actor profiles
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book reviews
director profiles
documentaries
experimental &
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film noir
film reviews
gay & lesbian
hong kong films
horror
interviews
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Actor Profiles
in issue 66
Delphine Seyrig: The Eternal Return
"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 Dan Callahan
Sean Connery: A "Natural Thrust"
"Connery, never a martyr to false modesty, remains as voluble and combative as ever."
By Christopher Sandford
in issue 65
John Barrymore: Sweet Prince of Irony
"Isn't it extraordinary that the most popular character ever written should apparently be defeated by life instead of transcending it?" — John Barrymore on Hamlet
By Dan Callahan
Steve McQueen: Fifty Years of the King of Cool
"Steve understood real people, particularly misfits, like nobody else. It was just the Hollywood brass he loathed."
By Christopher Sandford
in issue 64
Ida Lupino: Demon Mother Night — "[H]er favorite expression of strained intensity would be less quickly relieved by a merciful death than by Ex-Lax." — James Agee, 1943
By Dan Callahan
James Mason: Odd Man Out — 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."
By Christopher Sandford
The Goddess in Her Element: Ruan Lingyu in Shanghai —
"This is an actress who shows excitement down to the curl of her fingers, and whose face reveals every kind of mercurial change."
By Lesley Chow
Lee Tracy: "A Manic, Scalding Passion for Success" — "With his impish grin, twinkling eyes, and boyish blond hair, he looks like Tom Sawyer crossed with a Tammany Hall fixer."
By Imogen Sara Smith
Books: Douglas Fairbanks, by Jeffrey Vance
By Gordon Thomas
in issue 63
Robert Ryan: A Moon for the Misbegotten — "I have been in films pretty well everything I am dedicated to fighting against."
By Dan Callahan
in issue 62
Norma Shearer: The Primrose Path to MGM Stock — "She hovered somewhere between the realest of realities and the most blatant of impersonations." — F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Crazy Sunday," 1932
By Dan Callahan
Dana Andrews: The Forties Hero and His Shadow — "It's not difficult for me to hide emotion, since I've always hidden it in my personal life." — Dana Andrews
By Imogen Sara Smith
Japanese Cinema's Uncommon Man: Tatsuya Nakadai's Dissidents, Outcasts, and Shadow Warriors — "Like Hollywood's new postwar men, he offered a multifaceted, ambivalent masculinity far from monolithic wartime ideals."
By Imogen Sara Smith
in issue 61
George Sanders: A Mitigated
Cad — "Where on the screen I am invariably a sonofabitch, in life I am a dear, dear boy."
By Dan Callahan
"The Best Jewish Cowboy": An Interview with James Caan — "Hard times will make a monkey eat red peppers."
By Tony Macklin
in issue 60
Fatal Instincts: The Dangerous
Pout of Gloria Grahame — "I'm a girl who loves to be manhandled! After all, what are a few contusions or abrasions if you get the man you love?" — Gloria Grahame, 1953
By Dan Callahan
Birds Do It, Bees Do It: Isabella Rossellini Talks About Bug Sex,
Human Sex, and Green Porno — "A laugh and information!"
By Felix von Boehm and Alexia Berkowicz
in issue 59
Naomi Watts: Cinema's Postmodern Mother of Mirrors — "We're home free in the new mediated womb of the Naomi persona — which is to say, trapped, by our own desire."
By Erich Kuersten
Nuts to the Squirrels and Roués Redeemed: The Discreet Charm of Charles Boyer — "In Boyer, self-belief and theatrical technique are seamlessly fused together."
By Dan Callahan
Ode to Lili: And Leslie Caron — "This MGM movie is studio-system filmmaking at its most protective, and it's designed entirely to showcase Leslie Caron . . ."
By Dan Callahan
On the Walkabout: Remembering Heath Ledger (1979-2008) — "Wasn't he just there, standing right in front of us?"
By Justin Vicari
in issue 58
Colleen Moore Comes Back: On the Rediscovered, Restored 1927 Rarity Her Wild Oat — "Go sit on a flagpole!"
By Robert Keser
Bergman vs. Bergman: Ingrid Dearest in Ingmar's Autumn Sonata — "Ingmar can't fully follow his own gloomy party line as he stares at this simple, oblivious, wondrous creature."
By Dan Callahan
in issue 57
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."
By Dan Callahan
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."
By Andrew Culbertson
in issue 56
Uneasy Living: The Insecure
Charm of Jean Arthur — "Funny, tender, a little neurotic, a little erotic, and always spontaneous . . ."
By Dan Callahan
Extinguishing Features:
The Last Years of Richard Pryor — A genius self-destructs, with a little help from Hollywood
By Julian Upton
in issue 55
The Reckless Art of Erich von Stroheim: Part One: The Pinnacle —
"Like every other skilled fabulist on earth there would forever be a part
of Stroheim that truly believed his own fantasies."
By Tom Sutpen
Beauties and Furies: Hong Kong's New Wave of Women Stars — "The women of To's world are not just endearingly kooky, but often unacceptably bizarre and amoral in their excited reactions to events."
By Lesley Chow
Janet Gaynor — If she was forced, like so many actors, to live a closeted life, she at least did it as much on her own terms as she could in those tricky times.
By Gary Morris
in issue 54
The Martyrdom of Lulu: Louise Brooks at 100 — "If I ever bore you, it'll be with a knife."
By Dan Callahan
in issue 53
Mish-Mash Planet: The Cult of Rita Hayworth in You Were Never Lovelier — "Speaking of impurity: what was Rita Hayworth's image supposed to be in the '40s?"
By Dan Callahan
A Frontline Guy — An Interview with Burt Young — "Get Burt!"
By Damien Love
in issue 52
Kay Francis, Secrets of an Actress: New Books Reveal the "Wavishing" Star — "I'm not a star, I'm a woman, and I want to get fucked!"
By Dan Callahan
Game On: The Gold Diggers of Heartbreakers — The screwball comedy's back, and Weaver's got it
By Lesley Chow
Mystique Without Camp: The Allure of the Leading Man — Turning "the male gaze" on men
By Lesley Chow
in issue 51
Blossom in the Dust: Lillian Gish, The Wind, and Mr. Griffith —
"I was never young, and if you were never young, how can you ever feel old?"
By Gary Morris
Brigitte Lin — Sexual ambiguity is one of the hallmarks of Hong Kong cinema's golden age, and no one did it better than Lin Ching-Hsia, aka Brigitte Lin
By Gary Morris
in issue 50
Golden
Boy: The Sexy Ways of Joel McCrea — "Easy to overlook but endlessly rewarding
to look over"
By Dan Callahan
Beautiful
Dead Girl: The Olive Thomas Collection on DVD — "She's got the eyes of a
great one, putting over something incalculable . . ."
By Gordon Thomas
in issue 49
Margaret Sullavan and the Art of Dying — "Now . . . here comes the paradox."
By Dan Callahan
Angela Mao — The "deadly China doll" widely viewed, during her heyday in the early 1970s, as the female Bruce Lee
By Gary Morris
in issue 48
Hooker with a Heart of Darkness:
Jane Fonda in Klute — Bree Daniels trumps all Fonda's real-life
characters
By Dan Callahan
in issue 47
"Plant Your Feet and Tell the Truth": An Interview with Clint Eastwood — On Million Dollar Baby and a million-dollar career
By Tony Macklin
Esther Williams — The only actress who ever built a movie career on swimming
By Gary Morris
in issue 45
The Ballad of Stella Stevens: An Interview — In which Stella tells all — or at least most
By Tony Macklin
in issue 42
The Trouble with the Governator — The ascension of Arnold — salvation, apocalypse, or trigger for a resurgent left?
By Ben Dickenson
Katrin Cartlidge: A Tribute — Her brilliant career
By Julian Upton
Wheeler & Woolsey Queered —
The downright peculiar pleasures of pre-Code Wheeler & Woolsey
By David Boxwell
in issue 41
"It's customary for the boy to have his father's watch." Gregory Peck 1916-2003 — Now we really need him
By Scott Thill
in issue 40
Desperately Seeking Ginger — Hollywood Rhythms, Vol. 2 on DVD offers relief for the Ginger-deprived
By Alan Vanneman
Unintentional Camp and the Image of Will Smith — Camp — and coded queerness — finds a surprisingly happy home in the films in Will
Smith
By Seth Nesenholtz
"Fabulous Gowns but No Pussy!" An Interview with Holly Woodlawn — A superstar talks Trash and papayas
By Gary Morris
in issue 35
Bardot on DVD Offers Vintage Titillation — "See that girl? Her ass is a song."
By Alan Vanneman
in issue 34
Divine — The life of the Pink Flamingos star, as told by his mother in My Son Divine
By Matthew Kennedy
in issue 33
Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes — Livin’ large with the Hung One
By Gary Morris
in issue 32
Manhattan to America: Drop Dead! —
The New Yorker takes a slap at Julia Roberts
By Alan Vanneman
in issue 31
An Evening with Jackie Chan — Jackie spills his guts — verbally, this time. A 1993 interview from the Bright Lights archives.
By Dr. Craig Reid
in issue 30
Tokuko Nagai Takagi (1891 – 1919), Japan's first film actress — This forgotten star was caught up — and perhaps crushed — by larger historical forces
By Aaron M. Cohen
in issue 29
Sex: The Annabel Chong Story — Liberated porn queen or psychological wreck? You be the judge
By Gary Morris
in issue 28
Louise Hassing — Dogme secrets revealed by Lars von Trier's "most promising actress"
By Eric Schlosser
in issue 27
A Gallery of Pre-Code Women — Marlene Dietrich, Clara Bow, Tallulah Bankhead, Virginia Bruce, Billie Dove, Marion Davies, and Norma Shearer
By Gary Morris
in issue 26
Jean Arthur — John Oller's Jean Arthur: The Actress Nobody Knew is a surprisingly detailed, highly readable account of a complex woman whose integrity and perfectionism — and sometimes pettiness and even arrogance — both fueled her work and undermined it at almost every turn.
By Gary Morris
in issue 24
Sylvia Miles — In an interview, Sylvia Miles discusses her Oscar-nominated performance in Midnight Cowboy, her peerless rendering of a washed-up B-movie star in Paul Morrissey's Heat, and dumping a plate of spaghetti on critic John Simon's head after a particularly nasty review.
By Gary Morris
Pillow Talk
Are Rock and Doris Hollywood's strangest romantic team? How about Rock and Tony Randall?
By Alan Vanneman
in issue 23
Harvey Keitel — By many accounts one of the most generous, inspiring actors on the set, he's also frequently portrayed as an impossible perfectionist who lashes out at what he sees as the imperfections of others.
By Gary Morris
in issue 22
Joe Dallesandro —
Working-class Joe, a product of New York's foster homes and reform schools, was unique among Andy Warhol's menagerie of pathologically self-deluded, speed-talking "superstars." If most of them made up in personality what they lacked in looks or humanity, Joe was just the opposite — a sweet, shy, deliriously sexy cipher whose unflappable calm provided its own kind of campy counterpoint to Warhol's shrieking harridans and maniacal drag queens.
By Gary Morris
in issue 19
Joan Crawford — During an astonishing fifty-year career, Joan Crawford kept her name blazing in letters of fire. You could dislike her, but you could not ignore her. She was simply too big to be overlooked. Everything about her was oversize: her eyes, brows, mouth, jawline, shoulders, and of course, her gestures.
By Howard Mandelbaum
in issue 18
Bette Davis —
Millions of moviegoers responded to the challenge of her headstrong, neurotic heroines who, like Frankenstein's monster, were made of mismatched parts and bolts of electricity. Her cluster of quirks attracted as they repelled.
By Howard Mandelbaum
in issue 17
Laurel and Hardy — Three articles: Stealing the Clown's Clothes looks at Laurel's relationship with Chaplin; Eternal Child examines Laurel's roots in in the classic commedia dell'arte; Ollie's Somersault shows Ollie doing the impossible for his pal.
By Romano Giachetti, Gian Piero Brunetta, Osvaldo Soriano
in issue 16
Carmen Miranda — The "lady in the tutti-fruitti hat" brought to American wartime audiences an extravagantly seductive surface: the exoticism of her native country, a sensuality tempered by caricature, and outlandish costumes and fruit-laden "hats" that have an unsuspected origin in the black slums of Brazil.
By Gary Morris
Norma Shearer — Shearer's poise, intelligence, her seemingly easy laughter, and sense of high style masked a deep insecurity and a tendency
toward depression. Her face in fact often has a hard, masklike quality; her smile seems chiseled, unbreakable — the body armor of self-creation.
By Gary Morris
Jean Seberg — Jean Seberg was always more icon than actress. From her disastrous appearance as the title character in Preminger's Saint Joan, to Godard's immortalizing of her face in Breathless, to her status as fashion maven in the 1960s, to her extracurricular work with the Black Panthers, Seberg's acting career seemed secondary to her cultural presence from the beginning.
By Gary Morris
Asta Nielsen — Asta Nielsen, the Danish silent movie actress who is often called "the first great international star," made 74 films between 1910 and 1932. Garbo herself acknowledged the woman who co-starred with her in The Joyless Street, saying "she taught me everything I know."
By Gary Morris
in issue 15
Lon Chaney, Sr. — With his lacerations, deformities,
faux stump legs, and shaved head, Chaney was the original Modern Primitive. He made
his first films in the mid-1910s, and by 1920 was already creating roles that required him to be armless, legless, crippled, or otherwise deformed.
By Gary Morris
