Bright Lights Film Journal

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Sergei Bondarchuk and actress Lyudmila Savelyeva

DVD & Blu-ray · Historical & Epic · Reviews

12

“Tolstoy and Only Tolstoy. Nothing Comes from Us”: Sergei Bondarchuk’s War and Peace (1966-67) – Criterion Update

  • September 13, 2019

“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[…]

Fugitive Kind

Drama · Writers & Critics

1

Orpheus Unending, or Beyond and Behind The Fugitive Kind

  • September 8, 2019

For a variety of reasons, then, despite its high-gloss finish, the film did not achieve any real commercial success. This is not to say it was an artistic letdown, as[…]

Lion King

Animation

0

The Lion King (2019): The Art of De-Animation

  • September 3, 2019

These characters speak lines that contain emotion but show none of it themselves, even when they’re the exact same lines as before. And when they’re new, they show no old[…]

Ariel

Animation · LGBT & Queer · Memoir

0

Filmography of the Closet: Coming Out through The Little Mermaid

  • August 30, 2019

As a child, singing the Ariel aahs was synonymous for me with being or becoming Ariel. More than looking like her, dressing like her, acting like her – all of[…]

Black Man

African American · Cinematographers · Designers · Editors · Interviews

0

The Last Black Man in San Francisco: Talking with Production Designer Jona Tochet, Cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra, and Editor David Marks

  • August 26, 2019

We spent a lot of time going through references for the film as well as scouting iconic locations, but what it came down to was devoting ourselves to creating a[…]

Kirk Hammett

Horror · Interviews · Movies · SF & Fantasy

0

Metallica’s Kirk Hammett on Introducing Kids to Scary Movies, Why He Likes Lords of Chaos, and the Deal with Women and Horror

  • August 21, 2019

 * * * 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,[…]

Santa Fe Trail

Westerns

0

“When Words Turn into Guns”: Santa Fe Trail (1940) and Its Times

  • August 16, 2019

Martyrdom suits Brown’s purpose, and it is in this extremism that he is ultimately un-American. His cause may be morally right but his attempt to impose it is not; the[…]

Hollywood

Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Drama · Essays · Romance

0

Adios, Compañeros: Living the Dream of Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood

  • August 10, 2019

QT’s films are commonly hurtling toward darkness, yet Once Upon feels like a repudiation, as much as a culmination, of his oeuvre. There’s a point in the experience where the[…]

Red Badge of Courage

Literature and Film · War

0

John Huston and Stephen Crane: The Texts of Red Badge of Courage

  • August 6, 2019

Huston, unlike Crane and his readers, had the actual experience of combat before him. What he discovered in Italy validated much of what Crane wrote. Huston, too, would attempt in[…]

Bette Davis

Women in Film

0

A Woman’s Freedom: Dark Victory vs. Now, Voyager

  • July 25, 2019

This comparison shows Dark Victory to be conservative, and Now, Voyager to be liberal, on the question of how women can achieve lasting satisfaction. Of course, in Dark Victory one[…]

Exploitation & Erotica

0

Trash and Masochism: The Transcendent Aesthetics of Dungeon of Harrow

  • July 20, 2019

“. . . a jewel with facets of disease running all through it.” – Lester Bangs * * * It was once said that the real heroes of 18th-century writer[…]

Roger Corman

Directors · Women in Film

0

She-Gods, Gangsters, and Gunslingers: The “New Woman” in the Early Films of Roger Corman

  • July 12, 2019

As part of their liberation from convention, Corman empowers female characters with choices both real and metaphorical. Even a common love triangle can represent female empowerment, with the choice between[…]

Avengers Endgame

Franchises & Series · Superheroes

0

Avengers: Endgame; or Looking Ahead to 2016, the Liberal Fantasy Redo

  • July 8, 2019

This is all to say that Endgame is more interested in fantasy outcomes than solving the problems it gives itself. It promises us a future more bearable than our present[…]

Jean Harlow

Actors & Personalities · Hollywood

0

“Newest Ideas about Brain Power”: Hair Color and Jean Harlow, Hollywood’s Platinum Blonde

  • July 3, 2019

INTRODUCTION Jean Harlow (1911-1937), born Harlean Carpenter, rose to screen fame in the early 1930s playing characters with an unaffected, uninhibited, spontaneous sexuality. [See Figure 1.] Dubbed the “Platinum Blonde”[…]

Activist & Political · Essays

0

Donald Trump: Lynchian Monster

  • June 25, 2019

“We’ve met before, haven’t we?” – The Mystery Man in Lost Highway * * * David Lynch is not a horror director. With the possible exception of Eraserhead, his films[…]

News

0

FOLLOW-UP 6/19/19: The Lillian Gish/Bowling Green State University Controversy

  • June 19, 2019

Note: We don’t normally run press releases, but we’ve been close to the issue of Bowling Green State University’s removal of the names of Dorothy and Lillian Gish from the[…]

Essays · Music & Musicals

0

A Fine Romance: When Love Neither Leaves nor Stays

  • June 16, 2019

But goes on being itself * * * True Love in cinema is more than fine acting, well-written scripts, or even directorial tone. Not that IMDb cast and crew should[…]

Non-Fiction

Drama · New Media

0

Sexual Politics: On Olivier Assayas’s Non-Fiction

  • June 12, 2019

What interests me (and I suspect, Assayas) is not so much the substance of these dinner table debates, which tend to move in predictable repeating circles, as their texture. People[…]

Night Moves

Neo-Noir

2

The Birth of Night Moves: Alan Sharp on the Edge of America

  • June 7, 2019

The movie’s reviews were mixed, and it failed to make a profit in the summer of 1975. . . .  but Night Moves has gone on to be recognised as[…]

Drama · Music & Musicals · War

0

Singing in the Rubble: A Musical Map of the Cold War in Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cold War

  • June 3, 2019

Suddenly jazz became a major taboo in Soviet society until Stalin’s death. In Western Europe, by contrast, mainly in Paris, jazz took off after the Nazis’ defeat in the hues[…]

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