We were so excited at the ongoing spectacle of the Bush regime in slow-mo collapse — nothing personal, George, but we've waited so very long for this one — that we almost forgot it's not only everyone's favorite Christian-rattling holiday but also a landmark of our own, the 50th issue of Bright Lights. Sometime we'll document our tortured publishing history as a print and online mag, stretching back, serendipitously, to the year Nixon resigned, 1974.

But not now. Now it's time to get back to the moment (where we live). We've packed this anniversary issue with our trademark Scintillating Prose™. Leading the way are BL's regulars. With his usual panache, Alan "Acid Tongue" Vanneman praises and pans a half-dozen entries this time, including the last Fred & Ginger entry Barkleys of Broadway and the cult TV show Monk, along with recent releases Capote, Domino, Good Morning, and Good Night, and Serenity. Megan Ratner expertly explores the New York Film Festival and finds it in middling, if not exceptional, good health. Robert Keser provocatively probes the always worthy, if not entirely satisfying, Chicago International Film Festival. Richard Armstrong handily highlights the joys of Gillian Armstrong's The Last Days of Chez Nous. Andrew Grossman continues his breathless deep-sea dive into the murky waters of culture via the rape-revenge film, dreamscapes, and many another tributary along the way. Tom Sutpen turns his penetrating "male gaze" on Altman's Nixon drama, Secret Honor, and adds an enchanting entry to the "horror hallway" in the busy Casa de Bright Luz.

We know, we know — there's so much real horror around these days, why devote an entire "hallway" to it? Why not, say, a shelf or a corner? But let's face it — horror is an inexhaustible subject and genre and the reigning mood of all jaded moderns, and we had to have our say on it again. And since this is our magazine, we will. Tom Sutpen's contribution uncovers the singular pleasures of The Innocents, while the rest of the entries in this section come from new writers offering fresh takes on familiar subjects. John C. Turner elegantly exposes surprising resonances in Friedkin's alleged potboiler The Guardian. Stephen Harper commandingly catalogss the complexities of Night of the Living Dead in a very ambitious piece. Erich Kuersten contributes two entrancing articles here, one on Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the remake) and another on the underrated Val Lewton/Jacques Tourneur masterpiece The Leopard Man. The recently released Lewton DVD box inspired us to feature two other related pieces: a reprint of Mark Vieira's acclaimed production history of the major Lewton films; and Rod Heath's exceptional reading of Clouzot's Le Corbeau and, again, The Leopard Man.

Returning as we must to the now (our favorite locale of late), we offer Ian Johnston's stimulating survey of The Wayward Cloud; Lesley Chow's rich reading of Bewitched; Dan Callahan's sensitive scrutinizing of Forty Shades of Blue; and recent recruit Page Laws' ardent attack on Proof. More fun awaits from Karin Badt, who delightfully skewers the pomp that is Cannes and chats about Caché with Michael Haneke. Boris Trbic cleverly gets the dish on Dumplings from HK auteur Fruit Chan.

Of course, we can only resist the charms of the past for so long. Thus Dan Callahan takes us back again to Old Hollywood with a thoughtful paean to hunky Joel McCrea; Matt Kennedy kindly does his own salvage job on Boudu; and Bert Cardullo lets Satyajit Ray talk about his work in depth in a splendid interview from 1989. Newbie Anya Meksin discovers fascinating, hitherto unnoticed connections between Frederick Wiseman and "Lonesome" Leni Riefenstahl, while Gordon Thomas reaches back even further with a vibrant valentine to early Hollywood casualty Olive Thomas.

There are no "little stabs" from yours truly this time; we were too happily focused on the creeping collapse of you-know-who and you-know-what to stab anything. But we'll try to pick up the knife again next issue.