Chasing The Front Runner
Future events in political campaigns came to be much worse than the events of late 1987 proved to be. One might be inclined to scoff at Gary Hart’s response given[…]
Author: Robert Castle
Robert Castle has been contributing to Bright Lights Film Journal since 2000. His book The Interpretive Odyssey of Stanley Kubrick, is available on Kindle. In 2006, his first 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 columns appearing in Unlikely Stories (Spuyten Duyvil). His new novel, The Hidden Life (Atmosphere Press), is available at Amazon.
Counterculture · Dialogue · Drama · Romance
Bringing Down the Establishment: The Graduate and End of the Road: A Dialogue
The subsequent dialogue between the two films developed after much negotiation and cajoling. They were inclined to be hostile to the other. I tried to inform them about their common[…]
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Absurdism · Drama · Essays · Media · Philosophy · SF & Fantasy
Leaving the World of “The Truman Show”
“Where’s the TV Guide?” – last line of the film * * * Introduction Truman Burbank exits the only world he knows. We – the television audience in the film,[…]
Human Sacrifice in Brigadoon: The Fate of Harry Beaton
Brigadoon is a quasi-origin story that is closely associated with the way stories transform the reality of the recent past. Communities, societies, and nations survive by means of having sacrificial[…]
Celebrity Culture · Crime · Digital · Drama · Societal Trends
Bling around the Collar: How Can We Get Rid of This Dirty Ring?
The Bling Ring’s impossible challenge for us is to reject the moralizing. We feel superior to the teenagers because of the celebrity issue. The four girls and boy represent our[…]
Comedy · Historical & Epic · Native Americans · Revisionism · Westerns
Robert Altman’s Wild West Show: On Buffalo Bill and the Indians
Buffalo Bill and the Indians joins a select group of films whose popular failure nonetheless represented an aesthetic success: Patty Hearst (1987) and The King of Comedy (1983), come to[…]
Absurdism · Comedy · Drama · French Cinema · Mystery · Psychology
Fathoming the Phantom: On Bunuel’s The Phantom of Liberty
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? * * *[…]
Drama · Horror · Women in Film
The Birds Is Us: Where Did We Come From?
The movie is, literally, a projection of our mental landscape. We passively sit back (like Jeffries in Rear Window) and the world appears as we live and make it. We[…]
Psycho as Comedy: The Joke’s on Everyone
We can further associate the filmmaker, the man with whom we’ve placed our narrative trust, with the “psycho” of both the title and our typical image of one, the latter[…]
Horror · Philosophy · SF & Fantasy
The Thing about The Thing and Some Other Things
It’s your thing, do what you wanna do, I can’t tell you who to sock it to. – Isley Brothers What in the thing is thingly? What is the thing[…]
Celebrity Culture · Drama · Essays
Doubles, Anyone? Celebrity Stalking in Strangers on a Train and The King of Comedy
While Rupert isn’t interested in a crisscross murder, he certainly wants Jerry to spot him a segment on Jerry’s show. This is more than a favor..And he appears to go[…]
Activist & Political · Essays · SF & Fantasy
Klaatu’s Police Action: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Remembered
Suddenly, Gort doesn’t seem so powerful. We’re told of his strength and given a few meager examples. We have to take Klaatu’s word for it. The universe/world policeman is a[…]
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,[…]
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[…]
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.
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