Poster Comparison No. 8 – The Holy Man and the Cataclysm
I like these two movie posters, one for Roland Emmerich’s 2012 (2009), the other for Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956), and I suspect their similarity is anything but[…]
Author: C. Jerry Kutner
C. Jerry Kutner is a frequent contributor to Bright Lights Film Journal. Visit his website at home.earthlink.net/~cjk5. Oscars I: That Damn Helen Mirren!
I mean, DAME Helen Mirren. (Photo via Associated Press. Joke via Oscar co-host, Steve Martin.) Very happy for Kat B and The Hurt Locker. Worst Award of the Evening – The[…]
Photo Essays · Reviews · Silents
Victory (Maurice Tourneur, 1919)
More than 20 years before Jacques Tourneur took us to an exotic tropical isle in 1943’s I Walked With a Zombie, his father, producer/director Maurice Tourneur (1876-1961), blazed a similar trail with his[…]
Not Enraptured by Performance Capture?
The Avatar hype continues. There was a front-page piece in the L.A. Times today, whining – for lack of a better word – about how “unlike the great majority of[…]
Val Lewton’s Symbolic Statuary: A Photo Essay
“It was once the figurehead of a slave ship. That’s where our people come from. From the misery and pain of slavery.” ~ I Walked with a Zombie
Some Cameroning, Part 2 – Cameron as Auteur
Can a filmmaker spend most of his or her artistic life recycling other people’s ideas and still be a true auteur? Sure. Why not? Any idea, theme, style, or attitude[…]
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JACK ARNOLD (October 14, 1916 – March 17, 1992)
Photo: Director Jack Arnold (right) shows star Grant Williams how to handle a giant prop used in the making of The Incredible Shrinking Man. If director Jack Arnold were alive[…]
Music & Musicals · Reviews · TV & Streaming
The Marienbad Music Video
So many music videos and television commercials have ripped off the imagery of Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad since its 1961 release that it makes perfect sense for someone[…]
The Vertigo-Narcissus Connection
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrQIV3aYfiw] In celebration of the birthday of director Michael Powell (1905-1990) today, I’d like to share with you this clip from Powell & Emeric Pressburger’s 1947 color masterpiece, Black Narcissus,[…]
Cosmic Karma in The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
Check out the latest issue of Film Comment, containing an excellent, though regrettably short, piece by Richard Combs praising the formal achievement of Roger Corman’s The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre[…]
Everybody Love the Sad Donkey
In 1976, producer Dino de Laurentiis was asked why he had the audacity to remake King Kong. He replied, “Everybody love the big monkey.” Dino had a point. There are[…]
Film Buff of the Month – Tilda Swinton
Like Herzog’s opera-loving Fitzcarraldo dragging a 320-ton steamship through the jungles of Peru, Oscar-winning film buff/actress Tilda Swinton and a few followers are now driving – and occasionally dragging –[…]
Two More for the Movie Bookshelf
Having already submitted a list of ten to Movieman’s Movie Bookshelf meme, a “gathering of all the movie books that influenced, enlightened, and excited me, you, and everyone else,” I[…]
Fellini, Michael Jackson, and La Voce della Luna (1990)
In America, the 1960s were the golden age of the foreign film. Film directors like Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, Ingmar Bergman, and Alain Resnais were considered “superstars,” and[…]
Directors · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
José Mojica Marins Meets the Spirit of Ed Wood in the World of Coffin Joe
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLgx38t7AQ4] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAdAixzYq-k] Thank you, Spirit of Ed Wood Blogathon, for giving me an excuse to write about José Mojica Marins, the Brazilian screenwriter, director, and star of films every bit[…]
La Décade Prodigieuse – Ten Days’ Wonder (Claude Chabrol 1971)
Why Ten Days’ Wonder? I certainly wouldn’t call it one of Chabrol’s masterpieces. That’s a description I’d reserve for Les Bonnes Femmes, Le Boucher, Ã Double Tour, La Rupture, The[…]
Klueless Kael
The upcoming release of Alain Resnais’s classic Last Year at Marienbad on Blu-ray DVD reminds us that Marienbad was one of the many formally ambitious films released in the 1960s[…]
10 (or More) Film Books That Made Me What I Am Today
Speaking of books – having been invited by Movieman to contribute to his Reading the Movies meme, I submit a list of the 10-plus film-related books that had the greatest[…]
DRAG ME TO HELL / STUCK – Women in Trouble
The first is a supernatural horror film. The second is a horror story without any trace of the supernatural. Otherwise, they are remarkably similar. Both apply the horror film’s fundamental[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
The Great Roles of Christopher Lee’s Maturity
How can anyone not marvel that two of Gothic Cinema’s greatest performers, Christopher Lee and Vincent Price, were born on the same day? Christopher Lee was born on May 27,[…]
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