February 2008 | Issue 59
Editorial
Gary Morris
Articles
By Andrew Grossman
"Defenseless against music, I must submit to its despotism and, depending on its whim, be god or garbage." — E. M. Cioran
By Lesley Chow
"She is both sentimental and shameless."
By D. J. M. Saunders
But about this audit
By Amy Abugo Ongiri
"How you gonna keep um' down on the farm after they seen all this?" — voiceover from the trailer for the 1972 sexploitation film Sassy Sue
By Alan Jacobson
"You only need one leg to get around. Sure helps to have two."
By G. S. Morris
A kinder, gentler condescension
By Andrew Schenker
"A basic consistency on the actor's part remains uniquely convincing as character, no matter how simplistic that character's definition."
Movies
By Megan Ratner
Unsettling and unmissable
By Neil Rogachevsky
"We are asked to think morally: is the happiness these characters seek possible or desirable?"
By Erich Kuersten
"He's old enough to be my dad!"
By David L. Pike
"Neville remains wholly oblivious, falling into each trap the ferals set . . ."
By Alan Jacobson
"Real things happening to real people"
By Gary Morris
"You never could make a decent living . . . you never did mount me proper."
By Dan Callahan
"This MGM movie is studio-system filmmaking at its most protective, and it's designed entirely to showcase Leslie Caron . . ."
Stars
By Justin Vicari
"Wasn't he just there, standing right in front of us?"
By Erich Kuersten
"We're home free in the new mediated womb of the Naomi persona — which is to say, trapped, by our own desire."
By Dan Callahan
"In Boyer, self-belief and theatrical technique are seamlessly fused together."
Directors
By Gordon Thomas
"Watkins' filmmaking bravely seeks an insistence on personal truth — his own and the viewer's."
By Joseph Aisenberg
Paging crackle, energy, and wit. Come in, please.
By Damon Smith
"My whole thing, all my life, was march to your own drummer."
Columns
By Gordon Thomas
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
Festivals
By Cleo Cacoulidis
"Each work limns a moral dilemma that has no discernible answer."
By Robert Keser
"We will see whose heart is sharpest!"
Recent Posts

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

Watch on Youtube »

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

» Monsoon Wedding (Mira Nair)
» The General (Keaton)
» Sunrise (Murnau)
» 8-1/2 (Fellini)
» Playtime (Tati)
» Winstanley (Brownlow & Mollo)
» Permissive (Shonteff)
» Lola Montes (Ophuls)
» My Childhood, My Ain Folk ... (Bill Douglas)
» In the Realm of the Senses (Oshima)
» Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Disney)
» Repulsion (Polanski)
» Institute Benjamenta (Brothers Quay)
» Everlasting Moments (Troell)

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

» 30 Rock
» Batman: The Animated Series
» Broadway Theatre Archive
» Charlie’s Angels
» Cowboy Bebop
» Death of a Salesman
» Dollhouse
» Freaks and Geeks
» Have Gun Will Travel
» Mad Men
» Magnum P.I.
» Monk
» Pamela Anderson Roast
» Renegade
» Sex and the City

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
An endlessly fascinating clearinghouse for "the greatest hand-picked collection of bizarre, strange and unusual websites on the internet today." Highlights include the enchanting "Prison Bitch Name Generator" and "Life Gem" – how to "turn your deceased loved one into a diamond."

» 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).

» Women of Surrealism
They weren't all "muses" and maids – these women equaled or surpassed their more celebrated male counterparts in vision and technique.

» Ronald Firbank
He called the president of Haiti "a perfect dear" and was known to eat a single pea at dinner. Oh, and he ranks with Joyce and Woolf (see Edmund Wilson) as a groundbreaking literary modernist.

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

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