Fashion and Dunst: The Substance of Marie Antoinette
“The Coppola ideal is a young girl trapped in fustiness: she can be an object of voyeurism without a trace of lewdness, and remain spiritually intact even when accessorized.” Sofia[…]
Secrets of the European Union: Chicago’s Tenth Annual EU Film Festival
They saw what you did! Could anyone foresee, when six nations signed the Treaty of Rome in 1957, that this economic agreement would evolve into the unprecedented political experiment called[…]
Across the Great Divide: Canadian Popular Cinema in the 21st Century
Indigenous film, global dreams1 For most of the film critics who have given it any thought, the term “Canadian Popular Cinema” is a vexing oxymoron. In a paradox that goes[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
More Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, The Nutty Professor, no Gorilla (I think), and no Allen Ginsberg (or Ginzberg)
Since my esteemed Bright Lights After Dark (and Bright Lights Film Journal) co-contributor C. Jerry Kutner posted his last entry in the (now) ongoing Nutty Professor debate out here in[…]
FREDDIE FRANCIS (1917-2007)
I’d like to join Tim Lucas and others in acknowledging the passing of Freddie Francis, a fine underrated director and one of the greatest of English cinematographers. He deservedly won[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis vs. Julius Kelp & Buddy Love
In a comment to my previous Jerry Lewis post, Tom Sutpen wrote: Couldn’t agree more . . . except . . . Jerry Lewis has always steadfastly denied any Martin[…]
Farley Granger: Senso and Sensibility
In four films, two for Alfred Hitchcock (Rope {1948} and Strangers on a Train {1951}), one for Nicholas Ray (They Live by Night {1948}) and one for Luchino Visconti (Senso[…]
Dragons, Tigers, and Citizen Rayns: The 25th Vancouver International Film Festival
Asian cinema triumphs in this year’s D&T, Tony Rayns’s last For over a decade the Vancouver International Film Festival’s Dragons and Tigers program has provided a crucial forum for emerging[…]
Queer Quickies: Random Short Reviews from April Shower to Wedding Wars
Note: With so much queer media happening lately — from feature films to reality TV shows to movies-of-the-week — I decided, like Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby, to “go[…]
Twin Piques: Church and Bourgeoisie in Buñuel
That Obscure Agent of Misanthropy? Un Chien Andalou (1929), the “surrealist masterpiece” made in collaboration with Salvador Dali was, in one sense, a new sugar-free version of Rene Clair’s original[…]
Actors & Personalities · Asian
Beauties and Furies: Hong Kong’s New Wave of Women Stars
“The women of To’s world are not just endearingly kooky, but often unacceptably bizarre and amoral in their excited reactions to events.” Five years ago, I was starting to think[…]
Robert De Niro at Yale Again! The Good Shepherd: Poor Little Lamb!
Hey! How did we win the Cold War, anyway? Yale? Wasps? Homoerotic subtext? Do any of these spell Robert De Niro? I’m guessing no, but Bobby, in his second outing[…]
A Very Special Favor: More Strange Drag from the Hudson Closet
“Never mind that Hudson was a gay man playing a straight man playing a gay man in love with a man who was really a woman.” Universal Studio, never in[…]
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
Night Train (Jerzy Kawalerowicz, 1959) Call it Train of Fools. In Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s masterwork, a crowded night express travels overbooked with the despairing, the lovelorn, the lustful, a handful of priests[…]
One Small Step for a Penguin: George Miller’s Happy Feet
Getting down way down under You may not be aware of this yet — few Americans are — but Robin Williams likes black people. He also likes Latinos. And why[…]
Uneasy Lies the Head: Stephen Frears’ The Queen
“Hovering between treason and tribute . . .” Stephen Frears’ film The Queen starts with this quote from Henry V which announces that a whole Shakespearean drama is about to[…]
Casablanca: The Romance of Propaganda
“Casablanca provides twenty-first-century Americans with an oasis of hope in a desert of arbitrary cruelty and senseless violence.” As we approach the sixty-fifth anniversary of Casablanca (1942), it is clear that[…]
Caveh Zahedi’s PSA: Talking with the Auteur of I Am a Sex Addict
“Not only is it personal — it’s downright embarrassing.” Fourteen years in the making and spanning eighteen years, Caveh Zahedi’s I am a Sex Addict, despite a lukewarm reaction upon[…]
An Immovable Feast? Another Look at Henry King’s The Sun Also Rises
“It’s sort of what we have instead of God” “. . . you talk less about good movies than about what you love in bad movies.” — Pauline Kael, Trash,[…]
Links + BSA
