Bright Lights Film Journal 64 now live at brightlightsfilm.com.

from the editor

Funny ha-ha or funny weird?

features foyer

Tex Avery: Arch-Radicalizer of the Hollywood Cartoon — "Avery's pics confirm an always-lingering suspicion that the many radical plays with movie syntax and the numerous distancing techniques employed in '60s live-action films, of 'New Wave Cinema' extraction, were, in fact, first invented, and used for purely comic effect, in animated cartoons."

Retro Virus: Did AIDS perform Nensha? — "Be aware: there are forces at work here of which we have no knowledge." — Queen Elizabeth 2

Fifteen Years of French Cinema: By André Bazin — "If French cinema was no longer down in the dumps, so the reasoning went, its palette should duly adorn itself with all the colors of the intellectual rainbow. And this is exactly what happened."

articles antechamber

"Monsieur Hulot and Time": By André Bazin — "In their blend of social satire, wry charm, imaginative physical gags, and ingenious aural as well as visual devices, Jacques Tati's movies have not been surpassed by those of any other postwar cinematic comic — French or otherwise."

Busby Berkeley's Hollywood Hotel: Bring on the dancing girls! Oh, wait! There aren't any! — Thank God for the Benny Goodman Quartet

Let's Dance? Must We? Fred Astaire Collides with Betty Hutton — Ouch!

The Complete A of Altruism: In Which the Selfish Gene Explains Everything — Except whether to laugh or cry

Between Nudist Morality and Freudian Realism! Denuding Fleshly Hypocrisies, Cinematic and Otherwise — "Nude on the Moon's exploitation is as innocent as the Good Christo-Nudist's reclaiming of a pre-figleafed (albeit non-recreational) Eden."

recent cinema roundabout

"Just Another Man": On James Toback's Tyson — "Toback, to his credit, and despite the empathy he feels toward his subject, doesn't pull his punches."

avant-garde atelier

Opposition Compositions: Treasures IV: American Avant Garde Film 1947-1986 on DVD — "Avant garde filmmaking has been defined almost entirely in opposition to the Hollywood mainstream."

film festival flying buttress

Screening Hong Kong: The 33rd Hong Kong International Film Festival — One of the world's largest cinema events is also one of the most ambitious

The View from Here: Middle Eastern Cinema at the 49th Thessaloniki International Film Festival — "What happens when the gaze is returned?"

bright sights

Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Hobson's Choice, Murnau, Divorce Iranian Style/Runaway, Poil de Carotte, Celia — An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

horror haven

The Child Is Father to the Child: On the Friday the 13th Series — "You can depend on Jason."

the empty guest room

Ida Lupino: Demon Mother Night — "[H]er favorite expression of strained intensity would be less quickly relieved by a merciful death than by Ex-Lax." — James Agee, 1943

James Mason: Odd Man Out — Mason was "equally at home playing small, brooding anti-heroes, camping it up in a toga, or doing a nice line in late career self-parody."

The Goddess in Her Element: Ruan Lingyu in Shanghai — "This is an actress who shows excitement down to the curl of her fingers, and whose face reveals every kind of mercurial change."

Lee Tracy: "A Manic, Scalding Passion for Success" — "With his impish grin, twinkling eyes, and boyish blond hair, he looks like Tom Sawyer crossed with a Tammany Hall fixer."

the palace of program notes

Women Larger Than Life: Program Notes 1: Allan Dwan's Woman They Almost Lynched (1953)/Slightly Scarlet (1956) — "Within the confines of the action genres, Dwan is, like Jean Renoir, a classical humanist."

interrogation alcove

"Strong, Righteous, and Rustic": An Interview with Joel McCrea — "I told Hitchcock, 'I do miss my horse.'"

Impressions of an Auteur, Tehran Today: Talking with Iranian Director Khosrow Sinai — "This situation requires the filmmakers to be more creative in handling their mostly simple stories, which sometimes are so simple as to seem very modern and minimalistic."

Return of the Obsessed: James Toback Steps into the Ring Again with Tyson — "And then he said, 'It's like a Greek tragedy. The only problem is, I'm the subject.'"

pre-code parapet

Desperation and Divinity: "Help us, Mae!" — Hazy thoughts on the transition from real sex to digital hallucinations

Wild Boys and Midnight Maries: Social Realism and Pre-Code in Forbidden Hollywood (Vol. 3) — "We can't help but roll our eyes at a woman who would rather wear holes in her shoes looking for a 'good honest job' than roll around in money and mink."

little stabs

Little Stabs of Happiness (and Horror): Random Short Reviews of the Worthy and the Worthless in Recent and Old-School Cinema — "As soon as my health is in jeopardy, everybody shows up to lick my ass!"

hiding in the stacks

Charlie Kaufman and Hollywood's Merry Band of Pranksters, Fabulists, and Dreamers: An Excursion into the American New Wave, by Derek Hill

Douglas Fairbanks, by Jeffrey Vance

Fred Astaire, by Joseph Epstein

Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard, by Richard Brody

You'll Like this Film Because You're in It: The Be Kind Rewind Protocol, by Michel Gondry.

Frankly, My Dear: Gone with the Wind Revisited, by Molly Haskell

Jack Hill: The Exploitation and Blaxpoitation Master, Film by Film, by Calum Waddell

Joseph P. Kennedy Presents: His Hollywood Years, by Cari Beauchamp

Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy, ed. Richard Greene and K. Silem Mohammad

Hollywood's Ancient Worlds, by Jeffrey Richards, and Movie Photos, by Alex Bailey

Issue 62 of Bright Lights Film Journal is now online.

from the editor

Change you can believe in?

features foyer

Finding Unlikely Ideology in Prokofiev: Polyphonic and Anti-Authoritarian Gestures in The Gambler — "Alexei must be condemned to the pointless, loveless, and finally false freedom of a spinning limbo, as unfinished and unfinishable as the best Bakhtinian polyphony."

articles antechamber

Alfred Hitchcock at the Drag Ball: When Being Blonde and Soulless Is Not Enough — "Mother . . . my mother . . . um, what's the phrase? She isn't quite herself today." — Anthony Perkins, making a colossal understatement in Psycho

Lost Watches and Lost Souls: From New Jersey to Old Istanbul — Fresh Starts Don't Come Easy

Death, Excess, and Discontinuity: On Lost Highway, Irreversible, and Visitor Q — "All feature reactive heroes hurtling toward death as a means of reconciling the ruptures between them and their objects of desire."

Music, Morricone, and Jack Nicholson's Voice: The Soundscape of Wolf — "Suddenly my senses are all incredibly acute . . . I'm different, more alive, stronger . . ."

Metropolis, Ezra Pound, Mammon — And the Law of Too-Large Numbers nbsp;— "The old world is dying away, and the new world struggles to come forth: now is the time of monsters" — Antonio Gramsci

actors atelier

Japanese Cinema's Uncommon Man: Tatsuya Nakadai's Dissidents, Outcasts, and Shadow Warriors — "Like Hollywood's new postwar men, he offered a multifaceted, ambivalent masculinity far from monolithic wartime ideals."

film festival flying buttress

Music in the Making: Highlights from the 2008 Melbourne International Film Festival — "The surprise musical number can represent a facile avoidance of complexity, a moment of true strangeness, or a way of harmonizing existing, underlying themes."

Queer Angles: The 2008 Portland Lesbian and Gay Film Festival — Feisty orthodox Jewish dykes, globe-trotting ladyboys, fascistic Armani queens — you know, the gang

What's Up, QDoc? Portland's 2008 Queer Documentary Festival — Seeing queer lives from the U.S. and Canada to South Africa and Iran

recent cinema roundabout

Sinful Remake: The Women Problem — "Wife, get a real life for yourself. Career woman, the career isn't everything. Hussy, men still marry ladies. Lesbian, explore your 'male' issues . . ."

Linda, Harry, and the Pseudo-Screw: Burn After Reading: The Coen Brothers' DC Story — "Burn After Reading holds the notable distinction of being the only screwball comedy to leave all of its characters either moderately satisfied or dead."

It Ain't Me Babe: On Dylan and Todd Haynes' I'm Not There — See the incredible vanishing American

An Argento Family Reunion Special: Crying over the Spilled Mother of Tears — Bwaaah!

Vicky and Woody and François: On Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona — The return of Jules and Jim?

Out of Oblivion: Chris Marker and Cinematic Memories of Israel in Dan Geva's Description of a Memory — "It is an opportunity to film people and events that could be recalled at any time to affirm, lament, or challenge a moment in time in this troubled region."

the empty guest room

Dana Andrews: The Forties Hero and His Shadow — "It's not difficult for me to hide emotion, since I've always hidden it in my personal life." — Dana Andrews

Film Criticism as a Man's Job: A Belated Look at the Legacy of Manny Farber — "Farber's writing is the pure antithesis of academic — ornately sophisticated with a vernacular punch, stuffed with contradictory statements and astounding paradoxes."

Norma Shearer: The Primrose Path to MGM Stock — "She hovered somewhere between the realest of realities and the most blatant of impersonations." — F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Crazy Sunday," 1932

interrogation alcove

The Last Mistress: An Interview with Catherine Breillat — "When I make movies, nothing is limited."

revival room

Early Jeanne, Early Louis, Early Miles: Louis Malle's Elevator to the Gallows — "Paris at night in black-and-white with Miles on the soundtrack? It's a perfect fit."

The Volleyball in the Void: Tom Hanks Is Cast Away — Pascal . . . Kierkegaard . . . Nietzsche . . . Zemeckis?

Faust Goes to Hollywood: Revisiting John Frankenheimer's Seconds — "Think, for Pete's sake. What have you got now?"

vale of video

The First-Class Jewels: An American in Paris and Gigi — Two golden-age musicals get the deluxe treatment

bright sights

Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: The Italian, Traffic in Souls, Privilege, Wings, The Ascent, Tropical Malady, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, J'Accuse — An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

little stabs

Little Stabs of Happiness (and Horror): Random Short Reviews of the Worthy and the Worthless in Recent and Old-School Cinema — "Don't these children deserve the respect of a beautiful film?"

hiding in the stacks

Art in Cinema: Documents Toward a History of the Film Society, by Scott MacDonald

The Impossible David Lynch, by Todd McGowan

Issue 60 of Bright Lights Film Journal just went live.

from the editor

Our bad!

features foyer

Who Do You Love? Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game Reconsidered — Was Le Grande Jean too soft on the aristos?

Twenty-One Years in the Midday Sun: Revisiting Roger Ebert's Cannes — Here's lookin' at you, Roger

articles antechamber

What's Your Function? How Movies Are Made — You mean you've tried panicking?

One Culture, Two Systems: The Rules of Spanglish and Twice Upon a Time — "When talking to others, what needs to be articulated?"

Gothic Eurowesterns: A Grotesque Perspective on a Hollywood Myth — On the manifest destiny of Civil War tricksters and gun-slinging corpses

Consumerist Ultimate Indigestion: La Grand Bouffe's Deadly Physiological Pleasures — "To go to the cinema is like to eat or shit, it's a physiological act, it's urban guerrilla" — Marco Ferreri

Serpentine Evil and the Garden of Eden in DeMille's Samson and Delilah (1949) — Samson, meet Adam; Delilah, meet Eve

cellar of silence

Looking at Charlie — The Circus: An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin — Life in the ring

recent cinema roundabout

Critics Cornered: On Reviewers' Reactions to David Ayres' Street Kings — "Anyone who speaks unsanitized thought is going to lose."

the empty guest room

Fatal Instincts: The Dangerous Pout of Gloria Grahame — "I'm a girl who loves to be manhandled! After all, what are a few contusions or abrasions if you get the man you love?" — Gloria Grahame, 1953

interrogation alcove

Birds Do It, Bees Do It: Isabella Rossellini Talks About Bug Sex, Human Sex, and Green Porno — "A laugh and information!"

From a Line of Ancestors: Talking with Doris Dörrie and Natasha Arthy — "We in the West trample on them."

A Quiet Storm: Charles Burnett on Namibia and His Post-Killer of Sheep Career — "Each film requires for me its own approach."

Man with a Movie Camera: Visiting Jonathan Caouette — "I could somehow control my own story"

documentary dormer

What's Up, Docs? Nonstandard Operating Procedures in Recent Documentaries, and Interviews with Patricio Henriquez and Doug Pray — "Why didn't you just stick to the truth?"

there will be blood, and more blood

Bowling for America: Robert Warshow, There Will Be Blood, and the Topography of Desire — "The king-times are fast finishing. There will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist. But the peoples will conquer in the end. I shall not live to see it, but I foresee it." — George Gordon, Lord Byron

The Human Monster: On Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood — "There are no good and bad men, there are only damaged men . . ."

vale of video

Dream Documents of Civil War: Three Films by Miklós Jancsó — "Jancsó's controlled aesthetic acts as a dissonance that vibrates expressively with scenes of violence, torture, and shame."

film festival flying buttress

Plus Ça Change: The 2008 Rendez-vous with French Cinema — Gingerly moving out of the 20th century, not quite into the 21st

bright sights

Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Berlin Alexanderplatz, Harry Langdon: Lost and Found, Postwar Kurosawa, I Am Cuba, The Dragon Painter, The Wrath of the Gods, Georges Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema — An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

hiding in the stacks

Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, by Mark Harris

Issue 57 of Bright Lights Film Journal just went live with 27 articles.

from the editor

The unsinkable Bright Lights!

features foyer

Glancing, Staring, Cruising: Queer Ways of Looking — Ecce homo

articles antechamber

Space Here We Come: P. J. Harvey's Please Leave Quietly Redefines the Concert Film DVD — "It flashes before our eyes, and we are not even sure what we have witnessed."

300 Lies? Give Poeticsa Chance — What's Greek history without distortions, inaccuracies, and falsehoods?

Amazing Scenes: Pretending to Be Normal — Pause. N-o-o-o-o-t!

Notes on a Scandal: On Film Criticism and Its Teachers — Will the twain ever meet?

Auspicious Beginnings: Nicholson's Leitmotif in Five Easy Pieces — "His characters have tended to be more bewildered by life and disgusted by a world that won't cooperate."

The Panther and the Mouse: A Love Story — "Like the implicit struggle between Salome and Herod, it becomes unclear as to who serves whom."

What a Waste: The Apocalyptic Prophecies of T. S. Eliot and Alfonso Cuarón — "What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow / Out of this stony rubbish?"

parlor of porn

Before The Green Door: The Mitchell Brothers, the Counterculture, and Hard-Core's Beginnings — It came from San Francisco

Secret Window: The Erotic Gaze of Tom Lazarus — "Lazarus doesn't pathologize the locked-in gaze, he lets us feel it."

empty guest room

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: The Elusive Pleasures of Irene Dunne — "You'd never get tired of having her around, because she'd always be someone else for you."

avant-garde atelier

Close to Home: The Films of Su Friedrich on DVD — Autobiography sometimes trumps art in these uneven works

The Valorized Artist: Incorporation into the "Perpetual Art Machine" [PAM] — Art for [PAM]'s sake

recent cinema roundabout

Return of the Return of the Repressed: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's 28 Weeks Later — Look familiar?

Mo' Money! Mo' Money! Mo' Money! J. K. Rowling Just Got Richer — Harry the Fifth comes in third

Butterfly Dream: Tsai Ming-liang's I Don't Want to Sleep Alone — "There's no overt sexuality to Rawang's care for Hsiao Kang. It's a tender act of love, a selfless giving of himself to another. "

Blow the Man Down: Aki Kaurismaki's Lights in the Dusk — "The grafting on of the film's film noir plot has a reductionist minimalism to it, as if Kaurismaki were sketching an archetype . . .

An Infarction to Die For: Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Thirteen — Can a film with George Clooney, Matt Damon, and Brad Pitt be all bad? Yes.

Rat's Eye for the Straight Guy: Disney/Pixar's Ratatouille — Eat first, talk later? If only!

interrogation alcove

Constructive Empathy: Speaking with Kadri Kousaar About Magnus — "People can die without love."

Stay Well, or Else . . .: Michael Moore's Sicko — "What these Americans have could happen to us. And this is frightening."

Silent Light or Absolute Miracle: An Interview with Carlos Reygadas at Cannes 2007 — "I hate the idea that film is actually telling a story!"

Back to Basis: Talking with Paul Verhoeven — On Black Book and his recent Hollywood defection

revival room

Ronald Reagan's Shoot from Hell! Cattle Queen of Montana — Up shit creek without a Pichon Longueville '47

film festival flying buttress

Closing the Closet: QDoc: The 2007 Portland Queer Documentary Film Festival — "We couldn't figure out how to divide the cat . . ."

Movin' On Up: The 2007 Tribeca Film Festival — From neighborhood festival to NYC player

bright sights

Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Romeo, Juliet and Darkness; The Party and the Guests; Woman Is the Future of Man; Sansho the Bailiff; Old Joy; The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg; 20 Fingers; Electric Edwardians — An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases