May 2009 | Issue 64
Editorial
Articles
by Greg Ford
"Avery's pics confirm an always-lingering suspicion that the many radical plays with movie syntax and the numerous distancing techniques employed in '60s live-action films, of 'New Wave Cinema' extraction, were, in fact, first invented, and used for purely comic effect, in animated cartoons."
by Mark Adnum
"Be aware: there are forces at work here of which we have no knowledge." — Queen Elizabeth 2
Translated and with an introduction by Bert Cardullo
"If French cinema was no longer down in the dumps, so the reasoning went, its palette should duly adorn itself with all the colors of the intellectual rainbow. And this is exactly what happened."
"Nude on the Moon's exploitation is as innocent as the Good Christo-Nudist's reclaiming of a pre-figleafed (albeit non-recreational) Eden."
Hazy thoughts on the transition from real sex to digital hallucinations
"We can't help but roll our eyes at a woman who would rather wear holes in her shoes looking for a 'good honest job' than roll around in money and mink."
Movies
"Toback, to his credit, and despite the empathy he feels toward his subject, doesn't pull his punches."
by Roger McNiven
"Within the confines of the action genres, Dwan is, like Jean Renoir, a classical humanist."
"Avant garde filmmaking has been defined almost entirely in opposition to the Hollywood mainstream."
by Noah Berlatsky
"You can depend on Jason."
Actors
by Gerald Peary
"I told Hitchcock, 'I do miss my horse.'"
"[H]er favorite expression of strained intensity would be less quickly relieved by a merciful death than by Ex-Lax." — James Agee, 1943
by Christopher Sandford
Mason was "equally at home playing small, brooding anti-heroes, camping it up in a toga, or doing a nice line in late career self-parody."
"This is an actress who shows excitement down to the curl of her fingers, and whose face reveals every kind of mercurial change."
"With his impish grin, twinkling eyes, and boyish blond hair, he looks like Tom Sawyer crossed with a Tammany Hall fixer."
Directors
Translated and with an introduction by Bert Cardullo
"In their blend of social satire, wry charm, imaginative physical gags, and ingenious aural as well as visual devices, Jacques Tati's movies have not been surpassed by those of any other postwar cinematic comic — French or otherwise."
by Michaël Abecassis
"This situation requires the filmmakers to be more creative in handling their mostly simple stories, which sometimes are so simple as to seem very modern and minimalistic."
"And then he said, 'It's like a Greek tragedy. The only problem is, I'm the subject.'"
Columns
RunawayBright Sights: Recent DVDs: Hobson's Choice, Murnau, Divorce Iranian Style/Runaway, Poil de Carotte, Celia
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
Festivals
by Frank Bren
One of the world's largest cinema events is also one of the most ambitious
Books
Douglas Fairbanks, by Jeffrey Vance
Fred Astaire, by Joseph Epstein
Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy, ed. Richard Greene and K. Silem Mohammad
Hollywood's Ancient Worlds, by Jeffrey Richards, and Movie Photos, by Alex Bailey
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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