Bright Lights Film Journal

May 2013 | Issue 80

From the Editor

Editorial: The Boy Who Cried "Special!"

Gary Morris

FEATURES

Heavy TV:
Breaking Bad, Girls, and Mad Men

Alan Vanneman

Who needs an Oscar when you can have an Emmy?

August and Everything After:
A Half-Century of Surfing in Cinema

John Engle

Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and
laughingly dash with your hair.
— Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Ten Shades of Girl:
One Guy's Response to Fifty Shades of Grey

J. D. Markel

The causation of this book's variable inattentiveness to any coloring detail is the same source of the book's greater fundamental and overarching flaw. Fifty Shades of Grey just has too much sex in it.

The Phantom Archivist and The Phantom Archives:
The Amateur Online Archive of Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise (1974)

Roger Leatherwood

"Kahan's site encroaches on the nascent landscape of a new mode of archival behavior, increasingly obligatory in and enabled by the digital age, in which archival collections move out of the physical tyranny of closed vaults, reconceived as virtual and dynamic, to empower a wider audience of users through hypermodern modes of informed and active engagement."

Remote Viewing:
Observations Inspired or Furthered by And They Were Two in One and One in Two

Gary Shipley

"If, as [Nicola] Masciandaro claims, 'cinema's witness' is 'somewhere between the pure loss of head (negatively being no one) and the playful transcendence of the capital (positively being neither oneself nor someone else),' then this witness’s penumbral status becomes not only ontologically problematic, but morally problematic into the bargain."

EARLY AND PROTO-CINEMA

Who Was the Real James Young Deer?
The Mysterious Identity of the Pathè Producer Finally Comes to Light

Angela Aleiss

"With his acting experience and technical know-how, Young Deer soon advanced to one of Pathé's leading filmmakers. His Indian identity served him well: no one in the cast or crew at that time would have taken orders from a black man."

The Lost Films of the 1840s:
The Mississippi River and the Tradition of Proto-Cinema

Adam Hofbauer

"From depictions of industrial progress to scenes of communal resilience overcoming the daunting wilderness, there was the common theme of growth, everywhere the signs of nascent occupation. Farmland looked fresh and verdant, untouched and rife with endless potential harvests. Steeples rose from tall bluffs while the black smoke from steam boats spoke of unfettered expansion."

ARTICLES

What Exactly Is the "Road" in the Road Movie?
(Fragments on Narrative Endings)

Andrew Grossman

"We've long since lost faith in endings; the postmodern project of 'decentering' everything has made it irrelevant whether our endings end with conjugal bliss, a predicted death, nothingness, a tree, an empty gaze, or any assorted marginalia."

Don't Swoon:
Howl when you're far from home. Weep at Nature's wonders.

D. J. M. Saunders

But, dearest sister, never ever swoon.

Depth Takes a Holiday:
Good Bad Movies

Graham Daseler

"Good bad movies have been around since the dawn of cinema. Logically, they cannot be more common to one era than another. If you're looking for empty-headed entertainment on a Saturday night, you could pop in an early Chaplin short just as easily as The Cannonball Run (1981), especially once you realize how much they have in common."

FILMS

The Man Who Shot John Ford — in 3D:
Spielberg Retrofits Jurassic Park with Mixed Results

Lee Weston Sabo

"As cold and insincere as it may be for Spielberg to flush an 'updated' version back into theaters as a marketing blitz for the forthcoming 3D sequel, Jurassic Park still exemplifies, for better and worse, the staying power and effectiveness of Spielbergian theme park ride filmmaking, independent of the fact that it is actually about a theme park, and its success is a testament to how skilled he can be at showing an audience what it wants to see."

Kangaroo Court:
Breaker Morant

Graham Daseler

"Indeed, if there is a single distinguishing feature of Beresford's technique, it is a persistent evenhandedness that refuses to either exalt or vilify. In writing the screenplay for Breaker Morant, he explains, 'I wasn't interested in making these men out to be heroes. I wasn't trying to whitewash the situation. What I was interested in was the moral responsibility in times of war.'"

Pulping American Moral Exceptionalism:
Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained

Joseph Natoli

"Django Unchained was the subject of controversy due to its use of racial epithets and depiction of slavery; many reviewers have defended the usage of the language by pointing out the historic context of race and slavery in America. Spike Lee, in an interview with Vibe magazine, said he would not see the film, explaining, 'All I'm going to say is that it's disrespectful to my ancestors. That's just me . . . I'm not speaking on behalf of anybody else.' Lee later tweeted, 'American Slavery Was Not a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It Was A Holocaust. My Ancestors Are Slaves. Stolen From Africa. I Will Honor Them.' Writing in the Los Angeles Times, journalist Erin Aubry Kaplan noted the difference between Tarantino's Jackie Brown and Django Unchained: 'It is an institution whose horrors need no exaggerating, yet Django does exactly that, either to enlighten or entertain. A white director slinging around the n-word in a homage to '70s blaxploitation à la Jackie Brown is one thing, but the same director turning the savageness of slavery into pulp fiction is quite another.'" — Wikipedia

A Journey into Political Consciousness:
Africa as "Setting and Backdrop" in Shekhar Kapur's The Four Feathers (2002)

David Salter

"In reflecting the postcolonial sensibilities, rather than the imperialist enthusiasms, of the early twenty-first century, the film is very much a creature of its time."

The Strangeness of Realism vs. the Realism of the Strange:
Themes in Synecdoche, New York

Gary Shipley

"Charlie Kaufman's film(script) can be understood as a commentary on a line from E. M. Cioran: 'He who does not believe in the impossibility of truth, or does not rejoice in it, has only one road to salvation, which he will, however, never find.'"

Making Love While the Bullets Fly:
Plata Quemada (Burnt Money), Representation, and Queer Masculinity

David Greven

"The queer theorist Leo Bersani has argued for the "self-shattering" qualities of gay sex, but Plata Quemada foregrounds gay desire as a mutually shattering event. The film's romantic nihilism is at the heart of both its appeal and its essentially troubling nature."

Satirical Excess and Empty Vessels:
Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy

Christina Marie Newland

"Rupert Pupkin is uniquely a product of late capitalism near the close of the twentieth century; his fantasies reflect mass media's ability to twist the real world into an insubstantial collection of images that mimic reality — the representation of self becomes more than the actual self, and it becomes impossible to tell the difference."

(Not) Love and Death:
On Michael Haneke's Amour

Vlad Dima

"The film beautifully captures the slow decomposing of its characters by following a parallel process at the level of cinematic composition."

"Who Wants to Be Cured of Desire?"
Anthony Page's TV Movie My Zinc Bed (2008)

Dan Harper

"Don't we most of all resent the person who helps?" — Victor Quinn

Perpetual Motion:
The Dardenne Brothers' The Kid with a Bike

Vlad Dima

"As Cyril's frenetic movement appears to up the tempo of the film, the directors drastically slow down the pace by using long takes, and as little cutting as possible. It is amid the two contrasting tendencies that Cyril's story finds the perfect narrative balance."

"Drunk Literature":
On Malcolm Lowry, John Huston, and Under the Volcano

Dan Harper

"Somebody threw a dead dog after him down the ravine."

ONE FRAME AT A TIME

The Scandal of Vertigo:
It's Not What You Think

Peter Hayes

"I found it hard myself to believe that the home-video releases of one of the most highly regarded films ever made could be incomplete, but they are, and I still wouldn't believe it if the evidence were not indisputable."

THE EMPTY GUEST ROOM

Reading Movie Reviews as a Religious Experience:
Roger Ebert as the Rashi of Cinema

Daniel Ross Goodman

"The wonder of life and the resources of imagination supply all the adventure you need."
— Roger Ebert (in his Great Movies review of My Neighbor Totoro)

POLITICS AND CINEMA

Zero Dark Thirty:
Simple-Mindedness Dressed Up as Moral Complexity or Artistic Vagueness

Joseph Aisenberg

"Does it all come down to the injustice of 3,000 people dying on 9/11? But at some level everybody went through that. Yet few of us thereafter felt the need to cast off every other human part of ourselves in order to find 'justice,' whatever that means in such contexts."

Unreliable Narrative:
Zero Dark Thirty, Torture, and Truth

Tyler Sage

"If Bigelow is not assembling the story, who is? The darkest implication of this is that Zero Dark Thirty takes no stand on the events of the last decade because the sources on which it relies believe that there is no stand to take. Her sources believe that the existence of war is a value-free fact; so this is what Bigelow believes."

"What Price, Hollywood?"
Workers World Party Goes to the 85th Annual Academy Awards

Jay Rothermel

"Moorehead cannot pause to celebrate performances of Adele and the fabulous Shirley Bassey because they contradict her depiction of the Oscars as an unabated mudslide of anti-woman vulgarity; she does not discuss the implications of Michelle Obama's appearance, either. Why?"

"It Could Cause a Popular Uproar":
Interview with Amir Ramses on his controversial documentary Jews of Egypt

Patrick Keddie

"They were educated in security, and these guys are raised with the concept that the word 'Jew' means 'enemy.' They all look at themselves in the mirror, and they imagine themselves to be superheroes, spy killers . . . I doubt they even saw the film before banning it."

STARS

The Strange Case of Basil Rathbone:
The Life and Work of the Man Who Made Olivier — and Audiences — Swoon

Eddie Selover

"That God-damned play I bought for a song and made such a great success in — a great money success — it ruined me with its promise of an easy fortune. I didn't want to do anything else, and by the time I woke up to the fact I'd become a slave to the damned thing and did try other plays, it was too late. They had identified me with that one part, and didn't want me in anything else. They were right, too. I'd lost the great talent I once had through years of easy repetition, ever learning a new part, never really working hard. Thirty-five to forty thousand dollars net profit a season like snapping your fingers! It was too great a temptation."

— James Tyrone, Long Day's Journey into Night

COLUMNS

Bright Sights: Recent DVDs
City of Women (Fellini), Tess (Polanski), Tsar to Lenin (Axelbank and Eastman), The Promised Land (Wajda), Nanook of the North (Flaherty) and The Wedding of Palo (Dalsheim and Rasmussen)

Gordon Thomas

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

FILM FESTIVALS

No Means:
The International Istanbul Film Festival 2013

Lesley Chow

"At a protest against the demolition of the historic Emek theatre, Nil was beaten and kicked by police offers. My fellow FIPRESCI juror, the excellent critic Berke Göl, was grabbed by the throat, punched, and arrested. Hundreds of other protestors — largely film critics, actors, and directors including festival guest Costa-Gavras — were subject to police force."

BOOKS

The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend, by Glenn Frankel

Reviewed by Amy Gentry

Lee Marvin: Point Blank, by Dwayne Epstein

Reviewed by Erich Kuersten

Recent Posts

The Man in Grey (Leslie Arliss, 1943) | watch »

Margaret Lockwood in The Man in Grey One of the great Gainsborough melodramas, in the longer UK cut, on the always accommodating (if sometimes only temporarily) YouTube. Margaret Lockwood is as "wicked" here as she is in Wicked Lady. Watch it before the copyright police come a-callin'!

Watch on Youtube »

Gordon Thomas, and other BL staff, check out the eye- popping pleasures of Blu-Ray.

» Monsoon Wedding (Mira Nair)
» The General (Keaton)
» Sunrise (Murnau)
» 8-1/2 (Fellini)
» Playtime (Tati)
» Winstanley (Brownlow & Mollo)
» Permissive (Shonteff)
» Lola Montes (Ophuls)
» My Childhood, My Ain Folk ... (Bill Douglas)
» In the Realm of the Senses (Oshima)
» Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Disney)
» Repulsion (Polanski)
» Institute Benjamenta (Brothers Quay)
» Everlasting Moments (Troell)

BL Associate Editor Alan Vanneman and others watch (and review) television shows so you don't have to. Click if you dare.

» 30 Rock
» The American President
» Archer
» Batman: The Animated Series
» The Big Bang Theory
» Broadway Theatre Archive
» Car 54, Where Are You?
» Charlie’s Angels
» Cowboy Bebop
» Death of a Salesman
» Dollhouse
» Freaks and Geeks
» Have Gun Will Travel
» Mad Men
» Magnum P.I.
» Monk
» Pamela Anderson Roast
» PBS
» Renegade
» Sex and the City
» Sports Night
» Star Trek

I'm sick of movies, Mr. Webmaster. Take me away!

» Archive.org
Gazillions of free books, audio, and video. Grab 'em before the copyright police come knocking!

» Glenn Greenwald
The indomitable civil liberties champion takes exception to American exceptionalism. You will too when you read his blistering analyses.

» Project Gutenberg
See Archive.org.

» Creative Commons
"All Creative Commons licenses have many important features in common. Every license helps creators retain copyright while allowing others to copy, distribute, and make some uses of their work — at least non-commercially."

» The Ivy Compton-Burnett home page
A Bright Lights side project created by George Brown devoted to the greatest novelist of the 20th century. There, we said it.

» Raw Vision
The leading online site (and print publication) devoted to those zany untrained artists who channel personality quirks, neuroses, idées fixes, and downright craziness into Art.

» Siklink.com
An endlessly fascinating clearinghouse for "the greatest hand-picked collection of bizarre, strange and unusual websites on the internet today." Highlights include the enchanting "Prison Bitch Name Generator" and "Life Gem" – how to "turn your deceased loved one into a diamond."

» Clark Ashton Smith
The premier fantasy poet and short-story writer (and sculptor and artist) gets a detailed blog that's a model for intelligent fan-ism. Watch out for falling curmudgeons in the forum.

» Classic Arcade Games
Miss Asteroids? Centipede? Frogger? Miss that you missed them? Here's your chance to enjoy the state of the art circa 1980s.

» Jack Vance
Wikipedia's gateway to our favorite writer in and of science fiction and fantasy. A national treasure.

» Electronic Frontier Foundation
"EFF fights for freedom primarily in the courts, bringing and defending lawsuits even when that means taking on the US government or large corporations." Go EFF!

» The Canonical List of Weird Band Names: The Peculiar and the Profane
Another Bright Lights side project from the inimitable George Brown. You probably know the Meat Puppets but how about Lyin' Bitch and the Restraining Orders?

» James Purdy
A good introduction to a criminally neglected postwar literary master. Be 21 or be gone for his gorgeous, harrowing works, kids.

» The Radical Ant Farm
This page answers that nagging question: "What's up with the Russian criminal tattoos?" The rest of the site offers further fun.

» Spectro-Pop
Monumental site devoted to '60s pop music – you know, that stuff playing in the background during the orgy.

» The Left Business Observer
Doug Henwood's long-running economics newsletter, called "invaluable" by Noam Chomsky. Need we say more?

» Jane Bowles
Go to Wikipedia and improve this "stub" on the writer Tennessee Williams looked up to and James Purdy called "the eagle-woman of American letters."

» WFMU
The best online radio station for our money. A deep archive and no-music-turned-away policy will keep you rollin' and tumblin' till the apocalypse.

» Henry Green
Must we create a detailed tribute page to this extraordinary British novelist championed by Auden, Updike, and Terry Southern? Or will you do it? Start with Concluding (1948).

» Women of Surrealism
They weren't all "muses" and maids – these women equaled or surpassed their more celebrated male counterparts in vision and technique.

» Ronald Firbank
He called the president of Haiti "a perfect dear" and was known to eat a single pea at dinner. Oh, and he ranks with Joyce and Woolf (see Edmund Wilson) as a groundbreaking literary modernist.

» Essential Vermeer
Everything you need to know about the Dutch master of light and mysterious figures.

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