Bright Lights Film Journal

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Third Man

Drama · Historical & Epic · War

2

Casablanca and The Third Man in a World Made by War

  • June 3, 2018

The Third Man ends with rejection, physical and emotional death, a descent into a sewer, a walk through a graveyard and cold silence. The ruins of Vienna come to symbolize[…]

Earthsea

Animation

0

Daddy Issues: Anxiety and the Muted Triumphs of Goro Miyazaki’s Tales from Earthsea

  • May 30, 2018

“Hayao Miyazaki gets zero marks as a father but full marks as a director of animated films.” – Goro Miyazaki1 * * * Most artists exist under what the literary[…]

Avengers

Franchises & Series · SF & Fantasy

2

Watch It Again! The Avengers (2012) and the Intertextuality Problem

  • May 26, 2018

A Transformers film has to face incessant criticism about the amount of action, the blurry continuity of its symphonies of shrapnel, the overuse of MacGuffins, and the lack of good[…]

Dancer in the Dark

Music & Musicals

0

Meta-Anti-Musical: Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark

  • May 22, 2018

Dancer in the Dark is largely about movies, in particular, about those movies in which people sing and dance their troubles away. Even this self-reflexivity situates the film in the[…]

Adam Torel

Asian · Interviews · Producers & Studios · Production History

0

Moving from Japanese Film Distribution to Production: An Interview with Third Window Films’ Adam Torel

  • May 18, 2018

What Third Window’s practices and Adam Torel’s insights provide is a view of the industry that contrasts significantly from current Japanese film research, especially in light of other exhibitors and[…]

Made in Heaven

Drama · Essays · Memoir

0

When Heaven Came to Earth: Letter to My Millennial Friend on Alan Rudolph’s Made in Heaven, Shot the Year You Were Born

  • May 14, 2018

MY CHUM, JANE LILEE, Being as it’s coming up on the anniversary of our meeting, I thought I’d check in with you, and maybe get points for remembering the occasion.[…]

Composers · Music & Musicals

1

Happy Birthday, Baby! Irving Berlin (b. May 11, 1888) on Film

  • May 11, 2018

This article first appeared in Bright Lights in October 2000. We reprint it as a tribute to the seminal composer on what would have been his 130th birthday. (And frankly, we’re surprised[…]

Fashion · LGBT & Queer · TV & Streaming

0

What Exactly Do We Spy with Our Queer Eye? Neoliberalism and Homonormativity in the Revival of a Noughties Classic

  • May 6, 2018

Queer Eye strips queerness of radical intention and repackages it as the non-threatening support system of heteronormative practice, with the Fab Five offered up as the ultimate Gay Best Friend[…]

Comedy · Drama

0

Watch It Again: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

  • May 4, 2018

The high-tech and the primitive coexist in The Life Aquatic, much as they do in Keaton’s The Navigator, and as in all of Anderson’s films they combine with the deeply[…]

Tribeca

Comedy · Drama · Festivals & Awards

0

Dispatch from Tribeca #5: Short Takes on To Dust, Song of Back and Neck, Diane

  • May 2, 2018

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

1

Dispatch from Tribeca #4: Tiny Shoulders: Rethinking Barbie

  • April 28, 2018

“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[…]

Ghostbox Cowboy

Drama

1

Dispatch from Tribeca #2: Ghostbox Cowboy: Capitalists in the Coffee Shop

  • April 23, 2018

I don’t like these three guys in this coffee shop either. I can’t help but compare them to the Ghostbox opportunists who were written to be disliked. That much –[…]

Comedy · Documentaries · Festivals & Awards

0

Dispatch from Tribeca #1: If you loved Gilda, you’ll Love, Gilda

  • April 21, 2018

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.[…]

Comedy · Music & Musicals

0

Focus on Robert Altman: Three Takes on Popeye

  • April 19, 2018

Unassimilated weirdness is typical of Popeye – even in its soundtrack, where goofy “boing” effects are used to accompany ordinary, unheroic movement. Sweethaven’s anthem, the Harry Nilsson song “Everything Is[…]

Resnais

Documentaries · War

0

Meat for the Machine: On the Hidden Horrors of Alain Resnais’ Documentary Shorts

  • April 15, 2018

Covering topics as banal as the production of plastics and as profound as cultural appropriation, these films aren’t workaday projects so much as serious visual essays that extend Resnais’ preoccupation[…]

Annihilation

Drama · SF & Fantasy · Women in Film

0

The End of Cinema: Female Agency and the Influence of Stalker in Annihilation

  • April 11, 2018

Even as it has sunk like a stone commercially, Annihilation has drawn a flurry of passionate responses, mainly, it seems, from women writers. Many single out its admixture of beauty[…]

Phantom Thread

Designers · Drama · Women in Film

1

Food, Fashion, and (Fe)male Identity in The Phantom Thread

  • April 7, 2018

This is the second of two pieces on Phantom Thread. See Sam Ankenbauer’s different take in the previous post.  * * * The articulation of female pleasure in The Phantom[…]

Phantom Thread

Designers · Drama

0

Secret Lives: On Phantom Thread

  • April 4, 2018

Note: This is the first of two reviews of Phantom Thread. Watch for Raymond De Luca’s take later this week. Each viewing paints old interactions in new colors, and the film thrives[…]

grips

Film Crews · Production History

2

Get a Grip: Celebrating Those Overworked, Underpaid, Practically Invisible Technicians Who Help Make the Movies

  • March 30, 2018

A grip is a jack-of-all-trades: part mover, part roadie, part handyman, part mechanic, and part mechanical engineer. Grips are in charge of lifting, moving, constructing, rigging, pushing, driving, and securing[…]

Claude Chabrol

Crime · Directors

0

Dark Undercurrents: Claude Chabrol’s Second Wave from Les Biches (1968) to Innocents with Dirty Hands (1975)

  • March 25, 2018

“There are no waves, there is only the ocean.” – Claude Chabrol * * * From 1968 to 1975 Claude Chabrol directed a dozen films – one of the most[…]

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