Bright Lights Film Journal

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

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

Biopic · Drama · Men & Masculinity · Military and Paramilitary

0

Confessions of a Masc: On Paul Schrader’s Mishima

  • May 19, 2024

Words, and the internal fictions they represented, would never be enough to join Mishima’s corporeal self to the abstract notion of beauty except in a dreamlike capacity, which would not[…]

Experimental & Underground

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Elegy of Ephemera: Exploring Decay in Bill Morrison’s Cinema

  • May 12, 2024

The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object . . . which we do not suspect.1     – Marcel Proust,[…]

Crime · Drama · Family · French Cinema · Linguistics and Language

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Anatomy of a Fall and the Expatriate’s Predicament

  • May 6, 2024

Daniel is presented as a talented pianist, with an intellect of one well beyond his years. He is both strong-willed and sensitive. He is affectionate with his mother, yet culturally[…]

Asian · Drama · Experimental & Underground

0

Auto-Focus: Reflexivity, Autocritique, and Formal Experimentation in Hong Sang-soo’s In Water (2023)

  • April 29, 2024

The reflexive nature of Hong’s formalism, in which stylistic decisions call attention to themselves and point to the mediating presence of the man behind the camera, makes it problematic to[…]

Books · Drama

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Book Review: Terrence Malick and the Examined Life, by Martin Woessner. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024. $65.00

  • April 22, 2024

Malick, in other words, is a director who established himself during the transition from Old Hollywood to New Hollywood, where experimenting became the norm, and it is while experimenting at[…]

Animation · Animators · New Genres · New Media

0

Mercs and Mortality: Emesis Blue, a Fan-Made Team Fortress 2 Horror Flick

  • April 16, 2024

The film may appear gamer oriented, but general audiences should find it accessible and entertaining based on its fright factor alone. It’s simultaneously a boon to content-starved TF2 diehards and[…]

Activist & Political · Actors & Personalities · Communism and Socialism · Race · Women in Film

0

A Difficult Woman: The Disobedient Life of Jean Muir

  • April 10, 2024

At every turn, Muir was disobedient, unconventional, and disruptive; she simply didn’t care what people thought. At no point did it occur to her that she should curb her activism,[…]

Animals · Documentaries · German Cinema · Nature

0

Werner Herzog’s Mystic Powers of Storytelling through the Archive: On Grizzly Man and The Fire Within

  • April 5, 2024

I will be writing about just what his meticulous and brilliant use of archival footage in these films does to the stories, and how there is a thread connecting them[…]

Zone of Interest

Drama · Historical & Epic · Holocaust

0

The Air We Breathe: Ecology and Atmosphere in The Zone of Interest (2023)

  • March 29, 2024

If the choking of the camp victims is muffled in the film, it is darkly recapitulated in the sputtering coughs that spread through the family, from Höss to Hedwig’s mother.[…]

Cosmopolis

Absurdism · Cityscapes · Drama · Literature and Film · Writers & Critics

0

Cosmopolis: A DeLillo–Cronenberg Mutation

  • March 22, 2024

Cosmopolis reflects the experience of a cancer patient, housed within a corporatized institution, dependent on the biases and whims of authorities, machines, and data. The book and film, poorly reviewed[…]

Actors & Personalities · Drama · Essays · Romance

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Gazing at Gary Cooper: Sex, Power, Gender, and the Body in Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938), Ball of Fire (1941), and Love in the Afternoon (1957)

  • March 15, 2024

As with Monroe, his seemingly all-but-transparent method has proven remarkably difficult to emulate, much less duplicate. (Toles, 2003: 34) Whatever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type? That was[…]

Zone of Interest

Drama · genocide · Holocaust

0

Horror Held in Sunbeams Along the Garden Wall: On The Zone of Interest and the Mundanity of Preservation

  • March 9, 2024

Sunbeams, radiant and warm. Human bodies, young and old. And who are imprisoned here, our hearts are yet not cold. We who are imprisoned here, are wakeful as the stars[…]

Murder by Decree

Crime · Directors · Drama · Historical & Epic

0

Simply Human: Bob Clark’s Murder by Decree

  • March 1, 2024

The animal is the only genuine thing in man. – Frank Wedekind * * * A woman sits rhythmically rocking by candlelight, her eyes focused on a distant point. Around[…]

Killers of the Flower Moon

Crime · Drama · Historical & Epic · Indigenous · Native Americans

0

Family Viewing: The Osage Nation, the Reign of Terror, and Killers of the Flower Moon

  • February 18, 2024

Killers interweaves the Western, film noir, the gangster film, the police procedural, the courtroom drama, and even a bit of horror; however, it jumps between them with often elliptical editing[…]

Whispers from Space

Artists · Directors · Indies · LGBT & Queer · Mondo Culture · UFOs

0

Whispers from Space: Life as a Hollywood Insider/Outsider

  • February 10, 2024

Filmmaker Ralph Coon speaks frankly to Tony Conn about his cult UFO documentary, the hidden side of Hollywood, and doing heroin with Adam Parfrey. * * * Ralph Coon might[…]

Francis Ford Coppola

Books · Crime · Directors · Drama · Franchises & Series · War

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Book Review: Sam Wasson, The Path to Paradise: A Francis Ford Coppola Story. Harper, November 2023, 400pp, $32.99

  • February 5, 2024

Coppola not only lived for his films but also lived in and through them, in a constant process of inventing and reinventing himself both as an artist and as a[…]

Sweet East

Activist & Political · Comedy · Drama

0

Reactionary Politics: On Sean Price Williams’s The Sweet East (2023)

  • January 29, 2024

It’s easy to mistake The Sweet East for a progressive indictment of modern America, with its gun-wielding conspiracy theorists and predatory authority figures – but they belie a blasé politics[…]

El Conde

Comedy · Drama · Horror

0

“Nothing Inside”: On Pablo Larraín’s El Conde (2023)

  • January 22, 2024

This man who watches you returns from hell […]; he is hollow, he is full of air. Dry hands hold him upright from behind, like a house of cards being[…]

Comedy · LGBT & Queer · Sex & Relationships · Uncategorized

0

Meta-Morphoses: Sebastián Silva’s Rotting in the Sun (2023)

  • January 15, 2024

As seen with Jordan and Mateo, Silva extends his self-fictionalization to most of the cast, taking actors and regurgitating them as screen versions of themselves. Sometimes the cinematic portraits come[…]

The Old Oak

Activist & Political · Directors · Drama · Labor

0

Strategizing Solidarity: Ken Loach’s The Old Oak (2023)

  • January 9, 2024

“There can be no resistance without memory or universalism” – Jean-Luc Godard, In Praise of Love (2001) * * * With his new feature, The Old Oak (2023), Ken Loach[…]

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