October 2001 | Issue 34
Editorial
By Gary Morris
Articles
By Megan Ratner
As the world spins out of control, so do these women
By Gary Morris
Jello Biafra meet ‘90s D.I.Y. meet Patti Smith meet Rave Kulture meet…
Movies
By Alan Vanneman
"Let’s call the whole thing off?"
By Joanne Bealy
America’s cultural colonizing is scored in a French-Canadian documentary you’ll probably never see
By Scott Thill
It’s just Lynch being Lynch. And that’s a good thing.
By Luca Prono
Ozpetek’s queer melodrama excites and disappoints in equal measure
By Robert Castle
There’s more trouble in Toontown than even the Toons imagined
By David Boxwell
What’s going on in that tent?
By Gary Morris
This is one audition some viewers may want to skip
By Gary Morris
This love letter to San Francisco’s tranny community is a little too loving
By Alan Vanneman
Where’s the rest of him?
By Alan Vanneman
Not many extras but lots of fun
By Alan Vanneman
Ingmar Bergman does it again!
By Gary Morris
Three features, a documentary, and a rare short showcase the peculiar pleasures of the late Russian director
By Gary Morris
The artistic underpinnings of Nazi terror
By Gary Morris
Bergman’s cinematographer found more solace on the set than in real life
By Gary Morris
on DVD — Poe’s favorite story dressed to kill by a legendary surrealist auteur
Directors
By John Wisniewski
Wit and wisdom from the man who created one of cinema’s most enduring genres
By Gary Morris
Kern’s trashy teens fight and fuck their way through an incomprehensible world
By Gary Morris
Murder and dinner — almost — among the upper crust
By Matthew Kennedy
Criterion Collection serves up two Sirk beauties
Festivals
By Gary Morris
More relevant now than ever, this solid fest brings some of the complexity of the Arab world to often uncomprehending western eyes
By Gary Morris
A treasure trove of short queer cinema — and one feature — from cultures where creating it can be a criminal act
Books
Reviewed by Richard Armstrong
Reviewed by Gary Morris
My Son Divine, by Frances Milstead, with Kevin Heffernan and Steve Yeage
Reviewed by Matthew Kennedy
Recent Posts

The Yes MenAn excerpt with the wildly gymnastic "big-mouth" comic Joe E. Brown, from the film whose name inspired this magazine.

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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)
» Permissive (Shonteff)
» Lola Montes (Ophuls)
» My Childhood, My Ain Folk ... (Bill Douglas)
» In the Realm of the Senses (Oshima)
» Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Disney)
» Repulsion (Polanski)
» Institute Benjamenta (Brothers Quay)
» Everlasting Moments (Troell)

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

» 30 Rock
» Batman: The Animated Series
» Broadway Theatre Archive
» Charlie’s Angels
» Cowboy Bebop
» Death of a Salesman
» Dollhouse
» Freaks and Geeks
» Have Gun Will Travel
» Mad Men
» Magnum P.I.
» Monk
» Pamela Anderson Roast
» Renegade
» Sex and the City

I'm sick of movies, Mr. Webmaster. Take me away!

» Archive.org
Gazillions of free books, audio, and video. Grab 'em before the copyright police come knocking!

» Glenn Greenwald
The indomitable civil liberties champion takes exception to American exceptionalism. You will too when you read his blistering analyses.

» Project Gutenberg
See Archive.org.

» Creative Commons
"All Creative Commons licenses have many important features in common. Every license helps creators retain copyright while allowing others to copy, distribute, and make some uses of their work — at least non-commercially."

» The Ivy Compton-Burnett home page
A Bright Lights side project created by George Brown devoted to the greatest novelist of the 20th century. There, we said it.

» Raw Vision
The leading online site (and print publication) devoted to those zany untrained artists who channel personality quirks, neuroses, idées fixes, and downright craziness into Art.

» Siklink.com
An endlessly fascinating clearinghouse for "the greatest hand-picked collection of bizarre, strange and unusual websites on the internet today." Highlights include the enchanting "Prison Bitch Name Generator" and "Life Gem" – how to "turn your deceased loved one into a diamond."

» Clark Ashton Smith
The premier fantasy poet and short-story writer (and sculptor and artist) gets a detailed blog that's a model for intelligent fan-ism. Watch out for falling curmudgeons in the forum.

» Classic Arcade Games
Miss Asteroids? Centipede? Frogger? Miss that you missed them? Here's your chance to enjoy the state of the art circa 1980s.

» Jack Vance
Wikipedia's gateway to our favorite writer in and of science fiction and fantasy. A national treasure.

» Electronic Frontier Foundation
"EFF fights for freedom primarily in the courts, bringing and defending lawsuits even when that means taking on the US government or large corporations." Go EFF!

» The Canonical List of Weird Band Names: The Peculiar and the Profane
Another Bright Lights side project from the inimitable George Brown. You probably know the Meat Puppets but how about Lyin' Bitch and the Restraining Orders?

» James Purdy
A good introduction to a criminally neglected postwar literary master. Be 21 or be gone for his gorgeous, harrowing works, kids.

» The Radical Ant Farm
This page answers that nagging question: "What's up with the Russian criminal tattoos?" The rest of the site offers further fun.

» Spectro-Pop
Monumental site devoted to '60s pop music – you know, that stuff playing in the background during the orgy.

» The Left Business Observer
Doug Henwood's long-running economics newsletter, called "invaluable" by Noam Chomsky. Need we say more?

» Jane Bowles
Go to Wikipedia and improve this "stub" on the writer Tennessee Williams looked up to and James Purdy called "the eagle-woman of American letters."

» WFMU
The best online radio station for our money. A deep archive and no-music-turned-away policy will keep you rollin' and tumblin' till the apocalypse.

» Henry Green
Must we create a detailed tribute page to this extraordinary British novelist championed by Auden, Updike, and Terry Southern? Or will you do it? Start with Concluding (1948).

» Women of Surrealism
They weren't all "muses" and maids – these women equaled or surpassed their more celebrated male counterparts in vision and technique.

» Ronald Firbank
He called the president of Haiti "a perfect dear" and was known to eat a single pea at dinner. Oh, and he ranks with Joyce and Woolf (see Edmund Wilson) as a groundbreaking literary modernist.

» Essential Vermeer
Everything you need to know about the Dutch master of light and mysterious figures.

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