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June 4, 2026
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Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXII – gordsellar.com on:
The Esteemed Black Actresses Who Finally Have the Spotlight – The New York Times – Celebrity News on:
“Inherent to defamiliarization or riddling is, of course, a process of refamiliarization: as the film proceeds, we wish to see the strange normalized, the riddle answered. But in The House with Laughing[…]
This interview with Ray Harryhausen first appeared in Bright Lights in November 2007. We reprint it here as a birthday tribute to the seminal animator. * * * “I wrecked Washington, and[…]
Aaron Cohen’s profile of the obscure Japanese silent star Tokuko Takagi (also known as Taku Takagi), who came to America in 1906 and made a few films for Thanhouser Studios, first[…]
Crime · TV & Streaming · Writers & Critics
“The end has already happened, and all Rustin Cohle and Marty Hart can do is arrange the bodies in a pattern that makes them look less like bodies, more like[…]
“While I get Sam Goldwyn’s point about messages and Western Union, I think Shakespeare is always sending the same one: to overcome our worst weaknesses, first we must see them[…]
With such recent releases as The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), Moonrise Kingdom (2012), and The Spectacular Now (2013), there continues to be no shortage of movies about young[…]
“According to documents provided by the US Department of Justice, in the year he received almost $1 million for the rights to his memoir, Belfort made restitution payments totaling just[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews · TV & Streaming · Westerns
Today is actor Richard Boone’s birthday (June 18, 1917 – January 10, 1981). We’re celebrating it by reprinting Alan Vanneman’s pithy write-up (previously published in issue 48, May 2005) of[…]
“What befalls Veta can perhaps be justified as part of the film’s critique of psychiatry; after all, her unfortunate experience mocks the short-sightedness and arbitrary operation of the mental health[…]
Birds of Paradise: Costume as Cinematic Spectacle, ed. Marketa Uhlirova. London: Koenig Books, 2013. 341 pp. I first became intrigued by London’s Fashion in Film at an unusual series of[…]
“Everything goes on in the mind of a man who, nominally at least, has absolute power at court and who, until a few moments before, felt secure in the mutual[…]
“Godzilla has no anarchy or eccentricity, much less any experimental spirit or Japanese weirdness. Edwards is too preoccupied with turning the movie into something new, serious, and, worst of all,[…]
Is the filmmaker tyrant, aesthete, ringmaster, or hermit? For whom does an artist create? It is a question frequently put, perhaps more to writers than to others, and perhaps the[…]
“If Godzilla is not benevolent but merely indifferent, then his mercy amounts to that of a man sidestepping an anthill instead of trampling it under his heel.” Conventional academic and[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Discussed in this essay: The Battle of AmFar (Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, 2013); Dallas Buyers Club (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2013); How to Survive a Plague (David France, 2012); The Normal[…]
Activist & Political · Experimental & Underground · Reviews
“It’s not blood, it’s red” – Jean-Luc Godard A few weeks ago Abdelaziz Bouteflika was re-elected for a fourth time as president of Algeria with 81.5% of the vote. Most[…]
Dr. Steve Jones has written a book on a subject few people have examined in depth, though the press and critics have vilified it to no end. It’s a subject[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews · Writers & Critics
In honor of Vincent Price’s birthday (May 27, 1911-October 25, 1993), we present Sean Nortz’s thrilling exegesis of one of the actor’s most intriguing and downright bizarre films. (After this piece[…]
Animation · Historical & Epic · Reviews
In honor of Memorial Day, we present Christopher Dow’s lively history and critical analysis of World War II’s favorite cartoon fuck-up, Private Snafu, which appeared originally in Bright Lights in[…]
“[Jack] Kerouac declared in his preface to Galloway that the young artist ‘is colored by his symbols. His hue is vivid: he postures.’ This because the artist is in growth,[…]
