Lewton/Tourneur – The Lennon & McCartney of Cinema
Bright Lights After Dark tips its hat to the Val Lewton Blogathon hosted here, and encourages its readers to check out the documentary, Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows,[…]
Category: Genres
The White Reindeer (Valkoinen Peura, 1952)
Christa Lang Fuller, widow of Sam, in response to my post re 31 Essential Horror Films writes: “Please add Valkoinen peura (1952) to the top of your list as one[…]
The Searcher: On Ethan Edwards and John Ford’s Masterpiece
“Ride away . . . ride away . . .” John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) opens with the arrival of Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) at his brother’s home in southern[…]
The Wages of Skin: The Irrepressible Rise of All-American Smut
Linda Lovelace meets the Forty Thieves Having seen how sixties San Francisco spawned a generation of irreverent young celluloid porn barons — “Before The Green Door” in Bright Lights 57[…]
The Passion of the Auteurist: On Man of Cinema: Pierre Rissient
“It’s not enough to like this movie” He has been called the Kissinger of Cinema and the King of Cannes. Quentin Tarantino describes him as “a samurai warrior for films[…]
Made in China: Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky on Their Travels Across Manufactured Landscapes
“We’ve created a world that buffers us from nature.” In the past few years, there has been a healthy emission of premium-grade eco-conscious documentaries — Darwin’s Nightmare, Our Daily Bread,[…]
Whose Noir Is It, Anyway? Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly
Mike Hammer deconstructed, or Mike Hammer disrespected? Back in the day — way, way back in the day, when life in America was not a total girlie show — Americans[…]
The Poisoned Story: The Myth of Magic in Wait ‘Til You’re Older
“Even the least imaginative people are incredulous about aging: surely this isn’t the only story, the only body I get to inhabit.” To start off, Hong Kong films may not[…]
Will the Shark Bite? G. W. Pabst and The Threepenny Opera
“Macheath: I’m not asking you to put on an opera.” ~ Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera, Act 1, scene 2 Down the crooked lanes of London, gangster Mackie Messer stalks a[…]
Oh What a Lovely Jail: Crime Is Old, Crime Is New
Just Like Those Mind-Forged Manacles Blues A desire for revenge is a normal response to crime. Ask anyone who has just had his house burgled or car stolen. But there[…]
Halloween Special – 31 Essential Horror Films
This is my ranked list of 31 Essential Horror Films culled from Ed Hardy, Jr.’s 183 Official Nominees for the 31 Flicks That Give You the Willies List. In keeping[…]
Catherine Corman, Joseph Cornell, and Rose Hobart
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUpUKcCrBP8] When I first saw Rose Hobart (excerpted above) back in the 1970s, it was a revelation to me. Its maker, Joseph Cornell (1903-1972), was an American surrealist who specialized[…]
The Invasion – Metaphor for Everything or Nothing
STOP THE PRESSES! The Invasion sends out (gasp) mixed messages! Well, most Hollywood films send out mixed messages, don’t they? Mixed messages are far more the Hollywood rule than the[…]
Commies, Commies, Everywhere – Tourneur’s The Fearmakers
Commie on a plane – Oliver Blake and Dana Andrews in The Fearmakers Under the credits of Jacques Tourneur’s The Fearmakers (1958) we see a bearded Dana Andrews being tortured[…]
Historical & Epic · Movies · Reviews
300 Lies? Give Poetics a Chance
What’s Greek history without distortions, inaccuracies, and falsehoods? In the western Aegean, in a narrow pass by the Gulf of Malis, 300 Spartans and their Hellenic allies, led by King[…]
Genres · Horror · Movies · Reviews
Return of the Return of the Repressed: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s 28 Weeks Later
Look familiar? When considering any contemporary zombie film, it is virtually impossible to resist comparison to the work of George A. Romero. Although many directors within the genre attempt to[…]
DVD & Blu-ray · Experimental & Underground · Reviews
Close to Home: The Films of Su Friedrich on DVD
Autobiography sometimes trumps art in these uneven works Su Friedrich is a disciplined and highly skilled filmmaker who teaches school (film and video production at Princeton, to be precise) and[…]
Butterfly Dream: Tsai Ming-liang’s I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone
“There’s no overt sexuality to Rawang’s care for Hsiao Kang. It’s a tender act of love, a selfless giving of himself to another.” With I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone[…]
Glancing, Cruising, Staring: Queer Ways of Looking
Ecce homo I looked at him closely and more quickly (one can, without taking one’s eyes off an object, look very quickly. At that moment my “gaze” swooped down on[…]
Directors · Exploitation & Erotica
Before The Green Door: The Mitchell Brothers, the Counterculture, and Hard-core’s Beginnings
It came from San Francisco This is the first of a two-part article exploring how hard-core porn evolved through the efforts of Jim and Artie Mitchell and other pioneers, with[…]
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