While Bullitt (1968) is better known for its extended automobile chase sequence through the streets of San Francisco, the film is also a carefully written detective story in the same[…]
Books · Exploitation & Erotica
Sexplosion: From Andy Warhol to A Clockwork Orange – How a Generation of Pop Rebels Broke All the Taboos, by Robert Hofler. New York: HarperCollins, 2014. Hardcover, $27.99 When Michael[…]
Befitting a great film architect, Robert Wise gave good prologue. The beauty of a prologue well executed is in more than setting a mood or tone or offering simple backstory[…]
The Bergman film is much darker, and examines – with sadistic, Strindbergian zeal – the cruelties that men and women inflict on one other when love is distorted by power.[…]
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[…]
DVD & Blu-ray · Reviews · Silents
For many of us, cinema long ago replaced religion, but why not combine the two by celebrating Easter with a reading of Gordon Thomas’s study of King of Kings, part “un” of[…]
Activist & Political · Directors · Documentaries
In 1968, famed Black Power poet, playwright, and filmmaker Amiri Baraka, who died on January 9, 2014 at the age of 79, made a documentary in and around Spirit House,[…]
Books · LGBT & Queer · Producers & Studios
“He won’t be gay when I get through with him!” Revisiting legendary gay agent Henry Willson via Robert Hafler’s biography Henry Willson, The Man Who Invented Hollywood * * *[…]
Directors · Documentaries · Interviews
When a film screening is greeted first with silence, it is certainly not easy on the director. “It was so scary, everybody was so silent in the theatre we were[…]
Following up on the author’s previous Phantom piece, here he discusses Mary Philbin’s innocence, Lon Chaney’s dedication, and the larger implications of Norman Kerry’s “roving hands.” Written by Philip J.[…]
Directors · Documentaries · Experimental & Underground
“For a start, Straub and Huillet’s relationship is far from an image of perfect union. It seems to thrive on a combination of disagreement and respect, a dialectical tussle worthy[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews · SF/Fantasy
Blade Runner is a film seeping with representations of repressed sexuality. Every scene, sequence, and image is imbued with, commenting on, or directly a result of sexual frustration and need.[…]
DVD & Blu-ray · Reviews · Silents
“Erik, like Darth Vader, is much more interesting with as little backstory as possible.” — Mike Gebert, Nitrateville, site administrator1 When fairy tales, literature, and the movies hand us a[…]
“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[…]
Activist & Political · Reviews
“People believe what they want to believe because the guy who made this was so good that it’s real to everybody. Now who’s the master, the painter or the forger?”[…]
Actors & Personalities · Silents
INTRODUCTION Jack Pickford – actor, director, and alleged womaniser, alcoholic, drug-user, bootlegger and all-around scoundrel. Born in 1896, Jack was the brother of Mary Pickford, the Queen of Hollywood during[…]
Activist & Political · SF & Fantasy
Avatar metaphorically attacks all martial, colonial, and expansionist histories, which have occurred at the expense of the world’s indigenous peoples and Earth’s biocomplexity. Both implicitly, through the film’s narrative, and[…]
Activist & Political · Reviews
“To go to the cinema is like to eat or shit, it’s a physiological act, it’s urban guerrilla” ~ Marco Ferreri Francis Bacon once said: “We’re flesh, potential carcasses. If[…]
Experimental & Underground · TV & Streaming
Based on a pair of TV movie adaptations by Richard Matheson, the Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974) series ran only 20 episodes, surprising given the popular and commercial success of[…]
“Pornographic,” “voyeuristic,” “clinical” . . . at a time when gay cinema is known for its matter-of-fact, graphic handling of sex, it’s surprising that the sex scenes in Abdellatif Kechiche’s[…]
