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Bright Lights Film Journal
Issue 57 | August 2007

from the editor

The unsinkable Bright Lights!

We climbed out of our coffin recently — with help from our strapping new intern, Felipe — to bring you the new issue of Bright Lights. Ours wasn't the only resurrection happening; movie screens are awash in them, from Bruce Willis (Die Harder Goddamn You!) to Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones and the Nursing Home of Doom). Even politicians are getting in on the act, with diaper-clad masochist-senators and criminal attorney generals defying what would normally be career-killing exposures to maintain their death grip on power.

Resurrection is the byword here at Bright Lights, too, with an astounding number of articles this time in some manner returning the dead to life. (Not that we're not always engaged in that activity; inquire about lab tours.)

In the features foyer, new contributor Nicholas de Villiers examines "queer looks" by disinterring, and more or less blinding, the dreaded "male gaze." Skipping to the articles antechamber, we find a veritable Forest Lawn of critiques. BL guest David Ryan exhumes the history behind 300 and shows why all those nitpickers about the film's "inaccuracies" were wrong. Andrew Culbertson gives Jack Nicholson a proper wake. Newbies Guy Crucianelli and Matt Brennan memorialize, respectively, The Night Porter and the connections between Children of Men and Eliot's The Waste Land. Richard Armstrong buries rather than praises those terrible teachers of film criticism. Wrapping up this section, Justin Vicari honors P. J. Harvey and her concert film; and our beloved buddy Dave Saunders scours cinema past and present for "amazing scenes."

A ghostly presence occupies this issue's empty guest room: Irene Dunne, commemorated with élan by Dan Callahan.

Of course, it can't always be about the past and death (even though it always is), and this issue includes several reviews of recent films. Brian Wilson tackles 28 Weeks Later. Ian Johnston wrangles with Tsai Ming-liang's I Don't Want to Sleep Alone and Kaurismaki's Lights in the Dusk. Associate editor Alan Vanneman body-slams the latest Harry Potter, Ocean's 13, and Ratatouille. AV also found time for a smackdown of war criminal-movie star Ronald Reagan and Cattle Queen of Montana.

We love nothing better than a long, hard . . . chat, and this time there are four of them. Karin Badt waylaid Michael Moore, Carlos Reygadas, and Kadri Kousaar at Cannes and made 'em 'fess up on a number of topics. Equally forthcoming was BL fave Paul Verhoeven, shanghai'd by the ever-intrepid Damon Smith.

Speaking of long and hard, as one so often does, we've opened a new room this time: the Parlor of Porn. Therein you'll find Lesley Chow's fine study of Tom Lazarus' voyeur erotica, along with our Brit pal John Minson's heady history of hard-core's backstory with the Mitchell Brothers and the San Francisco counterculture. Porn has its avant-garde aspect, certainly, but there's nothing like the real thing. So the avant-garde atelier contains two entries: Tom Sutpen's mixed take on the work of acclaimed experimentalist Su Friedrich, and Michael Betancourt's informed look at the dubious video art project known as [PAM].

Meanwhile, Gordon Thomas gives the lowdown on a variety of recent classy DVDs that you might otherwise miss; Megan Ratner separates the wheat from the chaff in the Tribeca Film Festival; and yours truly showcases QDoc, Portland's (and the nation's first) queer documentary fest.

Now it's back in the box. Felipe, the guests have arrived. Let the viewing begin!

Gary Morris

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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

Glancing, Staring, Cruising: Queer Ways of Looking — Ecce homo

articles antechamber

Space Here We Come: P. J. Harvey's Please Leave Quietly Redefines the Concert Film DVD — "It flashes before our eyes, and we are not even sure what we have witnessed."

300 Lies? Give Poetics a Chance — What's Greek history without distortions, inaccuracies, and falsehoods?

Amazing Scenes: Pretending to Be Normal — Pause. N-o-o-o-o-t!

Notes on a Scandal: On Film Criticism and Its Teachers — Will the twain ever meet?

Auspicious Beginnings: Nicholson's Leitmotif in Five Easy Pieces — "His characters have tended to be more bewildered by life and disgusted by a world that won't cooperate."

The Panther and the Mouse: A Love Story — "Like the implicit struggle between Salome and Herod, it becomes unclear as to who serves whom."

What a Waste: The Apocalyptic Prophecies of T. S. Eliot and Alfonso Cuarón — "What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow / Out of this stony rubbish?"

parlor of porn

Before The Green Door: The Mitchell Brothers, the Counterculture, and Hard-Core's Beginnings — It came from San Francisco

Secret Window: The Erotic Gaze of Tom Lazarus — "Lazarus doesn't pathologize the locked-in gaze, he lets us feel it."

empty guest room

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: The Elusive Pleasures of Irene Dunne — "You'd never get tired of having her around, because she'd always be someone else for you."

avant-garde atelier

Close to Home: The Films of Su Friedrich on DVD — Autobiography sometimes trumps art in these uneven works

The Valorized Artist: Incorporation into the "Perpetual Art Machine" [PAM] — Art for [PAM]'s sake

recent cinema roundabout

Return of the Return of the Repressed: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's 28 Weeks Later — Look familiar?

Mo' Money! Mo' Money! Mo' Money! J. K. Rowling Just Got Richer — Harry the Fifth comes in third

Butterfly Dream: Tsai Ming-liang's I Don't Want to Sleep Alone — "There's no overt sexuality to Rawang's care for Hsiao Kang. It's a tender act of love, a selfless giving of himself to another. "

Blow the Man Down: Aki Kaurismaki's Lights in the Dusk — "The grafting on of the film's film noir plot has a reductionist minimalism to it, as if Kaurismaki were sketching an archetype . . .

An Infarction to Die For: Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Thirteen — Can a film with George Clooney, Matt Damon, and Brad Pitt be all bad? Yes.

Rat's Eye for the Straight Guy: Disney/Pixar's Ratatouille — Eat first, talk later? If only!

interrogation alcove

Constructive Empathy: Speaking with Kadri Kousaar About Magnus — "People can die without love."

Stay Well, or Else . . .: Michael Moore's Sicko — "What these Americans have could happen to us. And this is frightening."

Silent Light or Absolute Miracle: An Interview with Carlos Reygadas at Cannes 2007 — "I hate the idea that film is actually telling a story!"

Back to Basis: Talking with Paul Verhoeven — On Black Book and his recent Hollywood defection

revival room

Ronald Reagan's Shoot from Hell! Cattle Queen of Montana — Up shit creek without a Pichon Longueville '47

film festival flying buttress

Movin' On Up: The 2007 Tribeca Film Festival — From neighborhood festival to NYC player

Closing the Closet: QDoc: The 2007 Portland Queer Documentary Film Festival — "We couldn't figure out how to divide the cat . . ."

bright sights

Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Romeo, Juliet and Darkness; The Party and the Guests; Woman Is the Future of Man; Sansho the Bailiff; Old Joy; The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg; 20 Fingers; Electric Edwardians — An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases