Now that things are calming down — the "war" is "over," Argentina’s collapsed, Pakistan and India are ready to nuke it out, Somalia and Iraq are bracing for the bombs, Clinton’s dog was run over, a large bird ate my caftan, etc. — it’s time to relax, grab some hooch (or a handful of oxycontin), flick on the blacklight, and plunge into the netherworld that is the new Bright Lights. In our unceasing effort to transport culture-starved readers from the dreary reality of the prison cell/cubicle, soup line, or porn theatre booth where they normally sit, stand, or kneel, we’ve lined up a veritable world tour of some of cinema’s bright boulevards and brackish backwaters.

Associate editor Alan Vanneman’s Fred and Ginger Show, with Joan Fontaine standing in for Ginger, continues apace with Damsel in Distress. Bob Castle takes a thoughtful stroll through one of the lesser-known areas of Kubrick’s last gasp, and Bright Lights newcomer Maria van Dijk (Wilkommen, Maria!) puts her well-polished spyglass on the French B movie. Andrew Grossman’s in-depth study of lesbian/feminist/orientalist ripples through Chinese cinema is sure to provoke and excite, while BL regular Julian Upton offers a droll hymn to one of Britain’s most disreputable genres — feature films based on lousy TV sitcoms.

Robert Wise remains robust after what seems like centuries of inventive cinema, as evidenced by new contributor Andrew Rausch’s (Aloha, Andrew!) informative interview. Peter Jackson’s epic of hairy-footed boys and big bad monsters rates two tantalizing reviews: one by Vanneman, another by BL newbie Phil Cooper. (Bienvenidos, Phil!) America’s hermetically sealed movie screens don’t admit much outside the mainstream (and that includes the duplicitous "indie mainstream"), so it’s important to take note of the less controllable film festivals. Three are reviewed here: Robert Keser nicely navigates the Chicago International; Cleo Cacoulidis adroitly analyzes the Argentinian portion of the Thessaloniki International; and yours truly prattles on about San Francisco’s Berlin & Beyond.

On the video front, M. Valdemar — make that A. Vanneman — gets the blue ribbon for sitting through and writing up three Brigitte Bardot DVDs; the ever-clever Matthew Kennedy reviews two classic ‘60s Czech films and Gregory La Cava’s masterpiece My Man Godfrey; Andrew Grossman does a surgical strike on two "Japanese gay pink films"; Scott "Eraserhead" Thill manages to make those confusing Mabuse films sound phat, if not da bomb; and your editor lays the lorgnette on Buñuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire. Not to forget "old-school technology," we’ve included two book reviews this time (with many more to come next issue): Richard Armstrong’s intriguing analyis of Raymond Haberski’s study of American films and critics, and Dorna Khazeni’s deft interweaving of a history of recent Iranian cinema in a review of Hamid Dabashi’s problematic book on that subject.

Prayers of the congregation.

Gary Morris