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Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXII – gordsellar.com on:
The Esteemed Black Actresses Who Finally Have the Spotlight – The New York Times – Celebrity News on:
Myth and Archetype · SF & Fantasy
“Look at the stars,” the genius of Trumbull’s movie finally seems to be saying, but also know the stars within. * * * Often, it’s the throwaway scenes that click.[…]
Activist & Political · Comedy · Counterculture · Experimental & Underground
This is an excerpt from the introduction to the author’s new book on Mr. Freedom (https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/books/isbn/9781800856943/). * * * The film calls into question both the American international and domestic[…]
Covid-19 · Digital · Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · Pandemic · Societal Trends · TV & Streaming · Videos
YouTube is a global idea farm, not unlike Big Agriculture: welcome, user, to your pre-fab silo, built “just for you” by YouTube’s secret algorithm. That algorithm loads about 70% of[…]
Activist & Political · African American · Essays · Societal Trends
Editor’s Note: As part of Bright Lights’ ongoing campaign to challenge dogmatic viewpoints and advocate for nuanced analysis of cultural controversies, we present Graham Daseler’s powerful analysis of one of[…]
#MeToo · Activist & Political · Animation · Commentary · Essays · Women in Film
Editor’s Note: In an era where dogma rules and nuanced approaches to cultural creations are considered problematic, we repost M. C. Myers’ brilliant and timely analysis of Disney’s Snow White[…]
Documentaries · Migration · Societal Trends
From the documentary’s beginning until its closing credits, the Central American migrants who journey across Mexico are filmed accomplishing everyday yet extraordinary tasks. Most specifically, they are filmed taking part[…]
Director Robert Eggers’s historical realities get a budget upgrade * * * With The Northman – already famous for its historical accuracy – writer-director Robert Eggers strives to give his[…]
Experimental & Underground · Horror · New Media · Societal Trends · Theory · Thrillers & Action · TV & Streaming
The encounter between the lead characters and The Circle evokes a wider sense of anxiety regarding the extent to which we upload information about every area of our lives into[…]
Documentaries · Music & Musicals
Their performance isn’t marked by precision or technical mastery. It’s an onrush of unbridled enthusiasm all the way through – a frenzied, joyous romp that treats the show as if[…]
Costume Drama · Designers · Drama · Fashion · Melodrama · Photo Essays · Romance
In difficult times, fashion is always outrageous. – Elsa Schiaparelli * * * Edgar G. Ulmer’s Her Sister’s Secret was released to theaters the same year as Mitchell Leisen’s To[…]
Absurdism · Comedy · Drama · French Cinema · Mystery · Psychology
The question becomes: is it worth trying to be free? Is the struggle fruitless? Why can’t we escape our servitude to the past, to society, to others? * * *[…]
Eco · Horror · SF & Fantasy
In his creation of a nonhuman cinematic world that mines horror from its confrontation of human fear of irrelevance and inadaptability, Bouwer ultimately suggests that survival in the era following[…]
David Fincher’s Zodiac: Cinema of Investigation and (Mis)Interpretation, edited by Matthew Sorrento and David Ryan. 259 pp. Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2022. 2007 was a good year for American film, with[…]
The unfinished projects to which Welles devoted his energies began in July 1961. This was exactly twenty-five years after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the year in which[…]
Actors & Personalities · French Cinema
“Seyrig is capable of stopping an entire film with one decisive physical gesture, one smile, one glare, one sound from her smoky, murmuring voice.”
Actors & Personalities · Dance · Dancers · Hollywood · Music & Musicals
He is transfixing just walking across the screen in his first movie, Dancing Lady (1933), where he partners Joan Crawford and looks as if he could fly if he wanted[…]
Family · Horror · Women in Film
A living doll, everywhere you look. It can sew, it can cook, It can talk, talk, talk. – Sylvia Plath, “The Applicant” (Oct. 11, 1962) And they stuck me together[…]
Actors & Personalities · Interviews
“Hard times will make a monkey eatred peppers.”
“Steve understood real people, particularly misfits, like nobody else.It was just the Hollywood brass he loathed.”
Historical & Epic · Medieval · Women in Film
The adaptation is successful not just in its understanding of how irreverent and illogical the narrative space of medieval romance is and always has been, but also in how it[…]
Crime · Gothic · Horror · Melodrama · Photo Essays
Franju demonstrates how beauty hides pain, until pain becomes beautiful. * * * Georges Franju’s Les yeux sans visage/Eyes Without a Face is a reliably haunting film, a beautiful nightmare[…]
Animation · Asian · Communism and Socialism
The gold that No-Face dispenses to the workers later crumbles into a pile of dirt. Conjured from nothing, No-Face’s fabricated currency undermines the very system of profit that capitalism is[…]
Drama · Women in Film · Writers & Critics
We come to find out as viewers, whether we believe in Leda’s self-governing comportment at the beginning or not, that this task of motherhood is never-ending; each work demonstrates to[…]
Experimental & Underground · Religion & Spirituality · Women in Film
The volition of these dancers is as clear as the sense that it is not their own. Deren mirrors this depersonalization masterfully; her camera splits a man between his reflections,[…]
