Orpheus Unending, or Beyond and Behind The Fugitive Kind
For a variety of reasons, then, despite its high-gloss finish, the film did not achieve any real commercial success. This is not to say it was an artistic letdown, as[…]
Category: Artists
African American · Cinematographers · Designers · Editors · Interviews
The Last Black Man in San Francisco: Talking with Production Designer Jona Tochet, Cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra, and Editor David Marks
We spent a lot of time going through references for the film as well as scouting iconic locations, but what it came down to was devoting ourselves to creating a[…]
Horror · Interviews · Movies · SF & Fantasy
Metallica’s Kirk Hammett on Introducing Kids to Scary Movies, Why He Likes Lords of Chaos, and the Deal with Women and Horror
* * * It’s The Day of the Triffids’ fault: when he was a wee lad stuck at home in front of the television with a sprained arm (fault: sister,[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Drama · Essays · Romance
Adios, Compañeros: Living the Dream of Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood
QT’s films are commonly hurtling toward darkness, yet Once Upon feels like a repudiation, as much as a culmination, of his oeuvre. There’s a point in the experience where the[…]
She-Gods, Gangsters, and Gunslingers: The “New Woman” in the Early Films of Roger Corman
As part of their liberation from convention, Corman empowers female characters with choices both real and metaphorical. Even a common love triangle can represent female empowerment, with the choice between[…]
Actors & Personalities · Hollywood
“Newest Ideas about Brain Power”: Hair Color and Jean Harlow, Hollywood’s Platinum Blonde
INTRODUCTION Jean Harlow (1911-1937), born Harlean Carpenter, rose to screen fame in the early 1930s playing characters with an unaffected, uninhibited, spontaneous sexuality. [See Figure 1.] Dubbed the “Platinum Blonde”[…]
Actors & Personalities · Commentary · Silents
Political Correctness Run Amok: Life and Lillian Gish at Bowling Green State University, Ohio
Those who affect a superior attitude toward a great artist such as Lillian Gish are not only ignorant of our cultural heritage but stubbornly unaware that art usually comes from[…]
Composers · Historical & Epic · Reviews · Silents
Getting It Right the Second Time: Adapting Ben-Hur for the Screen
This is an updated and revised version of Gordon Thomas’s article first posted in Bright Lights in May 2006, reposted to celebrate Easter. * * * Bigger is better this[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Pre-Code
Happy Birthday, Lee Tracy (b. April 14, 1898): “A Manic, Scalding Passion for Success”
“With his impish grin, twinkling eyes, and boyish blond hair, he looks like Tom Sawyer crossed with a Tammany Hall fixer.”
The Glare of the City: Adapting The Long Goodbye
Altman admitted never finishing the novel and saw no need to remain faithful to it. For that reason, the movie wasn’t well received by Chandler fans. Most didn’t appreciate the[…]
Literature and Film · Writers & Critics
Script to Screen: Notes on Five Significant Screenplays, the Movies They Were Made Into, and the Process of Adaptation
The most substantial changes in Nightmare Alley are between the novel and the screenplay. For example, in the novel, Stan, who covets Zeena and her act, kills the alcoholic Pete[…]
Designers · Historical & Epic · Interviews
Queen Anne’s Fishbowl: Discussing The Favourite with Production Designer Fiona Crombie
Queen Anne’s bed was hand built, hand carved and painted. It was 14 feet high with four mattresses and layers of beautiful bedding. The bed is a fairly accurate queen’s[…]
Before Hollywood: Max Ophüls, Curtis Bernhardt, and Robert Siodmak in Exile in Paris
Hollywood was just beyond the horizon for the émigrés. There is no doubt that Curtis Bernhardt, Robert Siodmak, and Max Ophüls thought they would settle down in Paris and become[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
Who Becomes a Legend Most? And Why Wasn’t It Betty Garrett?
“The reason I sought out Betty Garrett’s book in the first place was because of something devastating that I read – and didn’t want to be true – in Farley[…]
The Auteurist Stork: Alfonso Cuarón’s Cinema of Deliverance
Roma is the latest edition in what can be considered Cuarón’s prenatal trilogy, preceded by Children of Men (2006) and Gravity. This is a director obsessed with matters of pregnancy,[…]
Actors & Personalities · Documentaries
Making Montgomery Clift: An Intimate Exploration of a Hollywood Enigma
As Robert Clift states in the film: “The people in my life who loved Monty lost him twice: in his death, and then again when they couldn’t find him in[…]
Looking for Quiet: The Other Side of Robert Mitchum
Considering Mitchum’s background, it’s forgivable to conflate his cinematic existentialist tough guys with his mythic, often dubious, real-life history. Some things are certain, though: Mitchum lost his father early, crushed[…]
Animation · Animators · Experimental & Underground · Religion & Spirituality
Making Fun: The Satiric Impulse in Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues and Seder-Masochism
In her two longest works of animation – Sita Sings the Blues (2008) and Seder Masochism (2018, currently on the festival circuit) – Nina Paley turns her sharp wit and[…]
Designers · Horror · Interviews
In the Mütterhaus: A Conversation with Suspiria’s Production Designer, Inbal Weinberg
“We need guilt, Doctor. And shame.” * * * Luca Guadagnino follows up 2016’s A Bigger Splash and 2017’s Call Me by Your Name with 2018’s Suspiria, a remake of[…]
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