November 2006 | Issue 54
Editorial
Articles
By Lesley Chow
"It's independent thinking without the protection of an 'indie' label."
By Dina Kassir
"It is a face that has 'glimpsed into the abyss' and never recovered from it."
By John P. Garry III
Society overboard!
By Norman Ball
Please dispose of all reality at the back of the theatre
By C. Jerry Kutner
"Look at yourself," she says, "that's not who you are anymore."
By Robert Castle
"He is an itinerant hero, a lone samurai whose mask is his blindness, a mask that hides his many strengths."
By Gordon Thomas
"Amann's sexuality in Asphalt has little in common with the chilled porcelain passivity of stars like Dietrich and Garbo . . ."
By Tom Sutpen
"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)
By Gary Morris
High camp in three minutes or less
By Mark Adnum
"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."
By Karin Luisa Badt
"I do not have the serenity of women. But I admire it."
By Karin Luisa Badt
With additional comments by Catalina Sandino Moreno and Ethan Hawke
By Ian Johnston
"Now it is a world of studio sets and the precise control of the effects of light and shadow."
By Tom Sutpen
"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."
SPECIAL ISSUE: Bright Lights’ Noir issue (#12, spring 1994)

from our discontinued print edition
By John Belton
"The black sheep of the family, noir's tramps are the tin-age antithesis to Chaplin's golden-age thesis."
By Gary Morris
Alien nation
By Daniel Barth
Faulkner: "Some good pictures come out of Hollywood. God knows how, but they do."
By C. Jerry Kutner
"There is only Noir!"
By Anna Domino
"Oh, that is excessive"
By Gary Morris
"Cage's Michael is a model of the terse, slightly wasted working- class guy who acts as a punching bag for malevolent Fate."
By Joe McElhaney
All the colors of darkness
Movies
By Alan Vanneman
When ants got big, and kids got small
By Alan Vanneman
Scorsese gets all Irish on our asses, and it works
By Alan Vanneman
If you must see only one Truman Capote movie in your life, let it be this one
By Deirdre Gilfedder
Bring us the head of Sofia Coppola, 'k?
By Alan Vanneman
Bob Zemeckis and Stephen Spielberg want your money. Give it to them.
By Boris Trbic
"The tourist says that it's a lot to carry and the worker agrees, then gets on with his work."
By Clare O'Farrell
"This new millennium hero lives in a fortress of solitary and alienated hyper-masculinity."
By Lowell Goodman
It's all here, including the "Mission Accomplished" moment
By Victoria Large
"If there's a beast in men, it meets its match in women too."
By Alan Vanneman
"I expect to be erect any time now."
Stars
By Reagan Humber
"Again the camera shows how the imperfection of Asa's face does not present an insurmountable obstacle to her being ultimately attractive."
By Dan Callahan
"If I ever bore you, it'll be with a knife."
Directors
By Lesley Chow
"Despite their loneliness, Tsai's characters often appear to be living in relation to someone else: a stranger who hovers around them."
Festivals
By Megan Ratner
Past trumps present in this unremarkable fest
By Robert Keser
"There are things you shouldn't sell"
Recent Posts

The Yes MenAn excerpt with the wildly gymnastic "big-mouth" comic Joe E. Brown, from the film whose name inspired this magazine.

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Gordon Thomas, and other BL staff, check out the eye- popping pleasures of Blu-Ray.

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BL Associate Editor Alan Vanneman and others watch (and review) television shows so you don't have to. Click if you dare.

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I'm sick of movies, Mr. Webmaster. Take me away!

» Archive.org
Gazillions of free books, audio, and video. Grab 'em before the copyright police come knocking!

» Glenn Greenwald
The indomitable civil liberties champion takes exception to American exceptionalism. You will too when you read his blistering analyses.

» Project Gutenberg
See Archive.org.

» Creative Commons
"All Creative Commons licenses have many important features in common. Every license helps creators retain copyright while allowing others to copy, distribute, and make some uses of their work — at least non-commercially."

» The Ivy Compton-Burnett home page
A Bright Lights side project created by George Brown devoted to the greatest novelist of the 20th century. There, we said it.

» Raw Vision
The leading online site (and print publication) devoted to those zany untrained artists who channel personality quirks, neuroses, idées fixes, and downright craziness into Art.

» Siklink.com
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» Clark Ashton Smith
The premier fantasy poet and short-story writer (and sculptor and artist) gets a detailed blog that's a model for intelligent fan-ism. Watch out for falling curmudgeons in the forum.

» Classic Arcade Games
Miss Asteroids? Centipede? Frogger? Miss that you missed them? Here's your chance to enjoy the state of the art circa 1980s.

» Jack Vance
Wikipedia's gateway to our favorite writer in and of science fiction and fantasy. A national treasure.

» Electronic Frontier Foundation
"EFF fights for freedom primarily in the courts, bringing and defending lawsuits even when that means taking on the US government or large corporations." Go EFF!

» The Canonical List of Weird Band Names: The Peculiar and the Profane
Another Bright Lights side project from the inimitable George Brown. You probably know the Meat Puppets but how about Lyin' Bitch and the Restraining Orders?

» James Purdy
A good introduction to a criminally neglected postwar literary master. Be 21 or be gone for his gorgeous, harrowing works, kids.

» The Radical Ant Farm
This page answers that nagging question: "What's up with the Russian criminal tattoos?" The rest of the site offers further fun.

» Spectro-Pop
Monumental site devoted to '60s pop music – you know, that stuff playing in the background during the orgy.

» The Left Business Observer
Doug Henwood's long-running economics newsletter, called "invaluable" by Noam Chomsky. Need we say more?

» Jane Bowles
Go to Wikipedia and improve this "stub" on the writer Tennessee Williams looked up to and James Purdy called "the eagle-woman of American letters."

» WFMU
The best online radio station for our money. A deep archive and no-music-turned-away policy will keep you rollin' and tumblin' till the apocalypse.

» Henry Green
Must we create a detailed tribute page to this extraordinary British novelist championed by Auden, Updike, and Terry Southern? Or will you do it? Start with Concluding (1948).

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» Essential Vermeer
Everything you need to know about the Dutch master of light and mysterious figures.

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