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Bright Lights Film Journal
Issue 54 | November 2006

from the editor

It's a Bright Lights world after all!

We admit it; we're certifiable. We must be, given the scope and size of this issue of Bright Lights. Why couldn't we just leave well enough alone? Just publish a short 'n sweet issue of crowd-pleasing critiques and amiable analysis, as usual? What strange force drove us to bloat this issue into grotesquerie, a 50-Foot Woman of movie magazines?

Perhaps it was those extra helpings of cake we had after watching Marie Antoinette. Or that experimental IV drip of caffeine that landed us in the emergency room. Or our visit — really just a peek in the door — to one of San Francisco's notorious all-night homosexual opium dens. Or it might have been too many visits to the political blogs (including our own) that unhinged us in this especial way.

Whatever the cause — and perhaps it's best if we simply admit our problem and try to live with it — this is indeed a hefty number, combining a bigger-than-usual regular issue with the film noir articles culled from an old Bright Lights print edition devoted to that subject.

Without further ado, let's go to the features foyer. Lesley Chow applies her subtle sensibility to recent black cinema and one of our favorite contemporary auteurs, Tsai Ming-liang. Dave Saunders takes a break from gazing at the Cardiff countryside to write on sex and spirituality in the cinema, while new contributor Dina Kassir turns her fearless gaze on Adorno, Dancer in the Dark, and other subjects.

In the articles antechamber, Robert Castle fondly fetes the Zatoichi movies and Jerry Kutner lovingly limns the Psycho cycle. Three new writers have taken up residence here. John Garry navigates the two Poseidons; Reagan Humber profiles Italian cult movies as seen through the sculpturesque Barbara Steele; and Norman Ball set aside his guitar to pen a brilliant piece on . . . well, you'll see.

More fun awaits in other spaces of La Casa de la Luz Bright, with Gordon Thomas lighting up the pleasures of Joe May's silent Asphalt; Dan Callahan expertly explicating the legend of Louise Brooks; and Tom Sutpen on a scintillating stroll through the Alan Lomax documentary.

Film festivals and interviews get three entries each this time: BL buddy Mark Adnum talked to Camille Paglia with the expected thrilling results. At Cannes, Karin Luisa Badt buttonholed Pedro Almodovar and Penelope Cruz, then nailed the director, writer, and cast of Fast Food Nation. Merci, Karin! Festival coverage this time includes Megan Ratner's savvy survey of the increasingly dubious New York Film Festival, Robert Keser's tantalizing take on the Chicago International, and yours truly pontificating on San Francisco's estimable MadCat Festival. (The latter — well, I — also wax poetic this time on the subject of a 1990s trailer show in Sodom by the Sea.)

Despite its increasing (and seemingly upstoppable) dreariness, recent cinema gets its due in a number of reviews by Alan "Ace" Vanneman, this time hitting The Ant Bully, The Departed, Infamous, and Monster House. Newbie Deirdre Gilfredder gives a Gallic pie-in-the-face to Marie-Antoinette, while Boris Trbic autopsies the fine documentary Workingman's Death. Two other new contributors, Clare O'Farrell and Lowell Goodman, offer different takes on Superman Returns. The ever-more-horrific present makes it easy to turn our eyes backward. This issue features Ian Johnston's nuanced look at Renoir's La Bête Humaine; Tom Sutpen's broad appreciation of Two Lane Blacktop; and Victoria Large's sexy study of The Company of Wolves. Finishing up this issue are Vanneman on the timeless Charlie's Angels and newbie Adam Elkus examining what happens when videogames become movies.

More looking backward (and reader requests) prompted us to exhume BL's film noir issue from 1994. Noted cinematician John Belton drills deep into the tramp trope in the genre. The aforementioned Jerry Kutner exhaustively explores the nature of noir and the timelessness of neo-noir. Dan Barth discusses Faulkner's noir connections, while Anna Domino finds much to love in Naked. Joe McElhaney uses noir laser releases in a smart study of the genre. Yours truly re-inters the corpse with a screed on the country/city motif of noir and a love letter to John Dall's Red Rock West.

Enough said?

Gary Morris

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.

features foyer

Routes to the City: The Ways of the New Black Films — "It's independent thinking without the protection of an ‘indie' label."

Falling Angels, Rising People: A Brief Look at Sex-and-Spirituality in Cinema — Wings not desired

Selma: Or the Absence of God — "It is a face that has ‘glimpsed into the abyss' and never recovered from it."

What Time Now? Catching Up Hours in Tsai Ming-liang — "Despite their loneliness, Tsai's characters often appear to be living in relation to someone else: a stranger who hovers around them."

S P E C I A L

Now online: noir and neo-noir from issue 12 (Spring 1994) of our discontinued print edition

Film Noir's Knights of the Road — "The black sheep of the family, noir's tramps are the tin-age antithesis to Chaplin's golden-age thesis."

Noir Country — Alien nation

Faulkner and Film Noir — Faulkner: "Some good pictures come out of Hollywood. God knows how, but they do."

Beyond the Golden Age: Film Noir Since the 'Fifties — "There is only Noir!"

Mike Leigh's Naked — "Oh, that is excessive"

John Dahl's Red Rock West — "Cage's Michael is a model of the terse, slightly wasted working- class guy who acts as a punching bag for malevolent Fate."

Neo-Noir on Laser: Point Blank, Chinatown, The Long Goodbye — All the colors of darkness

articles antechamber

Capsized: A Tale of Two Poseidons — Society overboard!

Suspicious White Powder: Bad Actors in an Age of Bad Equality — Please dispose of all reality at the back of the theatre

Steele Vision: The Face of Italian Cult Cinema — "Again the camera shows how the imperfection of Asa's face does not present an insurmountable obstacle to her being ultimately attractive."

Who Owns Norman Bates? On Psycho IV, III, II, I, and More — "Look at yourself," she says, "that's not who you are anymore."

Following the Blind Swordsman: The Zatoichi Movies — "He is an itinerant hero, a lone samurai whose mask is his blindness, a mask that hides his many strengths."

cellar of silence

The Sweet Smell of Asphalt: Discovering Joe May's 1929 Masterwork — "Amann's sexuality in Asphalt has little in common with the chilled porcelain passivity of stars like Dietrich and Garbo . . ."

the empty guest room

The Martyrdom of Lulu: Louise Brooks at 100 — "If I ever bore you, it'll be with a knife."

documentary dormer

Cultural Equity: On the Documentary Lomax the Songhunter — "Every smallest branch of the human family at one time or another has carved its dreams out of the rock on which it has lived." (Alan Lomax)

film festival flying buttress

Less Is Less: The 44th New York Film Festival — Past trumps present in this unremarkable fest

Chicago, je t'aime: The 42nd Chicago International Film Festival — "There are things you shouldn't sell"

On the Prowl with MadCat: On the 2006 MadCat International Women's Film Festival — Provocative and visionary!

camp corner

Trailer Trash: Dumpster Diving with Jenni Olson — High camp in three minutes or less

interrogation antechamber

Cruising with Camille: An Interview with Camille Paglia — "Please note that even Margo Channing, threatening a ‘bumpy night' for her hapless guests, merely fumingly forecasts. It's a gesture of mind, not body."

Returning to Life: Talking with Almodovar, Penelope Cruz, and Carmen Maura at Cannes — "I do not have the serenity of women. But I admire it."

What's Wrong with Fast Food? A Conversation with Richard Linklater and Eric Schlosser on Fast Food Nation — With additional comments by Catalina Sandino Moreno and Ethan Hawke

recent cinema roundabout

The Ant Bully: 3-D to the IMAX — When ants got big, and kids got small

The Departed: Crime All the Time — Scorsese gets all Irish on our asses, and it works

Doug McGrath's Infamous: The Best Truman Capote Movie I've Seen All Year! — If you must see only one Truman Capote movie in your life, let it be this one

Hating Marie: Why the French Still Don't Like Her — Bring us the head of Sofia Coppola, 'k?

No Tobacco Juice, but Funny! Monster House, Rockin' in 3-D! — Bob Zemeckis and Stephen Spielberg want your money. Give it to them.

"We Still Have to Work Just as Hard as Before": Michael Glawogger's Workingman's Death — "The tourist says that it's a lot to carry and the worker agrees, then gets on with his work."

O Superman

Superman Returns I: Superheroes for the New Millennium — "This new millennium hero lives in a fortress of solitary and alienated hyper-masculinity."

Superman Returns II: Superman . . . Bush . . . Perry White . . . Karl Rove . . . — It's all here, including the "Mission Accomplished" moment

revival room

Train to Nowhere: On Renoir's La Bête Humaine — "Now it is a world of studio sets and the precise control of the effects of light and shadow."

Hairy on the Inside: Surrealism and Sexual Anxiety in Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves — "If there's a beast in men, it meets its match in women too."

Just Another Guy on the Lost Highway: Revisiting Two-Lane Blacktop — "It's not some metaphorical struggle between two mighty kings of the road. It's more like a self-deceiving ritual carried out by two of its prisoners."

vale of video

From Aaron Spelling's Vault of Horror: Charlie's Angels on DVD! — "I expect to be erect any time now."

Game Over, Curtains Close: The Creative Failure of Videogame Movies — Lost in translation