Pulp with a Soundtrack: Getting Elmore Leonard on Film
“My sound is the absence of me.” – Elmore Leonard The curious thing about Elmore Leonard is that while his books move fast, the films that capture his tone seem[…]
Superwomen? The Bad-Ass Babes of Sin City – or Are They?
This noir-drenched comic adaptation is retro in more ways than one In the sordid, febrile netherworld of Sin City, the eponymous film re-creation of the comic by Frank Miller, the[…]
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service: Re-Viewing a Bond Masterwork
“We have all the time in the world” A cult audience was [. . .] recruited when the National Film Theatre ran a season of Bond films in 1980. Of[…]
Führerkontakt: The Emerging German Perspective on the Third Reich
“In short, completely normal.” A great deal of how the Third Reich presented itself and how we have come to know it is visual. Early on, the Nazis understood the[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Directors · Silents
Looking at Charlie – the Mutuals: An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin
“Love backed by force, forgiveness sweet, brings hope and peace to Easy Street” “Fulfilling my contract with Mutual was, I suppose, the happiest period of my life.” Charlie Chaplin had[…]
Rousseau Redux: Regis Wargnier’s Disappointing Pygmy Tale Man to Man
These “noble savages” — and the issues they embody — deserve better
Activist & Political · Animation
Only in America: On Team America: World Police
Trey Parker and Matt Stone fight Hollywood ignorance with some ignorance of their own
Losing Liam: On Ken Loach’s Realist Masterpiece, Sweet Sixteen
The best British film of its time?
Zuckerman and Zugsmith on Sirk
GEORGE ZUCKERMAN ON SIRK Robert Wilder’s novel had been shelved and written off (because of Breen office objections and a threatened lawsuit by the Reynolds tobacco family) when I first[…]
Sarris on Sirk
The very strange, controversial career of Douglas Sirk raises perplexing questions about form and content in the cinema. For one thing, Sirk’s literary source material has ranged from Anton Chekhov[…]
The Lure of the Gilded Cage: All I Desire and There’s Always Tomorrow
“Once upon a time in sunny California” reads a title card immediately after the credits for Sirk’s There’s Always Tomorrow. “Once upon a time” triggers an expectation of a fairy[…]
Love Affairs That Always Fade: Sirk’s Doomed Romances
In Douglas Sirk’s world, romantic love doesn’t play much of a part. His characters are boxed into ruts which are ever-deepening; they cannot understand themselves or their desperate predicaments, let[…]
Introduction to Bright Lights’ Douglas Sirk Issue
This is our first issue dedicated to a single director. Douglas Sirk was the logical choice. While not exactly a household word himself, some of his films were among the[…]
Two Weeks in Another Town: Interview with Douglas Sirk
Introduction (Jane Stern) There are more drugstores in Lugano, Switzerland than in any other town in Europe. They are small cliniques, filled with Jacuzzi pumps, sitz bath salts, pine oil[…]
God Is Dead, or Through a Glass Darkly: On Sirk’s Magnificent Obsession
Jon Halliday’s indispensable Sirk on Sirk has confirmed what Sirk’s admirers and students had long suspected: that his films are not all equally “personal,” and that he had a much[…]
Sirk and the Critics
(above) The happy-go-lucky “Sirk ensemble” from All That Heaven Allows: Russell Metty, Agnes Moorehead, Sirk, Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Ross Hunter, and dialogue director Jack Davis.
Class Dismissed: Revisiting Losey and Pinter’s Misunderstood Masterpiece, The Servant
They also serve who only stand and annihilate
DVD & Blu-ray · LGBT & Queer · Silents
Queer Silents: Different from the Others, Michael, and Sex in Chains on DVD
Kino’s unusual series spotlights German silent gay-themed cinema
Pucker Up: The Enchantments of Resnais’ Not on the Lips
The world’s first Spherist masterpiece?
The Archers Hit a Bull’s-eye: Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death
“This is the universe. Big, isn’t it.”
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