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
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[…]
“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
What’s black and white and destroys Western Civilization?
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[…]
DVD & Blu-ray · Music & Musicals
“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
“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.”
“I wish I was beside her but I’m not there, I’m gone” — from I’m Not There, Bob Dylan
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals · TV & Streaming
Read about what you can’t see
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Sorry, folks, but this is the last dance
Documentaries · Music & Musicals · Reviews
“It comes as no surprise that Dylan, who has made a career out of dodging tidy classifications and labels, would be involved with a film that exhibits traits of both schools of cinéma vérité, rendering it as one of the most challenging and important works of the 1960s.”
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Paris! Gershwin! Been there! Heard that!
Composers · Directors · Music & Musicals · Noir
“Welles familiarizes us with the geography of the town largely through source music. Los Robles is presented as a labyrinth, an inter-place where physical and moral borders are erased.”
Documentaries · Music & Musicals · Reviews
A documentary on the weird world of Ohioans keeping dangerous wild animals as pets (it’s legal there), this film couldn’t be more timely in the light of recent events
Documentaries · Music & Musicals · Reviews
“How does Tibet’s cultural destruction differ, in essence, from Time-Warner’s choreographed glamorization of bitches and ho’s in inner-city America, or death metal’s hold over disenfranchised Midwestern youth?”
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
Come on, do the Sluefoot? That I can resist.
Music & Musicals · Writers & Critics
“Coogan’s representation of Jesus, ascending high above the audience, is far removed from the silly, sexy Jesus who sang to us earlier wearing a wife-beater.”
Documentaries · Music & Musicals
“I’m dealing in rock ‘n’ roll. I’m, like, I’m not a bona fide human being.” — Phil Spector
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
“She came at me in sections . . . she was bad . . . she was dangerous . . . she was my kind of woman.”
Directors · Interviews · Music & Musicals
“Being middle-age rock and rollers, just trying to pay the bills, isn’t an easy lifestyle.”
