Bright Lights Film Journal

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Da 5 Bloods

Activist & Political · African American · Cinematographers · Interviews · War

0

The Greater Symphony: Talking with Cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel about Da 5 Bloods

  • September 29, 2020

When I take on a project, one of the first things I try to do is get an idea of the overarching tone the director is looking for. Then I[…]

New Genres · New Media · Travel

0

From Bergen to Oslo and Beyond: All Aboard the Slow TV Train

  • September 26, 2020

Yet if Slow TV is concerned with capturing movement, which is actually quite fast during the journey, why then is it also slow? The slowness is in the pace and[…]

Crime · Politics

0

Doing Favors: The Insular Moral and Political World of Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman

  • September 22, 2020

The restrained tone, middle American location, and half-century historical sweep of The Irishman depart from Scorsese’s gangland epics Goodfellas and Casino. It isn’t a political treatise, but it does tie[…]

French noir

French Cinema · Noir

0

The Big Sigh: Exploring the Lost Continent of Classic French Film Noir 1932-1966

  • September 15, 2020

Expanding and redrawing Ginette Vincendeau’s incomplete map of French film noir * * * Let it be said here first: I come to praise Ginette Vincendeau,1 not to bury her.[…]

Reviews

2

Celebrating National Pet Memorial Day (Sept. 13): Good Dog/Bad Dog: The Horror of Disney’s Old Yeller

  • September 13, 2020

Today, September 13 (the second Sunday of September), is National Pet Memorial Day, and we can’t think of a single cinematic pet more deserving of memorializing than that ill-fated, long-suffering[…]

Third Man

Noir · Writers & Critics

0

“Who is the third who walks always beside you?” Carol Reed, Graham Greene, and The Third Man

  • September 10, 2020

If Harry, viewed through the lens of Greene’s perverse Catholicism, is some kind of dark Jesus, then Holly is his betraying Judas, and Anna is his Magdalene. Both Harry and[…]

Jayro Bustamante

Activist & Political · Directors · LGBT & Queer

0

Seeing Double: Two New Films by Jayro Bustamante – Temblores and La Llorona

  • September 7, 2020

Despite their focus on timely sociopolitical matters, the films are almost never didactic (the final act of Temblores is an exception), because Bustamante is too keen to explore and shed[…]

David Whiting

Crime · Hollywood · Memoir · Stars

0

Who Was That Masked Man? Something About David Whiting

  • August 31, 2020

Why was a man who made so many bad choices in his life impossible to forget? * * * If you want to be remembered long after you are gone,[…]

Uptight

Activist & Political · African American · Drama

0

“Don’t talk to us about being killed”: Uptight and the Problem of Black Cinema in Hollywood

  • August 26, 2020

Like Dassin’s 1950 noir classic Night and the City, Uptight is shot predominantly at night, with oddly titled camera angles and bright, glaring colours, ironically organised around the shades of[…]

A Boy and His Dog

SF & Fantasy · Women in Film · Writers & Critics

0

A World Like This Deserves Contempt: Adapting Harlan Ellison’s A Boy and His Dog

  • August 21, 2020

A Boy and His Dog’s promotional advertisements also reveal how the novella was adapted and modified to suit the tastes of the American popular film-going public. The movie’s promo posters[…]

Birds

Drama · Horror · Women in Film

0

The Birds Is Us: Where Did We Come From?

  • August 18, 2020

The movie is, literally, a projection of our mental landscape. We passively sit back (like Jeffries in Rear Window) and the world appears as we live and make it. We[…]

documentary

Documentaries · Historical & Epic · War

0

Sacrifice in the Name of Documentary: Apollo 11 and For Sama

  • August 15, 2020

The pair have little in common, but each goes against the grain of how this form is typically used, sacrificing everything else in the pursuit of an important story that[…]

Daredevil Reporter

Directors · Journalism · Silents

0

The Daredevil Reporter (Der Teufelsreporter) (1929): Billy/Billie Wilder

  • August 12, 2020

Before Wilder considered his own career as a filmmaker as having begun, and then reached movie fame on the other side of the Atlantic, he left behind a stumbling career[…]

Mädchen in Uniform

Drama · LGBT & Queer

0

Positive Freedoms in a Negative Space: Revisiting Mädchen in Uniform

  • August 9, 2020

From these socio-erotic negotiations sprung cinema’s first expressly lesbian-themed feature, Mädchen in Uniform (1931), not simply a tale of forbidden love but a historically particular challenge to Weimar Germany’s separation[…]

Florida Project

Drama · Essays · Urban Conflict

0

Fighting for a Place to Be: Urban Space in Tangerine and The Florida Project

  • August 6, 2020

This conditional access to space is also there in Tangerine, but it is never tested to the breaking point. The conflicts that occur between the characters and the managers of[…]

Melina León

Directors · Indigenous · Interviews · Women in Film

0

On Canción sin nombre (Song Without a Name): Talking with Director Melina León

  • August 3, 2020

It’s the kind of film I wanted to make where you see social implications growing from a personal story. What made it very hard was the sadness of it and[…]

#MeToo

#MeToo · Activist & Political · Drama · Women in Film · Workplace

0

#MeToo in Three Recent Films: The Assistant, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, and On the Record

  • July 31, 2020

#MeToo has been an unequivocal success in terms of calling out the rampant sexual abuse that exists in the veins of Hollywood, but has been less successful in allowing room[…]

Bacurau

Activist & Political · Brazilian Cinema · Indigenous · SF & Fantasy · Westerns

0

Bacurau: Sheltering in Place

  • July 28, 2020

When I watched Bacurau again this summer online, so much felt different: the open-air communal life of the villagers seemed even more distant and utopian; after months of Brazil’s president[…]

Sid Grauman

Exhibition · Film Technology & History · Impresarios & Moguls · Movie Theatres · Silents

0

Prologue to Hollywood: Sid Grauman and the San Francisco Origins of Tinseltown Spectacle

  • July 25, 2020

While Grauman is mostly known for spectacular venues reflecting Hollywood’s film fantasies, his early San Francisco period indicates that throughout his career he showed remarkable consistency in referring to the[…]

Driveways

Directors · Drama · Interviews

0

On Driveways and Spa Night: Talking with Director Andrew Ahn

  • July 22, 2020

“I try very hard to give the characters in my films a sense of humanity. I want this feeling for the audience that these characters exist outside of the frame.[…]

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