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Max Von Sydow's Good Friday
Bright Lights After Dark Apr 10 09It's quite fitting that Max Von Sydow, celebrated Swedish actor, should turn 80 on Good Friday, of all days.
The Code and its Perfect Specimens
Bright Lights After Dark Apr 09 09There's TWO Pre-code sets out for spring, the Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 3 and now this, Pre-Code Hollywood set from Universal (showing Paramount stuff, which I generally love so no complaints there)Started with the last disc first, since it had THE MURDER OF THE VANITIES (1934) one of the last--and therefore most decadent--films to come out before the code.
Link du Jour – The Unofficial Female Film Canon
Bright Lights After Dark Apr 08 09Go immediately to House of Mirth and Movies to see “The Unofficial Female Film Canon,” an extraordinary annotated list of 101 films featuring female protagonists.
Two Reasons I’m Glad Alain Resnais is Still Alive
Bright Lights After Dark Apr 07 09
1) Because the 86-year-old French maitre is still making movies (such as Les Herbes folles, currently in post-production); and2) Because he’s around to personally supervise the DVD transfers of his early masterpieces (such as the Region 2 version of Muriel, ou Le temps d’un retour - reviewed by Glenn Kenny here - and the Criterion special edition of Last Year at Marienbad, to be released in regular and Blu-ray versions this June, along with two rarely-seen Resnais shorts).
The Tale of 3 Pauls: Coincidence, Confusion & Sex
Bright Lights After Dark Apr 06 091. PAUL THOMAS (dir. Bad Housewives, The Masseuse, The New Devil in Mrs. Jones) - A real actor (he played Peter in the film version of Jesus Christ Superstar), Paul Thomas is that rarity in the world of porn, a genuine "human.
Meta-Meta-Sketch Comedy?
Bright Lights After Dark Apr 03 09Post-modern sketch comedy is, by nature, repellent. This is by no means a new phenomenon: Monty Python had cops projectile-vomiting into their caps over crunchy frog when most of today's comedians were in diapers (if that).
Reagan, Watchmen, and The Architects of Fear
Bright Lights After Dark Apr 01 09 "I couldn't help but say to [Mr. Gorbachev], just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from another planet.
Maurice Jarre, Film Composer (1924-2009)
Bright Lights After Dark Mar 30 09 Everybody knows the music Maurice Jarre wrote for Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago ("Lara's Theme").
Against Interpretation: Synecdoche
Bright Lights After Dark Mar 29 09Having recently bid a fond adieu to the post-DVD-release critical interest resurgence for Synecdoche, New York, it seems a ripe enough time to forget this dauntingly nebulous film until, say, maybe someone like Criterion comes along in 20 years and revives it via whatever the popular media might be at that point (movies shot directly into the brain via Janus Film electrode? Charlie Kaufman would no doubt speculate far more creatively).
Dead Lesbian Society: WATCHMEN's Dark Silhouette
Bright Lights After Dark Mar 27 09(WATCHMEN SPOILER ALERT)A week after seeing WATCHMEN I'm still disturbed about the subtextual homophobia present in the opening critics killing of Silhouette, a lesbian superhero from the original 1940's Minutemen.
Tonight, on a very special episode of "Last House on the Left"
Bright Lights After Dark Mar 23 09 Just got back from seeing WATCHMEN at Union Square, a surreal and thoroughly fascist experience from start to finish; it starts with the "Regal Cinema First Look" promo material that runs before the previews.
Good News on the DVD Front!
Bright Lights After Dark Mar 22 09Looks like Warner Brothers has wised up and is offering a line of rarities from their vaults on DVD. They include such juicy titles as Boetticher's Westbound, Cukor's The Actress, Walsh's A Distant Trumpet, Minnelli's Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Borzage's The Shining Hour, and even films that were believed, at least by some of us, to be lost, like the bondage & espionage Ann Dvorak classic I Was an American Spy! There's even that bizarre must-have bit of craziness from Jack Webb, The D.
Kramer and his Bikers
Bright Lights After Dark Mar 21 09Actors make creepy bikers; generally bikers are less verbose. Watching THE WILD ONE the other night, a big screen filled with creepy "juvenile" behavior, got me to thinking about our associations with bikers and random orgiastic violence.
Three Brilliant Performances by Natasha Richardson (1963-2009)
Bright Lights After Dark Mar 19 09. . . and not one of them is presently available on U.S. DVD. Here's a box set I would happily purchase.
Charlie’s Little Sister (Shadow of a Doubt)
Bright Lights After Dark Mar 18 09Erich Kuersten’s younger sister series (starting here) inspired me to think about the younger sisters in Hitchcock films, particularly Pat Hitchcock in Strangers on a Train (1951), and her bespectacled predecessor, Edna May Wonacott as Ann Newton in Shadow of a Doubt (1943).
Carla Gugino is No. 1! Also No. 2!
Bright Lights After Dark Mar 17 09Disney’s Escape to Witch Mountain was the highest grossing film of the weekend. It starred Carla Gugino, among others.
Scenes From an Idiot’s Marriage
Bright Lights After Dark Mar 16 09 This is my all-time favorite SCTV sketch – a pastiche of Ingmar Bergman and Jerry Lewis, with Andrea Martin as Harriet Andersson and Martin Short (brilliant) as Lewis.
El Ulmer del Mexico: Bunuel's SUSANA (1951)
Bright Lights After Dark Mar 08 09I've only seen a few Bunuel's cheap Mexican productions, but as a fan of Ulmer and 1930s-1940s Poverty Row, they really do something for me.
This week (3/6-3/12) at the Film Forum in NYC: Leave Her to Heaven (1945)
Bright Lights After Dark Mar 06 09Today starts a Film Forum revival of John Stahl's 1945 "nature noir," LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN, as creepy a subtextual indictment of post-code Americana as I've ever seen.
Happy Belated Birthday, Jessica Biel!
Bright Lights After Dark Mar 04 09It was yesterday and I completely forgot! I know it's coming every year, since it's the day after mine, or one day and a decade or so.
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