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writers gone wild!
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Bright Lights Film Journal
Issue 50 | November 2005

from the editor

Bring us the head of Dubya — I mean, happy anniversary to us!

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.

Gary Morris

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Visit the archives for hundreds of other articles, dear.

horror hallway

There's Nothing You Can Do: Notes on William Friedkin's The Guardian — We have met the enemy and he is us

Night of the Living Dead: Reappraising an Undead Classic — Romero's canonical work remains timely decades later

An Unsawed Woman: Re-exhuming The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Remake — How Jessica Biel's Moral Hotness Tamed the West

Darkness, Darkness: The Films of Val Lewton: Looking Back at a B-Movie Master — Lewton's struggles to make magic had their own horrors

"What It Takes to Make a Softie": Breaking Noir Tradition in The Leopard Man — "Lewton's deep faith in humanity quietly waits for the smoke to settle so it can step in and start patching up the wounds."

Les Fleurs du Mal: The Leopard Man and Le Corbeau: Tourneur and Clouzot Deliver Homefront Perversity, Paranoia, and Subversion — "Nothing is so transient as sanity and safety . . ."

Far from the Madding Multiplex: The Subtle Horror of The Innocents — This ghost story's charms are far from ephemeral

features foyer

Against Pleasure, Against Identification: Feminism, Cultural Atheism, and the Tragic Subject (Part Two) — "The more a man dreams, the less he believes." — H. L. Mencken

articles antechamber

Beautiful Dead Girl: The Olive Thomas Collection on DVD — "She's got the eyes of a great one, putting over something incalculable . . ."

The Barkleys of Broadway: Fred & Ginger's Last Dance: Ten Pounds Shy of a Gem?— "You'd be hard to replace"? Damn near impossible!

Riefenstahl's Heights and Wiseman's Follies: Allegories of Flesh in Olympia and Titicut Follies — The body beautiful meets the body besieged

To Dance Without Warning: Reliving The Last Days of Chez Nous — You can go home again

The Nixon of Our Dreams? On Robert Altman's Secret Honor — We loved him, we loved him not

interrogation alcove

Revisiting Satyajit Ray: An Interview with a Cinema Master — "Everybody has access to me, anyone who wants to see me. . ."

The Immortality Blues: Talking with Fruit Chan About Dumplings — And other tasty subjects

Family Is Hell and So Is the World: Talking to Michael Haneke at Cannes 2005 — "All of us have these hidden moments in our lives . . ."

recent cinema roundabout

Bennett Miller's Capote: Flatter Than Kansas, and Almost as Boring — Life is earnest, sure, but why does art have to be?

Witchcraft Through the Ages: The Best of the New Bewitched — "Where do alchemy and acting meet?"

Tony Scott's Domino: Too Dumb to Write About? Not Entirely! — "Strong violence, pervasive language, sexual content/nudity and drug use"

Talking About the Space Between Us All: On Forty Shades of Blue — Ira Sachs' sophomore feature is charged with emotion

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Clooney defeats McCarthy! — Rosemary's nephew clocks dairy state demagogue in Good Night, And Good Luck

Proof or Consequences: Miscast Mathematicians in Love — Paltrow Sees Dead (Crazy) People

In a Galaxy Far, Far Away — But Not Far Enough: Joss Whedon's Serenity: Like TV, but Without All the Intelligence — Sayin' ain't doin', motherfucker!

How Sweet to Be a Cloud? Fancy and Fucking Collide in Tsai-Ming Liang's Latest — Tsai pushes the art/porn envelope — or does he?

film festivals flying buttress

The Unbearable Lightness of Cannes 2005: Diversions and Disappointments — At least the parties were fun

The Global Gaze: The 43rd New York Film Festival — Much to admire, little to love

I Am a Film Addict: The 41th Chicago International Film Festival — What the devil did they show?

the empty guest room

Golden Boy: The Sexy Ways of Joel McCrea — "Easy to overlook but endlessly rewarding to look over"

the vale of video

Renoir on the Seine: Boudu Saved from Drowning on DVD — Criterion's Renoir-fest continues with this classic

Mr. Monk's Moods: Tony Shalhoub Returns as the Prince of the Obsessive-Compulsives in Season Three of Monk on DVD — Funny, yes, but where are all the queers?