November 2009 | Issue 66
Editorial
Articles
An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin "Buck up! Never say die! We'll get along!"
"I don't need other people. I don't need help. I can take care of me."
Danish porn: Between the Sheets
By Jesse Stommel
"We keep returning to this story about pod people because we're terrified of the continuing erosion of our physicality in the postmodern era."
By Jay Rothermel
How a movie exposé of "abuse of power" defends those in power and their institutions
By Rob Faunce
"In both Sodom and Gomorrah and Cruising, homosexuality — and its alternate currents — is caught with a glance."
By Suzanne del Gizzo
Filming The Great Gatsby in the 21st Century
By Barry Wurst II
A tour of Edwards' curious 1988 film, with side trips to variations by James Ivory, John Schlesinger, and others
Movies
By Vlad Dima
"Tarantino thus concedes some of his omnipotence to the medium he so deftly manipulates."
By Lee Weston Sabo
"This is the World War II film confronting its Jungian shadow, acknowledging its darkest impulses and finally purging them."
"His plan mirrors Johnny's, that is, pieces of the plan are known to one person: Johnny and Stanley; and not until the end do we see most of their pieces come into place.""
By Devan Goldstein
"Where Cloverfield provocatively blurs the line between being 'about' 9/11 and being (mere) entertainment, Knowing lands squarely in the latter camp."
By Joan McGettigan
"Dillinger had recently undergone plastic surgery to alter his face and to try to remove his fingerprints. But Public Enemies does not dare to depict that kind of desperation and that determination to survive under any circumstances."
By Jay Rothermel
"Only saviors can save polluted planets, yellow cab drivers are losers . . ."
By Gary Morris
"I told him, 'I'm not gay. My neck was cold.'"
Stars
"Seyrig is capable of stopping an entire film with one decisive physical gesture, one smile, one glare, one sound from her smoky, murmuring voice."
By Christopher Sandford
"Connery, never a martyr to false modesty, remains as voluble and combative as ever."
Directors
"I'm shitting bricks, thinking he's onto me."
"One who knows how to, as they say, 'read' the images, can tell everything about me."
Columns
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
By Howard Mandelbaum
"The problem is other people — crazy people."
Festivals
"An alternative agenda for the festival might be: what can we make of modernism?"
This year's strong, idiosyncratic line-up reminds us that moviegoing can still be more than "a museum experience"
By Gary Morris
Getting out of the ghetto
By Ben Cho
"VIFF remains the unspoiled oasis for cinephiles looking to get away from it all."
Books
By Joseph McBride
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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