Meta-Anti-Musical: Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark
Dancer in the Dark is largely about movies, in particular, about those movies in which people sing and dance their troubles away. Even this self-reflexivity situates the film in the[…]
Category: Music & Musicals
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[…]
Focus on Robert Altman: Three Takes on Popeye
Unassimilated weirdness is typical of Popeye – even in its soundtrack, where goofy “boing” effects are used to accompany ordinary, unheroic movement. Sweethaven’s anthem, the Harry Nilsson song “Everything Is[…]
Tempest in a Teaspoon – Thomas Adès Opera of Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel
Alan Vanneman goes to the Met – the Metropolitan Opera, that is. The Met was looking for a film critic who likes opera to review Thomas Adès operatic version of[…]
Animation · Comics · Music & Musicals · SF & Fantasy · TV & Streaming
Hooked on a Feeling: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Adventure Time, and the Bonds of Imagination
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 has infinitely more in common with the psychic quest for one’s identity, the yearning for belonging and friendship, and the no-rules imagination – sometimes[…]
Activist & Political · African American · Music & Musicals
Los Angeles Cinema and the Utopia of La La Land
Few movies have represented LA with such fawning reverence and nostalgia as La La Land. The filmmakers depict a clean, spare, elegant city, sluiced in mid-century Technicolor, consisting almost exclusively[…]
How to Kill the Queen of the Night: Tragedy Is No Joke, but It Can Be Deeply Funny
O wad some Power the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us! – Robert Burns, “To a Louse, On Seeing One on a Lady’s Bonnet At Church.” * *[…]
La La Land and Dreams of a Musical Renaissance
There is some originality in this orgy of borrowing, with easy references to touch screens, cell phones, and an interracial marriage, but all with a constant backward orientation. La La[…]
Counterculture · Documentaries · DVD & Blu-ray · Music & Musicals
Take What You Have Gathered from Coincidence: D. A. Pennebaker’s Dont Look Back (1967)
“BOB: Well, you always know who you are. I just don’t know who I’m gonna become.” – Sam Shepard. True Dylan: A One-Act Play as It Really Happened One Afternoon in[…]
Experimental & Underground · Music & Musicals
The World’s First 24-Hour Music Video: Mapping the Cinematic Geography of 24 Hours of Happy
UPDATE May 21, 2014: Six Iranian participants in 24 Hours of Happy were arrested on Tuesday, May 20, and “forced to repent” on national television for that appearance. They posted[…]
Cinco de Mayo Fun! Ninón Sevilla Gets Down in the 1950 Mexican Musical Melodrama Aventurera
Cabaret or whorehouse? If only poor Elena had known the difference! In the late 1940s, Mexico experienced an economic boom that shifted the cultural and artistic energy from country life — the[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
Easter 2014, Part Deux: Irving Berlin’s Easter Parade, in which Fred and Judy celebrate the death and resurrection of Christ
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[…]
Marion Davies and Bing Crosby are Going Hollywood! But only one of them makes it
“Praise the Lord and pass the absinthe!” When Marion Davies first met William Randolph Hearst, she was a Ziegfeld Follies showgirl, and a showgirl she remained. She had an uncertain[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
It’s Always Fair Weather? I’m Afraid Not: Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse Say Good-bye to Broadway
What’s black and white and destroys Western Civilization?
CJK’s Blu-ray of the Month: The Beatles HELP! (Richard Lester, 1965)
You might think that everyone knows the Beatles. But you would be wrong. When a couple of weeks ago I asked the clerk at Best Buy if they had the[…]
“Where Are We Now?” A Still Life in Moving Frame
“I wish I was beside her but I’m not there, I’m gone” — from I’m Not There, Bob Dylan
DVD & Blu-ray · Music & Musicals
Opera Goes Blu, and So Should You: An Amateur’s Guide to Mozart’s Operas on Blu-ray
“Passions, whether violent or not, must never be expressed to the point of exciting disgust, and as music, even in the most terrible situations, must never offend the ear, but must please the listener, or in other words must never cease to be music… .”
Essays · Historical & Epic · Music & Musicals
The Music of Words: Storytelling in Two Powell & Pressburger Films
“While Powell and Pressburger were masters of the classic show-don’t-tell method, they also daringly broke the rule by telling, not showing. Both techniques ultimately serve the same purpose. Despite the aesthetic of excess often attributed to the Archers’ films, they gain power by withholding certain elements, requiring the audience to supply what’s not there.”
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals · TV & Streaming
Fred’s on TV! But You Can’t See Him, Except on YouTube
Read about what you can’t see
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Nothin’ but Legs! Fred and Cyd Go out Kicking in Cole Porter’s Silk Stockings
Sorry, folks, but this is the last dance
Links + BSA
