild Boys and Midnight Maries: Social Realism and Pre-Code in Forbidden Hollywood (Vol. 3) — "We can't help but roll our eyes at a woman who would rather wear holes in her shoes looking for a 'good honest job' than roll around in money and mink."

little stabs

Little Stabs of Happiness (and Horror): Random Short Reviews of the Worthy and the Worthless in Recent and Old-School Cinema — "As soon as my health is in jeopardy, everybody shows up to lick my ass!"

hiding in the stacks

Charlie Kaufman and Hollywood's Merry Band of Pranksters, Fabulists, and Dreamers: An Excursion into the American New Wave, by Derek Hill

Douglas Fairbanks, by Jeffrey Vance

Fred Astaire, by Joseph Epstein

Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard, by Richard Brody

You'll Like this Film Because You're in It: The Be Kind Rewind Protocol, by Michel Gondry.

Frankly, My Dear: Gone with the Wind Revisited, by Molly Haskell

Jack Hill: The Exploitation and Blaxpoitation Master, Film by Film, by Calum Waddell

Joseph P. Kennedy Presents: His Hollywood Years, by Cari Beauchamp

Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy, ed. Richard Greene and K. Silem Mohammad

Hollywood's Ancient Worlds, by Jeffrey Richards, and Movie Photos, by Alex Bailey