Issue 54 of Bright Lights Film Journal just went live.
from the editor
It's a Bright Lights world after all!
features foyer
Routes to the City: The Ways of the New Black Films — "It's independent thinking without the protection of an 'indie' label."
Falling Angels, Rising People: A Brief Look at Sex-and-Spirituality in Cinema — Wings not desired
Selma: Or the Absence of God — "It is a face that has 'glimpsed into the abyss' and never recovered from it.
What Time Now? Catching Up Hours in Tsai Ming-liang — "Despite their loneliness, Tsai's characters often appear to be living in relation to someone else: a stranger who hovers around them."
S P E C I A L
Now online: noir and neo-noir from issue 12 (Spring 1994) of our discontinued print edition
Film Noir's Knights of the Road — "The black sheep of the family, noir's tramps are the tin-age antithesis to Chaplin's golden-age thesis."
Noir Country — Alien nation
Faulkner and Film Noir — Faulkner: "Some good pictures come out of Hollywood. God knows how, but they do."
Beyond the Golden Age: Film Noir Since the 'Fifties — "There is only Noir!"
Mike Leigh's Naked — "Oh, that is excessive"
John Dahl's Red Rock West — "Cage's Michael is a model of the terse, slightly wasted working- class guy who acts as a punching bag for malevolent Fate."
Neo-Noir on Laser: Point Blank, Chinatown, The Long Goodbye — All the colors of darkness
articles antechamber
Capsized: A Tale of Two Poseidons — Society overboard!
Suspicious White Powder: Bad Actors in an Age of Bad Equality — Please dispose of all reality at the back of the theatre
Steele Vision: The Face of Italian Cult Cinema — "Again the camera shows how the imperfection of Asa's face does not present an insurmountable obstacle to her being ultimately attractive."
Who Owns Norman Bates? On Psycho IV, III, II, I, and More — "Look at yourself," she says, "that's not who you are anymore."
Following the Blind Swordsman: The Zatoichi Movies — "He is an itinerant hero, a lone samurai whose mask is his blindness, a mask that hides his many strengths."
cellar of silence
The Sweet Smell of Asphalt: Discovering Joe May's 1929 Masterwork — "Amann's sexuality in Asphalt has little in common with the chilled porcelain passivity of stars like Dietrich and Garbo . . ."
the empty guest room
The Martyrdom of Lulu: Louise Brooks at 100 — "If I ever bore you, it'll be with a knife."
documentary dormer
Cultural Equity: On the Documentary Lomax the Songhunter — "Every smallest branch of the human family at one time or another has carved its dreams out of the rock on which it has lived." (Alan Lomax)
film festival flying buttress
Less Is Less: The 44th New York Film Festival — Past trumps present in this unremarkable fest
Chicago, je t'aime: The 42nd Chicago International Film Festival — "There are things you shouldn't sell"
On the Prowl with MadCat: On the 2006 MadCat International Women's Film Festival — Provocative and visionary!
camp corner
Trailer Trash: Dumpster Diving with Jenni Olson — High camp in three minutes or less
interrogation antechamber
Cruising with Camille: An Interview with Camille Paglia — "Please note that even Margo Channing, threatening a 'bumpy night' for her hapless guests, merely fumingly forecasts. It's a gesture of mind, not body."
Returning to Life: Talking with Almodovar, Penelope Cruz, and Carmen Maura at Cannes — "I do not have the serenity of women. But I admire it."
What's Wrong with Fast Food? A Conversation with Richard Linklater and Eric Schlosser on Fast Food Nation — With additional comments by Catalina Sandino Moreno and Ethan Hawke
recent cinema roundabout
The Ant Bully: 3-D to the IMAX — When ants got big, and kids got small
The Departed: Crime All the Time — Scorsese gets all Irish on our asses, and it works
Doug McGrath's Infamous: The Best Truman Capote movie I've Seen All Year! — If you must see only one Truman Capote movie in your life, let it be this one
Hating Marie: Why the French Still Don't Like Her — Bring us the head of Sofia Coppola, 'k?
No Tobacco Juice, but Funny! Monster House, Rockin' in 3-D! — Bob Zemeckis and Stephen Spielberg want your money. Give it to them.
"We Still Have to Work Just as Hard as Before": Michael Glawogger's Workingman's Death — "The tourist says that it's a lot to carry and the worker agrees, then gets on with his work."
O Superman
Superman Returns I: Superheroes for the New Millennium — "This new millennium hero lives in a fortress of solitary and alienated hyper-masculinity."
Superman Returns II: Superman . . . Bush . . . Perry White . . . Karl Rove . . . — It's all here, including the "Mission Accomplished" moment
revival room
Train to Nowhere: On Renoir's La Bête Humaine — "Now it is a world of studio sets and the precise control of the effects of light and shadow."
Hairy on the Inside: Surrealism and Sexual Anxiety in Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves — "If there's a beast in men, it meets its match in women too."
Just Another Guy on the Lost Highway: Revisiting Two-Lane Blacktop — "It's not some metaphorical struggle between two mighty kings of the road. It's more like a self-deceiving ritual carried out by two of its prisoners."
vale of video
From Aaron Spelling's Vault of Horror: Charlie's Angels on DVD! — "I expect to be erect any time now."
Game Over, Curtains Close: The Creative Failure of Videogame Movies — Lost in translation