Issue Archive
Bright Lights Film Journal began life as a print publication in 1974, published and edited by Gary Morris. In 1995, the magazine went online exclusively as brightlightsfilm.com. In April 2014,[…]
53 Search results for "jerry lewis"
Satirical Excess and Empty Vessels: Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy
“Rupert Pupkin is uniquely a product of late capitalism near the close of the twentieth century; his fantasies reflect mass media’s ability to twist the real world into an insubstantial collection of images that mimic reality — the representation of self becomes more than the actual self, and it becomes impossible to tell the difference.”
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Nothin’ but Legs! Fred and Cyd Go out Kicking in Cole Porter’s Silk Stockings
Sorry, folks, but this is the last dance
Book review: Brutal Intimacy, by Tim Palmer
Brutal Intimacy: Analyzing Contemporary French Cinema, Tim Palmer. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2011. Paperback, $28.00. 304pp. ISBN: 978-0819568267 Endemic to any reading of a new work lionizing French cinema is[…]
“You Know Billy, We Blew It”: Historical Influences on the “Rough Rebels” and How the Counterculture Was Excluded from Hollywood
Hippies and radicals, back of the (cultural) bus
Actors & Personalities · Comedy
Ernie Kovacs: An American Secret
“Ernie’s contract is reported to contain a clause forbidding him ever to consult a psychiatrist. The network is afraid if he ever became normal he’d be ruined.” — Dorothy Kilgallen
The Inspector’s Speech
Featuring Andrea and Steve Martin. Comic geniuses. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUMhA8Ye3x8] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j-b0kP7Cf8] If the scene in which Steve Martin as Inspector Clousseau attempts to learn English pronunciation (bottom) bears more than a passing resemblance[…]
Crazy Dreams: The World Of Blake Edwards
“The truth is that humour and terror play an equal part in his vision, which takes shape at the point where the two extremes meet.”
Frank Tashlin: The Animated Auteur
“Tashlin’s tenure at Warner Bros. did not provide him with a ‘cartoon aesthetic’ that could be applied, ready-made, to his features; rather, it allowed him to develop a feature filmmaking aesthetic through cartoons.”
Serious Joke: The Coen Brothers’ Emergence as Jewish Humorists
“The films of the Coen brothers seem to take place in a postmodern Chelm, displaced chronologically and geographically.”
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: The Italian, Traffic in Souls, Privilege, Wings, The Ascent, Tropical Malady, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, J’Accuse
The Italian (Reginald Barker, 1915) and Traffic in Souls (George Loane Tucker, 1913) The Italian of producer Thomas Ince’s 1915 film is Beppo Donnetti, played by George Beban in a performance[…]
Quickies: Random Short Reviews from Affinity to Cthulhu to War Dance
“Don’t these children deserve the respect of a beautiful film?”
Once there was a protest against a satire about a film within a film…
I’m sure this is the fifteenth thing you’ve read today about the TROPIC THUNDER scandal, vis a vis “Once upon a time, there was a retard…” but if you haven’t,[…]
Fear of Fishing: Closets and Product Placement in Hawks’ Man’s Favorite Sport?
“The sorrows of narrative immersion are the joys of Brechtian postmodernism …” I love the films of Howard Hawks but I’ve always dismissed Man’s Favorite Sport as unwatchable, mainly because[…]
Artists · Directors · Movies · Reviews
Inherit the Wind: Talking with Peter Bogdanovich and Joseph McBride About The Other Side of the Wind
Life with the restless ghost of Orson Welles’ last movie In 1970, after two decades of European exile broken only by his brief return in 1957-58 to make Touch of[…]
Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
More Fun in the New (Queer) World: The 2005 Portland Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
Out of the closets and onto the screen Queer film festivals have always been a crucial flashpoint for community. Starting in the 1970s, with the now sprawling San Francisco version,[…]
Auteur in Distress: On Wallace Beery, von Sternberg, and Sergeant Madden
Cinema’s supreme pictorialist surrenders to “the cop on the beat” Wallace Beery was always a strange case. An outstanding character actor throughout the silent era and the early sound period,[…]
Quickies: Random Short Reviews from Bobby Abate to The Whale Rider
“It’s a spring break party 24/7 365 days a year!” Bobby Abate In his online bio, queer avant-garde filmmaker Bobby Abate compares himself to Britney Spears. Like her, he says,[…]
They Lost It at the Movies: Film Culture in the Age of Positif and Cineaste
“I can’t believe that you let those people put pictures on your skin.” C. W.’s father to C. W. Moss in Bonnie and Clyde
Frederic March and Carole Lombard Find Nothing Sacred in the Big Apple
“There she is, in all her beads and ribbons!” How Manhattan is Nothing Sacred? To be more Manhattan, it would have to be Manhattan. Because once more we’re on that[…]
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