Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: City of Women, Tess, Tsar to Lenin, The Promised Land, Nanook of the North, The Wedding of Palo
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
Category: Movies
Essays · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Making Love While the Bullets Fly: Plata Quemada (Burnt Money), Representation, and Queer Masculinity
“The queer theorist Leo Bersani has argued for the “self-shattering” qualities of gay sex, but Plata Quemada foregrounds gay desire as a mutually shattering event. The film’s romantic nihilism is at the heart of both its appeal and its essentially troubling nature.”
Festivals & Awards · Uncategorized
No Means: The International Istanbul Film Festival 2013
“At a protest against the demolition of the historic Emek theatre, Nil was beaten and kicked by police offers. My fellow FIPRESCI juror, the excellent critic Berke Göl, was grabbed by the throat, punched, and arrested. Hundreds of other protestors — largely film critics, actors, and directors including festival guest Costa-Gavras — were subject to police force.”
Perpetual Motion: The Dardenne Brothers’ The Kid with a Bike
“As Cyril’s frenetic movement appears to up the tempo of the film, the directors drastically slow down the pace by using long takes, and as little cutting as possible. It is amid the two contrasting tendencies that Cyril’s story finds the perfect narrative balance.”
“Who Wants to Be Cured of Desire?” Anthony Page’s TV Movie My Zinc Bed (2008)
“Don’t we most of all resent the person who helps?” — Victor Quinn
“What Price, Hollywood?” Workers World Party Goes to the 85th Annual Academy Awards
“Moorehead cannot pause to celebrate performances of Adele and the fabulous Shirley Bassey because they contradict her depiction of the Oscars as an unabated mudslide of anti-woman vulgarity; she does not discuss the implications of Michelle Obama’s appearance, either. Why?”
Satirical Excess and Empty Vessels: Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy
“Rupert Pupkin is uniquely a product of late capitalism near the close of the twentieth century; his fantasies reflect mass media’s ability to twist the real world into an insubstantial collection of images that mimic reality — the representation of self becomes more than the actual self, and it becomes impossible to tell the difference.”
Michael Curtiz, Part 2 – Weird Scenes Inside the Wax Museum
The directorial personality of Michael Curtiz remains elusive, but his visual talent is indisputable. Look closely at the lighting and composition of these images from Mystery of the Wax Museum[…]
Michael Curtiz – Auteur Without a Theme?
Hungarian-born filmmaker, Michael Curtiz (pictured with Joan Crawford, above), is considered by many to be one of the quintessential Hollywood directors – he is, after all, the man who[…]
Ozymandias Melancholia: Woody Allen’s To Rome with Love: A Personal History
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed . . . — from Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias”
More Than Just Another Day Underground: Anthony Asquith’s First Feature Gets the Deluxe Treatment
“It is a much starker contrast than, say, in Hitchcock’s London films of the same period, where the humorous grace notes of the urban everyday and a happy ending are balanced throughout by a recognition of the inherent instability and all-out terror of the same modernity that produces those grace notes.”
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: The Blue Angel; The Rolling Stones: Charlie Is My Darling; Fritz Lang: The Early Works: Harakiri, The Wandering Shadow, and Four Around the Woman; Hello I Must Be Going
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
Hidden Within Ourselves: A Psychoanalytic Examination of the Effects of Repression in Michael Haneke’s Caché
“Caché lays bare a heavy psychological truth about the collective unconscious — without submitting to another perspective, we may not be able to recognize and acknowledge the abject parts of our own selves, even when they are clearly presented to us, hidden in plain sight.”
What Else Is Lost with Memory Loss? Memory and Identity in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d.— Alexander Pope (As quoted by Mary [Kirsten Dunst])
The Body Fights Back: Night of Silence and Recent Turkish Cinema
“The bride is like a child who has found herself in a new body overnight. Different parts of her have been stained red, white, and gold; she bears all the carnal colors and signs — but what to do with them?”
Enjoyed Inglourious Basterds? You’re Doing It Wrong!
“Aldo Raine is nothing more than Adolf Hitler wrapped in an American flag.”
From La Fille to Dr. Cordelier: Character and Environment in the (Mostly) Early Works of Jean Renoir
“Renoir’s static images contain a great deal of emotional intensity — like that last lyrical shot of the sun setting in La Fille — and the sheer beauty of his two-dimensional compositions generates an emotional in volvement within the viewer (like that in the viewer of a painting) and a sense of emotional treatment of the romantic material within the frame, yet preserves an awareness of the existence of a larger world beyond the borders of the frame.”
Father of His Country: On Spielberg’s Lincoln
“Spielberg’s post-millennial Lincoln epitomizes the more experienced politician’s awe for Justice (as distinguished from the malleable Law), which is to be sought by whatever means necessary and inevitably involves sacrifice, perhaps of one’s very soul. There’s more than a touch of Faust in this script.”
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… .”
Small Stakes, Small World: Technology and Skyfall
The James Bond series is ostensibly about a jet-setting spy drinking martinis with beautiful women and saving the world. Skyfall, the newest entry in the 007 franchise, is certainly glamorous[…]
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