Bright Lights Film Journal

  • TwitterTwitter
  • FacebookFacebook
  • InstagramInstagram
  • Google+Google+
  • RSSRSS
  • About
    • Staff
    • History
    • Contact
    • Advertise with BLFJ
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Banned Words
    • BLFJ News
    • Issue Archive
  • Artists
    • Actors & Personalities
    • Cinematographers
    • Composers
    • Directors
    • Editors
    • Interviews
    • Visual Artists
    • Writers & Critics
  • Movies
    • DVD & Blu-ray
    • Festivals & Awards
    • Lists
    • Reviews
    • Photo Essays
  • Genres
    • Activist & Political
    • Animation
    • Asian
    • Avant Garde & Underground
    • Crime
    • Documentaries
    • Erotica & Exploitation
    • Historical & Epic
    • Horror
    • LGBT & Queer
    • Music & Musicals
    • Noir
    • Pre-Code
    • SF & Fantasy
    • Silents
    • Westerns
  • TV & Streaming
  • Books
  • Contributors
  • Subscribe
  • Ads
    • Most Popular

      All time

    • Black Lives Matter: Whitewashing the Amanda Knox Story in the Netflix Documentary

      49 Comments

    • The Last Airbender: The Most (Incomplete) Fantastic Journey

      30 Comments

    • Latest Stories

      What is new?

    • Manufactured Lives: Commodities and Ideology in Blade Runner

      June 9, 2026

    • The Unseen Line: Cinema as Geometry

      June 4, 2026

    • Comments

      Most Recent

    • Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXII – gordsellar.com on:

      A Film Divided Against Itself: D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915)

    • The Esteemed Black Actresses Who Finally Have the Spotlight – The New York Times – Celebrity News on:

      Books: Best Actress: The History of Oscar-Winning Women by Stephen Tapert

Ozu's Floating Weeds

Asian · Directors · Reviews

1

The Taste of Greasepaint: On Bergman’s Sawdust and Tinsel and Ozu’s Floating Weeds

  • April 24, 2014

The Bergman film is much darker, and examines – with sadistic, Strindbergian zeal – the cruelties that men and women inflict on one other when love is distorted by power.[…]

Reviews · Writers & Critics

2

The Greatest Beauty: The Imaginary Journey of Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty (La grande bellezza), 2013

  • April 24, 2014

Sorrentino’s award-winning drama opens with a quote from Céline‘s Journey to the End of the Night: “To travel is very useful, it makes the imagination work, the rest is just delusion and[…]

Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals

2

Easter 2014, Part Deux: Irving Berlin’s Easter Parade, in which Fred and Judy celebrate the death and resurrection of Christ

  • April 20, 2014

In part “deux” of Bright Lights’ tribute to Easter, we present that devout duo, Fred and Judy, offering spiritual and musical solace on this day of reflection. Remember how it[…]

DVD & Blu-ray · Reviews · Silents

1

Easter 2014, Part Un: A Tale of Two Kings: DeMille’s Silent Classic on DVD — in Both Versions

  • April 20, 2014

For many of us, cinema long ago replaced religion, but why not combine the two by celebrating Easter with a reading of Gordon Thomas’s study of King of Kings, part “un” of[…]

Baraka would renounce his “slave name” of LeRoi Jones shortly after completing The New-Ark.

Activist & Political · Directors · Documentaries

2

Recovering The New-Ark: Amiri Baraka’s Lost Chronicle of Black Power in Newark, 1968

  • April 17, 2014

In 1968, famed Black Power poet, playwright, and filmmaker Amiri Baraka, who died on January 9, 2014 at the age of 79, made a documentary in and around Spirit House,[…]

'In what was probably intended to be a private message from Kutcher and Stern to Wozniak, this section includes a shot of curly pink neon letters “W-o-z” on a bulletin board behind Kutcher while he talks about the competition.'

Actors & Personalities · TV & Streaming

5

Kutcher Punk’d Wozniak and Brogrammed Jobs to Hide the Women

  • April 14, 2014

Ashton Kutcher, producer and star of MTV’s celebrity prankster series Punk’d, played a prank on Steve Wozniak in the film Jobs, where he stars in the title role. The prank[…]

Reviews

1

“Old Dog, New Tricks”: Resurrecting James Bond in Skyfall

  • April 14, 2014

Bond has long served as a cipher for the British nation; therefore his personal struggle also exposes cultural anxiety about Britain’s waning global influence and increasing vulnerability in the twenty-first[…]

Heath Ledger in The Four Feathers

Actors & Personalities

0

On the Walkabout: Remembering Heath Ledger (April 4, 1979-January 22, 2008)

  • April 14, 2014

“Wasn’t he just there, standing right in front of us?” Actors are known to be complicated beings. Because the successful ones loom so large in our vision, their deaths are[…]

Jack Nicholson, Diane Keaton, and director Nancy Meyers on the set of Something's Gotta Give

Reviews

1

Men in Peril, Hollywood, & Our Culture’s Skewed Portrayal of Heart Disease

  • April 11, 2014

“An ill heart, expressive of character rather than culture, guarantees three things. First, by holding the individual responsible, the largest offenders, diet and a sedentary populace, are given a pass.[…]

Richard Johnson and Helen Mirren in the 1982 BBC-TV version of Cymbeline

Reviews · Writers & Critics

0

Going to Extremes #2: Cymbeline (Sometimes in Britain)

  • April 11, 2014

Where all this takes me is to the thought that fiction frequently presents human personality as something lost or imprisoned – by self-ignorance and suspicion if by nothing worse. “We’re[…]

Books · LGBT & Queer · Producers & Studios

2

Inside the Dreamboat Factory: The Fairy Godfather of Hollywood

  • April 11, 2014

“He won’t be gay when I get through with him!” Revisiting legendary gay agent Henry Willson via Robert Hafler’s biography Henry Willson, The Man Who Invented Hollywood * * *[…]

Actors & Personalities

1

Mickey Rooney – Seriously! (R.I.P.)

  • April 10, 2014

Mickey Rooney died on April 6, 2014. We offer Jim MacEachern’s profile of him in tribute. * * * “A great man is only the reflection of a great boy[…]

Directors · Documentaries · Interviews

0

Inside New York’s Subway Secret: Talking with the Makers of La Voz de los silenciados (The Voice of the Voiceless)

  • March 13, 2014

When a film screening is greeted first with silence, it is certainly not easy on the director. “It was so scary, everybody was so silent in the theatre we were[…]

Silents

1

There’s Something About Mary: Misdeeds and Maneuvers on the Set of Phantom of the Opera (1925)

  • March 12, 2014

Following up on the author’s previous Phantom piece, here he discusses Mary Philbin’s innocence, Lon Chaney’s dedication, and the larger implications of Norman Kerry’s “roving hands.” Written by Philip J.[…]

Reviews · Writers & Critics

0

Going to Extremes, Part One: Pericles (Some Mouldy Tale)

  • March 7, 2014

Drama is about extremity. This can centre on one person, or on his/her society or both. Without it drama cannot exist. But what if the world’s greatest dramatist starts testing[…]

Festivals & Awards

0

The Way Things Look: Farewell to Alain Resnais at the Berlinale 2014 (Feb. 6-16)

  • March 6, 2014

The author, who served on the critics’ jury at the festival, profiles the late Alain Resnais and his award-winning final film, along with several works by other directors. This Berlinale[…]

Noir · Reviews

2

Ida Lupino’s American Psycho: The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

  • February 27, 2014

“In The Hitch-Hiker, Lupino offers an unusually sustained visual examination of the average male body that is then contrasted against the anarchic body of the Psycho. Myers is often shown[…]

Directors · Documentaries · Experimental & Underground

1

One Frame Apart: On Straub and Huillet and Pedro Costa’s Where Does Your Secret Smile Lie?

  • February 26, 2014

“For a start, Straub and Huillet’s relationship is far from an image of perfect union. It seems to thrive on a combination of disagreement and respect, a dialectical tussle worthy[…]

Joanna Cassidy in Blade Runner

Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews · SF/Fantasy

0

Bondage, Bestiality, and Bionics: Sexual Fetishism in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner

  • February 25, 2014

Blade Runner is a film seeping with representations of repressed sexuality. Every scene, sequence, and image is imbued with, commenting on, or directly a result of sexual frustration and need.[…]

DVD & Blu-ray · Reviews · Silents

4

Blu-ray Review: The BFI’s The Phantom of the Opera (Rupert Julian, 1925, and silent film reissue, 1929)

  • February 24, 2014

“Erik, like Darth Vader, is much more interesting with as little backstory as possible.” — Mike Gebert, Nitrateville, site administrator1 When fairy tales, literature, and the movies hand us a[…]

  • « Previous Page
  • Next Page »
  • Links + BSA

    ProjectorScreen.com
    Shop ProjectorScreen.com for the best projectors and projector screens.
    YouTube to MP3
    Wholesale Home Audio Video
    • Weird Band Names
    • How to write a script for a TV show PDF
    • Marketing Enablement
      • TwitterTwitter
      • FacebookFacebook
      • InstagramInstagram
      • Google+Google+
      • RSSRSS

      © 2020 Bright Lights Film Journal | brightlightsfilm.com
      Online since 1996 | ISSN: 0147-4049
      a Studio Hyperset expression · Design by Irina Beffa · Theme Art by Jim McDermott
      Privacy