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writers gone wild!
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Bright Lights Film Journal
Issue 41 | August 2003

from the editor

Forget the Tour de France.
How about the Tour de Bright Lights?

We like sports as much as the next guy — well, the next guy who drinks cordials and reads Ronald Firbank. But why travel thousands of miles to teeter on crumbling precipices or cower in blood-drawing brambles to witness masters making magic? Readers of Bright Lights can sit in the safety of their lawn chair, La-Z-boy, or fainting couch and see the world through the jaundiced eyes of its writers. Not only the vastly overrated "real world," but those fanciful "inner worlds" that are often so much more, well, reasonable.

This issue explores a variety of exotic spaces. For the inner Austrian, there's Robert von Dassanowsky's splendid tour of The Sound of Music and the cinematic image of that much-misunderstood country. Bright Lights newbie D. L. Booth eloquently addresses "Lonesome" Leni Riefenstahl's role in inspiring the James Bond title sequences. Fans of more perverse realms can seek out Tanfer Emin-Tunc and Nichole Prescott's dazzling visit to the endlessly evocative Glen or Glenda. Equally strange, and far more irritating it seems, is the gay Jewish doc Trembling with G-d, ruthlessly unmasked by Andrew Grossman.

Those who linger in the Articles Antechamber will be well rewarded. Denmark's "star directors" get the once-over from BL virgin and Scopitone fan Jack Stevenson, who should know. Associate Editor Alan Vanneman gives it good to Spielberg via Catch Me If You Can, and lays into Fred ‘n' Bing at the Holiday Inn. Robert Keser takes us on heady romps through recent "sixties retro" movies and John Sayles' apprenticeship with Roger Corman.

Elsewhere, seekers will find Megan Ratner's finely honed prose in reviews of I Vitelloni and the documentary Stevie. Scott Thill offers a moving tribute to Gregory Peck, as well as reviews of DVDs of The Mouse That Roared and The Animatrix. BL regular Robert Ecksel thoughtfully defends Herzog's Invincible. For camp followers, there's Matt Kennedy's bitch-slapping of Die Mommie Die, while yours truly weighs in with reviews of Madame Satã, queer docs from the 2003 SFILGFF, and — for the SAS (short-attention-span) crowd, which is practically everybody at this point — a selection of brief reviews of movies new and old that, in the great Bright Lights tradition, have nothing to do with each other.

Gary Morris

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Watch for new issues of Bright Lights every three months: August, November, February, and May. To be automatically notified when the next issue is posted, join our mailing list.

Visit the archives for hundreds of other articles, dear.

articles antechamber

Dancing with Werewolves: John Sayles in Roger Corman's Hollywood — It Came from New World Pictures!

Steven Spielberg: A Jew in America — Deconstructing Catch Me If You Can

Too Much Bing, Not Enough Fred — There's not much room at the Holiday Inn

The Wave Breaks: Star Danish Directors Fail to Translate — From the regional to the international and back in a few short years

Up/Down with Retro: Three Recent Hits Retrofit the Sixties — History takes a hike

the empty guest room

"It's customary for the boy to have his father's watch." Gregory Peck, 1916-2003 — Now we really need him

features foyer

An Unclaimed Country: The Austrian Image in American Film and the Sociopolitics of The Sound of Music — On cliche, culture, and locating national identity in Wise's epic musical

Glen or Glenda: Psychiatry, Sexuality, and the Silver Screen — Normalizing "deviant" genders and bodies is just one of many tropes in Wood's complex camp classic

Leni's Body Beautiful: Forty Years of Riefenstahl's Olympic Gaze in the James Bond Title Credits — In the beginning there was Leni, and Leni begat Maurice, who begat the Bond title sequences

palace of the perverts

Trembling Before G-d, or Die Volkschmiere — Who will judge the judges trembling before sex? The atheists!

Angela's Lashes: Charles Busch's Die Mommie Die! — Stage vet Charles Busch does glam for camp movie

Fists and Feathers: Madame Satã Reviewed — Don't mess with Madame

revivals

Knocking on Modernity's Door: Fellini's I Vitelloni — Postwar despair, Italian style

recent film roundabout

His Brother's Keeper: Steve James' Stevie — The ills of this wounded Everyman may be beyond healing

Shalom? Auf Wiedersehen! Werner Herzog's Invincible — "Invincible" Herzog does it again

festivals vestibule

Put the Camera on Us! Documentaries at the 2003 SF International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival — Reality cinema celebrates homos of this year and yesteryear

cornucopia corner

Little Stabs of Happiness (and Horror) — Random Short Reviews of the Worthy and the Worthless in Recent and Old-School Cinema

temple of video

Of Psychotic Environments and Corporate Hallucinations: The Animatrix on DVD — Masters of anime riff on The Matrix in this sizzling collection of nine shorts

Some Bark, No Bite: The Mouse That Roared on DVD — Strangelove gets sweet