Now when we rest an easier teeny-weeny piece in our aerie due to the mysterious development that it can indicate that a certain president-king will be overthrown they come in November, this is the time to relax with a foam bath, the substance controlled of his option, and the new High Lights...2

OK, so that new intern we hired doesn't have the firmest grasp of English. He had other, more important charms. But perhaps we'll send him to China, to join the hapless student translators who produced the strange subtitles on a bootleg DVD of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, wittily profiled by Bright Lights (excuse me, High Lights) newbie Naeem Mohaiemen. Naeem isn't the only new face in the cobwebbed corridors of Castle Bright Lights. There's also Edward D. Miller, who cogently inquires, "Who's the real monster in Monster?" Meanwhile, Alan Jacobson joins the pack to raise a royal stink about the lack of appreciative audiences for Looney Tunes: Back in Action and Down with Love. Finally, Bert Cardullo, who published a book of interviews with legendary film critic Stanley Kauffmann, came up with an unpublished one for Bright Lights. Kauffmann's in fine form in his mid-eighties. Bienvenidos, guys!

BL associate editor and Waldo Lydecker double Alan Vanneman continues his massive study (at this point on par with La Comedie Humaine) of Fred Astaire movies, this time taking on the oddly noirish Astaire vehicle The Sky's the Limit. Also under the Vannemanscope are Mona Lisa Smile starring Her Toothiness, and Bonnie and Clyde, done to the nines in this ambitious piece. Also on hand with two exciting articles is BL stalwart Andrew Grossman. In the mega-meta "What We Talk About When We Talk About Ho Meng-Hua," he takes the Socratic dialogue to new heights. Andrew also thoughtfully skewers some queer and queer-tinged cinema of today and yesterday in "Twelve-Tone Cinema: A Scattershot Notebook on Sexual Atonality."

BL regular Megan Ratner offers quietly powerful readings of Olmi's Il Posto, recently released on a Criterion DVD, and Nathaniel Kahn's acclaimed documentary about his famous father Louis, My Architect. The unkillable James Bond returns yet again to these pages courtesy of perennial BL-er Bob Castle, who cleverly relocates On Her Majesty's Secret Service at the top of the 007 heap, rather than its accustomed place at the bottom. Frequent contributor Jack Stevenson, who knows everything about Scopitones and Dogme, authoritatively examines the case for and against Lars von Trier as pornographer. The verdict? Read the article. Beloved comrade Scott Thill, deviser of the fantastic Morphizm zine, was apparently in a geographical frame of mind this time. In a fine piece on Return of the King, he explains why you can't go home again if the home is in Middle Earth; and he pays tribute to William Gibson via the new DVD about the "new romancer," No Maps for These Territories.

Novelty-starved readers (you know who you are) will cheer a new section created by BL champ Robert Keser. It's "Distribute This!", a look at various worthy but little-known films in danger of dissolving into the festival circuit and then oblivion. This issue Bob looks at a recent Mexican film, the fabulous, Jodorowsky-esque (we mean that in the good sense) Vera. Pray to whatever idol is nearby that this one will surface.

And yours truly weighs in with a review of Peter Sehr's Kaspar Hauser, eternally, and we think unfairly, eclipsed by Herzog's version of the same sad story; and a slew of brief reviews of curious films that are all over the cinema map.

Now party!