Bright Lights Film Journal :: August 2008

"There's a whole postmodern hall of mirrors you can wander through with the idea of a digitally re-colored 'final cut' of a 10-year-old 'director's cut' of a 26-year-old movie."

Facism, American Style: Revisiting Kazan and Schulberg's A Face in the Crowd

by Robert Ecksel

"Goodnight, you stupid idiots. Goodnight, you miserable slobs."

Plumbing the Depths of Capitalism: On Force of Evil

by Imogen Sara Smith

"It was like going down to the bottom of the world."

Homeless on the Range: The Lusty Men and the "Great American Search"

by Imogen Sara Smith

"He's always holding something back."

Haneke's Games: On Funny Games (2007, 1997)

by Daniel Hui

"Should we enjoy being manipulated?"

Ghosts of the Present: On Aditya Assarat's Wonderful Town

by Ian Johnston

"The film is both a bittersweet love story and a memorial to the tsunami victims."

Where Do We Find Ourselves? John Cassavetes' Faces Turns 40

by Ara Corbett

"How can one be a maverick independent filmmaker, and be an attentive, loving husband and father?"

A Real Director's Cut: Cassavetes Edits Himself in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

by Jason Mark Scott

"It is the subjective fever dream of a psyche carving fantasy out of reality as he goes."

Actors

George Sanders: A Mitigated Cad

by Dan Callahan

"Where on the screen I am invariably a sonofabitch, in life I am a dear, dear boy."

"The Best Jewish Cowboy": An Interview with James Caan

by Tony Macklin

"Hard times will make a monkey eat red peppers."

Directors

The Kids Are Not All Right: Larry Clark on Wassup Rockers and More

by Damon Smith

"For me it was like, How do I manipulate this kid so he can do this and he's comfortable?, which is all part of directing."

Paradise Betrayed: Talking with Terence Davies about Of Time and the City

by Karin Luisa Badt

"You can't stop time. It stops you."

Object in Mirror May Be Closer Than It Appears: Stuart Gordon Talks about Horror, the Absurd, and Stuck

by Matthew Sorrento

"These two people are stuck in life."

The Mole Man: Going Underground with Alejandro Jodorowsky

by Damien Love

"I think Spielberg is the son from when Walt Disney fucked Minnie Mouse."

Columns

Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: La Roue, The Last Emperor, Lost in Beijing, Popeye the Sailor, Satantango, Vampyr

by Gordon Thomas

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

Little Stabs of Homo Happiness (and Horror): Random Short Reviews of the Worthy and the Worthless in Recent Queer TV and Cinema

by Gary Morris

"The gays — they make too much big crazy!"

Festivals

Getting Better All the Time: The 2008 Tribeca Film Festival

by Megan Ratner

Just lose the red carpet

Books

Harlan Ellison's Watching, by Harlan Ellison

by Matthew Sorrento