Billy Wilder (1906-2002) died on March 27, age 95. We honor him by reposting Jason Carpenter’s fine analysis of the master’s work, first published in Bright Lights in 2016. *[…]
Animation · Animators · Designers · Experimental & Underground
John Whitney himself envisioned nothing more and nothing less for the future of CGI than a union of space and time: “Time has become visual.” But all film deals in[…]
Actors & Personalities · Interviews
In which Stella tells all or at least most
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Feminism · Indies · Interviews · SF & Fantasy
For me, on Supergirl, I was 100% in. It was the biggest opportunity that ever happened to me, and the process of making the film was very nourishing. I think[…]
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Drama · Women in Film
“[H]er favorite expression of strained intensity would be less quickly relieved by a merciful death than by Ex-Lax.”
DIY · Experimental & Underground · Exploitation & Erotica · Film Culture · Impresarios · Outsiders · Programmers
He told me about when his piano player canceled out of a silent movie performance. “I walked outside during the kiddie matinee and saw some young people loading musical instruments[…]
Biopic · Directors · Experimental & Underground · War · Writers & Critics
I’m not interested in what happened next; I’m interested in what happens emotionally next. It’s like memory. Memory isn’t linear. It’s cyclical. A tiny thing can be the thing that’s[…]
Comedy · Communism and Socialism · Directors · Drama · Eastern European · Russia · War · Writers & Critics
Billy Wilder turned to these two plays because they offered the situations, structure, and characters that would allow his imagination to flower and create contemporary stories – a patriotic military[…]
Actors & Personalities · Artists
Editor’s Note: Richard Pryor died on this date, December 10, 2005, ten days after his sixty-fifth birthday. We salute this comic genius and cultural game-changer by reposting Julian Upton’s powerful[…]
Just as Holy Motors simultaneously mourned the loss of physicality from filmmaking while embracing the creative possibilities offered by digital technology, Annette is built on a seeming paradox: it plunges[…]
Actors & Personalities · Hollywood · Politics
If only Ronald Reagan had been a better actor, our world might be a brighter place today. * * * Although it’s been thirty-three years and six presidents since Ronald[…]
Dance · French Cinema · Interviews · Music & Musicals
Dancing in the streets of Rochefort was the best performing experience I’ve ever known. Reacting to real sunshine, breezes, cafés, and streets was miraculous. My emotions suddenly became as accessible[…]
Directors · Drama · Essays · Writers & Critics
Where Reid spends pages and pages absentmindedly ruminating on the many very painful, and very human, distinctions between Self and Other before losing himself in a tonal mess of relationship[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Impresarios & Moguls
Mom and Dad is likely the most successful exploitation movie ever, and it still offers a lesson in the facts of, well, not life but canny American entrepreneurialism, that is,[…]
Drama · Religion & Spirituality · Writers & Critics
Graham Greene could be a very political writer (nowhere more than in The Quiet American, which was his next major work after The End of the Affair), but Christianity has[…]
Directors · Gender · Hollywood · Horror · Men & Masculinity
If the sum of Spielberg’s work is about how men live in the world, Jaws is his most particular point on the subject, a film centered with almost fantastical totality[…]
Lester D. Friedman. Citizen Spielberg. 2nd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2022. $24.95. Calling him “our foremost practitioner of reel American history,” Friedman draws our attention to Spielberg’s determination[…]
#MeToo · Animation · Animators · News · Production History · Societal Trends
Docter and Lasseter were part of the Pixar Braintrust, a group of aging white men that held creative control of Pixar’s productions. The original members – Lasseter, Docter, Andrew Stanton[…]
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[…]
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[…]
