A Tale of Two Bookshops: Sex and Books and The Big Sleep
We missed World Book Day (March 5) this year, but what the heck. In these challenging times, we celebrate all things literary anyway by re-presenting Paroma Chatterjee’s brilliant take on[…]
Category: Movies
Experimental & Underground · Festivals & Awards
Rose Is a Rose: The 2020 International Short Film Festival Oberhausen
Watching as a FIPRESCI festival juror from Australia, at all hours of night and day, I was overwhelmed by the breadth of the international program, with its dizzying, often undifferentiated,[…]
Directors · Festivals & Awards · Interviews
Women in Film: Interviews with Mati Diop, Marie Kreutzer, Haifaa al-Mansour, and Zoé Wittock at Berlinale, Toronto, and Sundance Film Festivals
Our globe-trotting correspondent Amir Ganjavie spoke with four emerging women directors at the 2019 Berlinale and Toronto International Film Festivals and the 2020 Sundance Festival. Collectively, they represent France (via[…]
Comedy · Counterculture · Crime · Historical & Epic · Hollywood · Movies · Westerns
At Spahn Ranch: The Tragic Heart of Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood
Who are these people? Watching Cliff try to figure it out is painful, because we know the future, but such knowledge is not power. Within its imagined boundaries, Once Upon[…]
Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · War
Dispatch #1 from 2019 Doc NYC: Barbara Kopple’s Desert One
This is the first in a series of reviews by our New York correspondent Claire Baiz of entries in this year’s Doc NYC, the Big Apple’s – and one of[…]
Eastern European · Festivals & Awards
Ready for the Close-up: Filmmaking Then and Now in the Baltic States
Note: We’re publishing this to coincide with New York’s Scandinavia House’s important second festival devoted to Baltic cinema. * * * Introduction The second New York Baltic Film Festival will[…]
The View on Parade: Xavier Dolan, Richard Billingham, and the Limits of Australian Cinema at the 2019 Melbourne International Film Festival (Aug. 6-23)
It seems a good opportunity to talk about film and nationhood, given that so many of this year’s local films – not only A Family but Alice, Buoyancy, and Animals[…]
DVD & Blu-ray · Historical & Epic · Reviews
“Tolstoy and Only Tolstoy. Nothing Comes from Us”: Sergei Bondarchuk’s War and Peace (1966-67) – Criterion Update
“What do such large loose baggy monsters, with their queer elements of the accidental and the arbitrary, artistically mean?” – Henry James, from the preface of his novel The Tragic[…]
Horror · Interviews · Movies · SF & Fantasy
Metallica’s Kirk Hammett on Introducing Kids to Scary Movies, Why He Likes Lords of Chaos, and the Deal with Women and Horror
* * * It’s The Day of the Triffids’ fault: when he was a wee lad stuck at home in front of the television with a sprained arm (fault: sister,[…]
Dispatch from Tribeca #4: Standing Up, Falling Down
In her fourth report from the Tribeca Film Festival, Claire Baiz looks at first-time feature director Matt Ratner’s intriguing family drama Standing Up, Falling Down, which, as a thoughtful film[…]
Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · Sound & Language
Dispatch from Tribeca 2019 #1: Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound
Herewith we begin our coverage of the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, courtesy of our intrepid reporter Claire Baiz, who will be filing dispatches on some of the more worthy entries[…]
Composers · Historical & Epic · Reviews · Silents
Getting It Right the Second Time: Adapting Ben-Hur for the Screen
This is an updated and revised version of Gordon Thomas’s article first posted in Bright Lights in May 2006, reposted to celebrate Easter. * * * Bigger is better this[…]
The 59th Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Greece (Nov. 1-11, 2018)
From volatile sibling relationships to House of Atreus–style depravity, traditional ideas about family were upended and replaced with a contemporary look at the complex, ever-expanding definition of the ties that[…]
Festivals & Awards · Women in Film
Pop Deluxe: Natalie Portman and Sasheer Zamata at Toronto International Film Festival (Sept. 6-16, 2018)
Rather than a fascist leader, in Vox Lux Celeste suggests a different sort of monstrosity – a receptacle for the nation’s horrors and fantasies, even more than a Madonna or a[…]
Festivals & Awards · New Media
Got a Light? David Lynch’s Festival of Disruption (Oct. 13-14, 2018)
Francis Ford Coppola introduced the screening of his Robin Williams vehicle Jack. Since this was the Festival of Disruption, Coppola said he wanted to “disrupt” by screening his worst film,[…]
Virtually Everything: All Godard and Tsai at Melbourne International Film Festival 2018 (Aug. 2-19)
Even more than in The River, with The Deserted we are sensually implicated in the small gestures of rest and relief, saving graces in this abandoned world. When Lee later[…]
Working-Class Heroes, Angry Young Men, and a Reprobate Redeemed: BFI’s Woodfall: A Revolution in British Cinema
Look Back in Anger (Tony Richardson, 1959); The Entertainer (Tony Richardson, 1960); Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Karel Reisz, 1960); A Taste of Honey (Tony Richardson, 1961); The Loneliness of[…]
Comedy · Drama · Festivals & Awards
Dispatch from Tribeca #5: Short Takes on To Dust, Song of Back and Neck, Diane
To Dust (dir. Shawn Snyder) “Isn’t that sweet,” I thought when I picked up my mother’s dropped pocket calendar. So many dates had names on them. Mom doesn’t want to[…]
Documentaries · Festivals & Awards
Dispatch from Tribeca #4: Tiny Shoulders: Rethinking Barbie
“I’m grateful I didn’t grow up with Barbie.” – Gloria Steinem * * * Gloria Steinem isn’t alone. Lisa Simpson hates Barbie. Feminist writer Roxanne Gay wishes Barbie had never[…]
Comedy · Documentaries · Festivals & Awards
Dispatch from Tribeca #1: If you loved Gilda, you’ll Love, Gilda
The effect is intimate, but not particularly enlightening. Love, Gilda offers a lot of reminiscing, some sweet (and a few heavy) insights, but very little new information about Radner’s life.[…]
Links + BSA
