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Bright Sights: Recent DVDs — A look at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

Little Stabs of Happiness (and Horror) — Random short reviews of the worthy and worthless in recent and old-school cinema

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Roman Polanski:
What's on Trial?

from the editor

Keep watching the lights . . .

Articles

Roman Polanski: What's on Trial?
By Karin Luisa Badt

Looking at Charlie: Modern Times
An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin
"Buck up! Never say die! We’ll get along!"
By Alan Vanneman

Past Sunset: Noir in the West
"I don't need other people. I don't need help. I can take care of me."
By Imogen Sara Smith

On the Escarpment, Off the Escarpment: It Helps When the Love Is Strong
Especially when the lovers aren't
By D. J. M. Saunders

Porno to the People: The Danish Revolution That Liberated America
"Tease was out, honesty was in."
By Jack Stevenson

The Dead Things We Already Are: Pod People, Body Snatching, and the Horrors of Business as Usual
"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 Jesse Stommel

The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover: Larry Cohen's The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover
How a movie exposé of "abuse of power" defends those in power and their institutions
By Jay Rothermel

Contagious Homosexuality: Cruising and Sodom and Gomorrah
"In both Sodom and Gomorrah and Cruising, homosexuality — and its alternate currents — is caught with a glance."
By Rob Faunce

Can't Repeat the Past? Of Course You Can't — and Shouldn't
Filming The Great Gatsby in the 21st Century
By Suzanne del Gizzo

Blake Edwards vs. Hollywood: Sunset and the Myth of Hollywood's Golden Age
A tour of Edwards' curious 1988 film, with side trips to variations by James Ivory, John Schlesinger, and others
By Barry Wurst II

Actors

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

Directors

Just Say Oui: An Interview with the Yes Men
"I'm shitting bricks, thinking he's onto me."
By Damon Smith

Film and Film and Film: An Interview with Jonas Mekas
"One who knows how to, as they say, 'read' the images, can tell everything about me."
By Jon Lanthier

- - - - - -
Issue 66 | November 2009
Next issue: February 2010
www.brightlightsfilm.com
Online since 1996

Movies

Film Kills: Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds 1
"Tarantino thus concedes some of his omnipotence to the medium he so deftly manipulates."
By Vlad Dima

"Do You Find Me Sadistic?" Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds 2
"This is the World War II film confronting its Jungian shadow, acknowledging its darkest impulses and finally purging them."
By Lee Weston Sabo

Of Perfect Plans and Acts of Creation: Stanley Kubrick's The Killing
"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 Robert Castle

Critical Distance: What Knowing Knows About 9/11
"Where Cloverfield provocatively blurs the line between being 'about' 9/11 and being (mere) entertainment, Knowing lands squarely in the latter camp."
By Devan Goldstein

Playing It Safe with John Dillinger: Michael Mann's Public Enemies
"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 Joan McGettigan

"They Come in Peace": Andy Fickman's Race to Witch Mountain
"Only saviors can save polluted planets, yellow cab drivers are losers . . ."
By Jay Rothermel

Far from Elementary: Debra Chasnoff's Straightlaced: How Gender's Got Us All Tied Up
"I told him, 'I'm not gay. My neck was cold.'"
By Gary Morris

Festivals

After the Surge: The 2009 Melbourne International Film Festival
"An alternative agenda for the festival might be: what can we make of modernism?"
By Lesley Chow

Bucking the Tide: The 2009 New York Film Festival
This year's strong, idiosyncratic line-up reminds us that moviegoing can still be more than "a museum experience"
By Megan Ratner

Lucky 13: The 2009 Portland Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
Getting out of the ghetto
By Gary Morris

From Air Dolls to the Anchorage: The 2009 Vancouver International Film Festival
"VIFF remains the unspoiled oasis for cinephiles looking to get away from it all."
By Ben Cho

Columns

Bright Sights: Play Time, Gaumont Treasures, Diary for My Children, Winstanley, Marlene, Bill Douglas Trilogy
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
By Gordon Thomas

Letter from New York (c. 1980)
"The problem is other people — crazy people."
By Howard Mandelbaum

Books

In My Father's Shadow: A Daughter Remembers Orson Welles, by Chris Welles Feder.
By Joseph McBride

Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber, edited by Robert Politot
By Jon Lanthier

America’s Film Vault: A Reference Guide to the Motion Pictures Held by the U.S. National Archives, by Phillip W. Stewart
By Matthew Kennedy

Performing Illusions: Cinema, Special Effects and the Virtual Actor, by Dan North
By Deborah Allison