The Fabulous Baker Boys Explains Why There’s No People Like Show People
Damn we’re good. With the single exception of biting the heads off of rats, lounge acts are the lowest form of show business. As such, they exert a perverse fascination[…]
Category: Genres
Actors & Personalities · Asian · Interviews
An Evening with Jackie Chan: Interview and Profile
This article appeared originally in the all-Hong Kong issue of Bright Lights #13 (1994). * * * Jackie spills his guts – verbally, this time I first met Jackie Chan in 1980,[…]
A Better Tomorrow? American Masochism and Hong Kong Action Films
This article appeared originally in the all-Hong Kong issue of Bright Lights #13 (1994). * * * Among their thrills, Woo’s homoerotic bullet ballets offered welcome distraction from 1997’s doomsday[…]
Asian · Directors · Interviews
Interview with John Woo
This article appeared originally in the all-Hong Kong issue of Bright Lights #13 (1994). * * * Hong Kong’s master of balletic blood ‘n bulletplay speaks John Woo, one of[…]
Asian · Historical & Epic · Reviews
Beautiful Beast: Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
A 19-year-old newcomer and a middle-aged veteran steal the show from two legends of Hong Kong cinema Director Ang Lee would not be an obvious first choice to direct a[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Blind Spot: Nonny de la Pena’s The Jaundiced Eye (1999)
A grim intersection of homophobia and hysteria ruins two men’s lives America’s criminal justice system has been under increasing attack in the past few years, and it’s hardly surprising. The[…]
Turnabout: Lane Janger’s Just One Time (1997)
The latest attempt at a “gay crossover date movie” almost succeeds Just One Time will trigger déjà vu in some viewers. This feature-length comedy is an expanded version of a popular[…]
Asian · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Softcore Soap: Mel Chionglo’s Burlesk King (1999)
Like the macho dancers it portrays, this uneasy mix of melodrama and realism never quite gets it up With Macho Dancer (1988), the late Filipino director Lino Brocka (1940-1991) pioneered a[…]
Poor Queen: Giorgios Katakouzinos’s Angel (1982)
Soldier by day, tranny slut by night Giorgios Katakouzinos’s 1982 feature Angel (Aggelos) is one of the most acclaimed and popular Greek films ever, allegedly having been seen by one Greek[…]
Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour on DVD
Is Tom Neal’s Al Roberts really Fate’s Plaything or just the ultimate pushy bottom? Edgar G. Ulmer is one of the more provocative auteurs in movie history. His provenance is impeccable[…]
Ozu’s Good Morning on DVD
Schoolboys on strike, farting contests, and a mysteriously acquired washer make up the world of this Japanese classic Of the three great directors of classical Japanese cinema, Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963) remains[…]
Documentaries · Experimental & Underground
Documentaries: Peter Wintonick’s Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment (2000)
The “moment” is both defined and celebrated in this exceptional documentary “I don’t know what truth is. Truth is something unattainable. We can’t think we’re creating truth with a camera.[…]
Achievement and Crisis: Hong Kong Cinema in the ’80s
This article appeared originally in the all-Hong Kong issue of Bright Lights #13 (1994). * * * A comprehensive look at a seminal decade in one of the world’s great[…]
Alive and Kicking: The Kung Fu Film Is a Legend
This article appeared originally in the all-Hong Kong issue of Bright Lights #13 (1994). * * * HK’s martial arts film stylishly bridge time, space, and now cultures More popularly[…]
Masterpieces of Japanese Silent Cinema on DVD-ROM
Japanese silent films are no longer silent in this fabulous – and expensive – DVD-ROM Western interest in Japanese film falls mainly into three realms: the Godzilla movies and their endless cheesy[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground · Reviews
A Black Silence Almost as Violent as Laughter: Jean Cocteau’s Orphic Trilogy
The arthouse staple gets a gorgeous makeover in this DVD set brimming with extras Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) has been called the most versatile artist of the twentieth century, and in[…]
Three Early Kurosawas: Drunken Angel, Scandal, I Live in Fear
Tubercular yakuza, scandalous artists, and postwar paranoids duke it out with the world For a variety of reasons, Western audiences have enshrined Kurosawa as the preferred director of Japan’s golden[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground
Tableaux Vivant: Notes on Lawrence Jordan
Jordan’s collage films are “moving” in two senses “Animation” connotes many things to us jaded moderns – Bugs Bunny and variants, the dreaded Disney and its hellspawn, Spike and Mike[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground
Brief Candles: The Films of Warren Sonbert
The work of an avant-garde master restored I had the privilege of sitting with Warren Sonbert (1947-1995) at some of San Francisco’s press screenings in the several years that preceded[…]
“Are You Sure?” Edgar G. Ulmer’s Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957)
Monsters are bad enough, but how about all those relatives? For cinema, the postwar period – particularly the 1950s when atomic consciousness became a permanent part of America’s psychic landscape[…]
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