Horror · Women in Film · Writers & Critics
Ardel Wray: Val Lewton’s Forgotten Screenwriter
Despite the fact that Wray had no previous screen credits, Lewton hired her to rework the story of I Walked with a Zombie with only two months to go before[…]
Category: Artists
“Nicholas Who?” An Irreverently Linear Journey Through the Work of the Late Nicolas Roeg, Director of Well Over Four Films
“There’s something that happened, and there’s a kind of ring around that event – or it’s fenced off – and everything else is okay around it, but there’s just something[…]
Directors · Documentaries · Essays
But It Did Happen! Werner Herzog and the Ecstatic Truth
I think that this delicate line between reality, and fact, and truth needs to be more clearly defined. We have to redefine reality.1 – Werner Herzog There are dignified stupidities.[…]
Designing Women: Talking with Costume Designer Olga Mill and Production Designer Grace Yun about Hereditary and First Reformed
We worked to create a “slow film” aesthetic, with distinct moments where it broke from the rules. Paul planned to use boredom and duration as the method, with longer takes,[…]
Le Misanthrope: On Lars von Trier
If there’s an authorial hand in Trier’s films, it serves only to pull the wings off the fly. * * * In the thirty-five-odd years he’s been active, Lars von[…]
Andrew and Virginia Stone: Noir to the Bone
Andrew Stone and his fantastically helpful wife-editor have evolved an entirely different ethos of film-making.… If they want to blow up a train, they blow up a real train. If[…]
Comedy · Directors · Women in Film
Drop In and Get Lost: Sex as Funhouse, Freak Show, and Masquerade in Irma la Douce and Kiss Me, Stupid
American Audiences watched Irma la Douce without discomfort, perhaps because French prostitutes and pimps were performing immoral acts and misdeeds. The same subversion of middle-class values that would later inform[…]
Asian · Interviews · Producers & Studios · Production History
Moving from Japanese Film Distribution to Production: An Interview with Third Window Films’ Adam Torel
What Third Window’s practices and Adam Torel’s insights provide is a view of the industry that contrasts significantly from current Japanese film research, especially in light of other exhibitors and[…]
Happy Birthday, Baby! Irving Berlin (b. May 11, 1888) on Film
This article first appeared in Bright Lights in October 2000. We reprint it as a tribute to the seminal composer on what would have been his 130th birthday. (And frankly, we’re surprised[…]
Designers · Drama · Women in Film
Food, Fashion, and (Fe)male Identity in The Phantom Thread
This is the second of two pieces on Phantom Thread. See Sam Ankenbauer’s different take in the previous post. * * * The articulation of female pleasure in The Phantom[…]
Secret Lives: On Phantom Thread
Note: This is the first of two reviews of Phantom Thread. Watch for Raymond De Luca’s take later this week. Each viewing paints old interactions in new colors, and the film thrives[…]
Film Crews · Production History
Get a Grip: Celebrating Those Overworked, Underpaid, Practically Invisible Technicians Who Help Make the Movies
A grip is a jack-of-all-trades: part mover, part roadie, part handyman, part mechanic, and part mechanical engineer. Grips are in charge of lifting, moving, constructing, rigging, pushing, driving, and securing[…]
Dark Undercurrents: Claude Chabrol’s Second Wave from Les Biches (1968) to Innocents with Dirty Hands (1975)
“There are no waves, there is only the ocean.” – Claude Chabrol * * * From 1968 to 1975 Claude Chabrol directed a dozen films – one of the most[…]
A Mannequin’s Face: Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford was born on this day in 1905. Our buddy Howard Mandelbaum wrote this incisive tribute to her in the 1970s. We reprint it here for your reading pleasure.[…]
Directors · Horror · SF & Fantasy
Weird and Pissed Off: Field Notes on John Carpenter’s First Fifteen Years
“It’s better to be a human being than an imitation.”- John Carpenter, on The Thing * * * 1. Begin with sound. Begin with Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). A[…]
African · Experimental & Underground · New Media · Video Artists
Senses of Times and Times of Death: Contemporary African Video Works at the National Museum of African Art
We might presume the temporal slips at stake in an African video exhibit are squarely political or anticolonial, but the videos’ slow, reverse, and repeated motions also link politico-economic disorder[…]
Designers · Interviews · LGBT & Queer
Designing Desire: Production Designer Samuel Deshors Talks about Call Me by Your Name
Call Me by Your Name was nominated for four Academy Awards this year, including Best Picture, Best Lead Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Song. In this interview, production designer[…]
Directors · Essays · Philosophy
Asking the Wrong Questions: Reiteration and Doubling in David Lynch’s Lost Highway, Mullholland Drive, and Inland Empire
“Mystery is good, confusion is bad. And there’s a big difference between the two.” – David Lynch * * * A survey of the critical literature pertaining to David Lynch’s[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy
No One Gets In Alive! Kicking Down Doors with the Marx Brothers
The Brothers don’t enter into sanctimonious class systems, organizational institutions, or drawing rooms to assimilate and enjoy the fruits of its privileges either; they gain access, enact a savage modus[…]
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