Watch It Again! Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah, 1971)
Peckinpah’s ethics and form are evinced best in his sixth film, Straw Dogs, where we also discover the key to his aesthetic of violence. David Sumner takes a sabbatical to Yorkshire,[…]
Author: Robert Castle
Robert Castle has been contributing to Bright Lights Film Journal since 2000, He has a monthly feature, started five years ago, "A Sardine on Vacation," appearing in Unlikely Stories. In 2006, his first and only books were published: The End of Travel, a memoir (Ravenna Books); Odd Pursuits, a collection of 16 stories (Wild Child Publishing); and A Sardine on Vacation, fiction based on the feature column (Spuyten Duyvil). Since then he has devoted himself to play writing. A couple one-act plays have been performed in NYC in 2008 and 2009. In 2007, he co-wrote a play that appeared in the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. He is a Board Member for the Philadelphia Dramatist Center.
Private (and Public) Traps: Truman Burbank’s Audiences in The Truman Show
“Are we trapped like Truman? Is this why we want him to leave his world? Then what will we do? Turn off the set? Leave our society with its endless[…]
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The Essence of Television: The Irresistibility of Chauncey Gardner
“The beauty of Being There‘s satire lies in the strategy of depicting both television and its effects in a single man whose personality absorbs friend and foe, combines idiocy and[…]
Death of a President: The Last Temptation of Anti-Bush Critics
“Where many people watch a film for a true or faithful rendition of an historical event, I needed confirmation that the thing I was viewing was . . . made up!”
Two Cinematic Visions of the Inca Conquest: The Royal Hunt of the Sun and Aguirre: Wrath of God
“Both films suggest Europe has run aground spiritually, as they both depict the Catholic Church and its representatives to be as bloodthirsty as the conquistadors.”
Carnivals of Our Fathers:” Media Movies” Before the Television Age
“That what we now call ‘the media’ could be a threat to society was not necessarily an unknown topic before television. From the 1930s, movies had recognized the manipulative side of the press.”
Lists · Movies · Writers & Critics
Rating Movies: Or, Seeing Stars
“I want my favorites to get the high ratings — my judgments are being challenged by anonymous forces whom I cannot confront.”
Of Perfect Plans and Acts of Creation: Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing
“His plan mirrors Johnny’s, that is, pieces of the plan are known to one person: Johnny and Stanley; and not until the end do we see most of their pieces come into place.
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974): The Ultimate NYC Film
“What is this New York-ness?”
The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009): Inflating Pelham
“To be a star, or thought of as a star, was not enough.”
Following the Blind Swordsman: The Zatoichi Movies
“He is an itinerant hero, a lone samurai whose mask is his blindness, a mask that hides his many strengths. I am always looking for new cinematic vistas. New directors,[…]
Actors & Personalities · Genres
Un-Movies: When is a movie not a movie?
All movies have the potential to become a non-movie, particularly when the movie showcases a cause, a disease, a celebrity, an actor’s virtuosity, a play or musical. The movie becomes[…]
A Sequel Too Far: The Case of the Multiplying Movie
“A Hollywood Satan is a persistent devil” There is a simple, plain logic to sequels. Capitalize on the prodigious success of the original movie. Sometimes the box office success of[…]
Proust Regained: On Raul Ruiz’s Time Regained and Filming the Unfilmable
“In a single bold stroke, Ruiz films the novel according to the play of images, feelings, scents, and tastes that Marcel experiences.” 1. An attempt to film Proust’s Remembrance of[…]
Unadaptable: A Fatal Problem with The Human Stain
“Why not sock the audiences early with the ‘fuck her in the ass’ line?” I do not look forward to any book I am reading being turned into a novel.1[…]
Performance World: The Truman Show‘s Sociology
The show must go on Never has a movie better fitted a sociological theory than The Truman Show (1999) to the work of Erving Goffman. Best known for Presentation of[…]
The Interpretative Odyssey of 2001: Of Humanity and Hyperspace
More fun in the new (old) world
F for Fake: The Ultimate Mirror of Orson Welles
In which Welles deflates expectations of greatness and transcends them
Don’t Follow Leaders: Animal Mother in Full Metal Jacket
Kubrick’s shaman/artist takes on “the leaders”
