Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
In part “deux” of Bright Lights’ tribute to Easter, we present that devout duo, Fred and Judy, offering spiritual and musical solace on this day of reflection. Remember how it[…]
Activist & Political · Directors · Documentaries
In 1968, famed Black Power poet, playwright, and filmmaker Amiri Baraka, who died on January 9, 2014 at the age of 79, made a documentary in and around Spirit House,[…]
Actors & Personalities · TV & Streaming
Ashton Kutcher, producer and star of MTV’s celebrity prankster series Punk’d, played a prank on Steve Wozniak in the film Jobs, where he stars in the title role. The prank[…]
“Wasn’t he just there, standing right in front of us?” Actors are known to be complicated beings. Because the successful ones loom so large in our vision, their deaths are[…]
Where all this takes me is to the thought that fiction frequently presents human personality as something lost or imprisoned – by self-ignorance and suspicion if by nothing worse. “We’re[…]
Books · LGBT & Queer · Producers & Studios
“He won’t be gay when I get through with him!” Revisiting legendary gay agent Henry Willson via Robert Hafler’s biography Henry Willson, The Man Who Invented Hollywood * * *[…]
Mickey Rooney died on April 6, 2014. We offer Jim MacEachern’s profile of him in tribute. * * * “A great man is only the reflection of a great boy[…]
Directors · Documentaries · Interviews
When a film screening is greeted first with silence, it is certainly not easy on the director. “It was so scary, everybody was so silent in the theatre we were[…]
Drama is about extremity. This can centre on one person, or on his/her society or both. Without it drama cannot exist. But what if the world’s greatest dramatist starts testing[…]
Directors · Documentaries · Experimental & Underground
“For a start, Straub and Huillet’s relationship is far from an image of perfect union. It seems to thrive on a combination of disagreement and respect, a dialectical tussle worthy[…]
Annie Hall is warm, taut rather than loose, angular instead of fuzzy, Manhattan is a love letter to New York, a hymn to neurosis, and a delicate straddling of the[…]
Actors & Personalities · Silents
INTRODUCTION Jack Pickford – actor, director, and alleged womaniser, alcoholic, drug-user, bootlegger and all-around scoundrel. Born in 1896, Jack was the brother of Mary Pickford, the Queen of Hollywood during[…]
“In the 1930s, Warners effectively became the studio to go to for social critique, a risky position to hold under the Hays Code when pictures could be censored not just[…]
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Reviews
“While the premise of an injured soldier recuperating in a house full of smitten women seems ripe for male-fantasy debasement, the film is deeply interested in the psyches of its[…]
“Salman says he identifies as a Palestinian, but does not feel a sense of nationalism. His is not the generation that still holds onto house keys and deeds to property[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
What’s black and white and destroys Western Civilization?
Comedy · Directors · Essays · Writers & Critics
“Nowadays, schlubs play schlubs and audiences are expected to accept that geeky males can win over classically beautiful women. What does it tell us about the state of gender relations, sexual fantasy, and desire that a physically average geek like Seth Rogen can trump an iconically attractive and glamorous star like Cary Grant?”
When witches lay curses down upon the cowardly townsfolk about to hang or burn them, it’s almost always “I’ll be back to haunt your ancestors in 100 years!” Is it time then for Frances Farmer to return for that long-awaited revenge on Seattle, the patriarchy, the legal system, Hollywood, and the American Medical Association? Let’s hope
For every filmmaker who is considered an auteur, there is a key work – often a first film like Welles’ Citizen Kane – that expresses in essential form most of[…]
Actors & Personalities · Exploitation & Erotica
When people die there is usually an element of shock to the news, but when I heard Jean Hill passed away this week (8/21/13) I wasn’t shocked, since her health[…]
