Bright Lights Film Journal :: October 2000

October 2000 | Issue 30

Editorial

From the Editor

Gary Morris

Articles

Robinson Crusoe and the Ethnic Sidekick

By Frederick Zackel

Who knew that Crusoe and Friday would be resurrected daily for service to western culture's nefarious needs?

Irving Berlin on Film

By Alan Vanneman

Forget Barry Manilow — this is the guy who really wrote the songs

Fall 2000’s Queer Films: Preview!

By Gary Morris

Gay werewolves, the Marquis De Sade, and a mean one-legged nun: The tortured queens and killer dykes of yesteryear make way for more rareified queer types this season

Movies

Dis-Orientation: Japan from a Western Viewpoint in Topsy-Turvy and The Mikado

By Eve Kushner

If the "Asian face" doesn’t get you, how about names like Nanki-Poo and Yum Yum?

When Worlds Collide: East Is East

By Molly Sackler

Stereotypes and social critique spar in this culture-clash dramedy

Truth and Consequences: Long Night’s Journey into Day

By Gary Morris

Post-apartheid South Africa’s rituals of admission and absolution

Anarchy in the UK: Derek Jarman’s Jubilee (1978)

By Julian Upton

Punks hail Britannia in their own peculiar way in this little-seen gem by the late queer auteur

A Tired Bag of Tricks: Nick Broomfield’s Fetishes

By Gary Morris

Literal commodity fetishism in the far fringes of New York’s S&M scene

Ozon Meets Fassbinder: Water Drops on Burning Rocks

By Gary Morris

A stylized look at one of the colder corners of gay petit bourgeois life

Teetering Teens: From the Edge of the City

By Gary Morris

Couldn’t they have just sent us a postcard?

Deepa Mehta's Fire

By Gary Morris

The first of the Canadian-Indian auteur's controversial attacks on the privileges of patriarchy

The Nightmare in the Fairy Tale: Criminal Lovers

By Susan Knecht

A modern-day Hansel and Gretel take on love, sex, and death with rapturous results

Sirk’s A Scandal in Paris on VHS

By Gary Morris

The "Great Dane’s" rare 1946 masterpiece now on VHS

Ulmer’s Daughter of Dr. Jekyll on DVD

By Gary Morris

Monsters are bad enough; must we also endure their relatives?

Stars

Tokuko Nagai Takagi: Japan’s First Film Actress

By Aaron M. Cohen

This forgotten star was caught up — and perhaps crushed — by larger historical forces

Directors

Béla Tarr Speaks!

By Eric Schlosser

About Werckmeister Harmonies (Cannes 2000, Director's Fortnight)

Brief Candles: Warren Sonbert in Retrospect

By Gary Morris

The work of an avant-garde master now restored

Tableaux Vivant: Lawrence Jordan

By Gary Morris

Jordan’s collage films are "moving" in two senses

Rare Kurosawa on VHS

By Gary Morris

Tubercular yakuza, scandalous artists, and postwar paranoids duke it out with the world

Jean Cocteau’s Orphic Trilogy on DVD

By Gary Morris

The arthouse staple gets a gorgeous makeover in this DVD set brimming with extras

Recent Posts

Alice in Wonderland (1933) | watch »

You've seen Tim Burton's 2010 Alice; now check out Humpty Dumpty in writer-designer William Cameron Menzies' 1933 version.

Watch on Youtube »

Gordon Thomas, and other BL staff, check out the eye- popping pleasures of Blu-Ray.

» Monsoon Wedding (Mira Nair)
» The General (Keaton)
» Sunrise (Murnau)
» 8-1/2 (Fellini)
» Playtime (Tati)
» Winstanley (Brownlow & Mollo)
» My Childhood, My Ain Folk ... (Bill Douglas)
» In the Realm of the Senses (Oshima)
» Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Disney)
» Repulsion (Polanski)

BL Associate Editor Alan Vanneman watches (and reviews) television shows so you don't have to. Click if you dare.

» 30 Rock
» Broadway Theatre Archive
» Charlie’s Angels
» Death of a Salesman
» Freaks and Geeks
» Have Gun Will Travel
» Magnum P.I.
» Monk
» Pamela Anderson Roast

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