Méliès Magnifique
Bright Lights After Dark Sep 25 09The general line on Georges Méliès (1861-1938) is that his films were rooted in the theatrical. He had been a stage magician before he was a filmmaker, so many commentators have viewed his films as mere extensions of his magic act. The Infernal Cauldron made in 1903 (above) helps to dispel this notion. With its lovely color tints carefully applied frame by frame, it owes as much to painting and illustration as it does to stage performance. It not only entertains (like a theater piece) and evokes the viewer’s sense of wonder (like a magic act); it evokes the aesthetic pleasures of the most beautiful illustrations one might stumble across in a 19th Century childrens’ book. Full story...
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Tortured Longing is the new coke
Bright Lights After Dark 4 days agoI can feel the Twilight zeitgeist in the air tonight, perhaps it's because I live across from the cinema and the line around the block is across from me, and I hear them out there, howling.
Antichrist's Cine-Chthonic Relations
Bright Lights After Dark Nov 16 09I'm shocked SHOCKED to find the modern masterpiece of 2009, ANTICHRIST, getting such hostile reviews.
The Unknown Paul Wendkos (1925-2009)
Bright Lights After Dark Nov 16 09
I just learned, via Peter Nellhaus, of the passing of one of America's most obscure-but-talented directors, Paul Wendkos.
Brothers in Cynicism
Bright Lights After Dark Nov 16 09Every time a new film by the Coen brothers comes out, I dread having to hear from the same old so-and-so's who can't bear to slog through the Coens' peculiar brand of pessimism.
Carl Dreyer says Drive Safely and Save Lives!
Bright Lights After Dark Nov 13 09
They Caught the Ferry (1948) is a short highway safety film – much like the ones we used to watch in Drivers Ed.
Memo to Michael Bay: GI JOE KICKS YOUR ASS!
Bright Lights After Dark Nov 06 09 Superheroes with toy franchise tie-ins get a lot of heat... unless critics had a real lively sense of humor they trashed both TRANSFORMERS (as well as WOLVERINE, TERMINATOR SALVATION, etc.
Bright Lights issue 66 now online
Bright Lights After Dark Nov 01 09Issue 66 of Bright Lights Film Journal is now online.
From the editor
Keep watching the lights.
Have a Blaisdell Halloween!
Bright Lights After Dark Oct 31 09
Paul Blaisdell (July 21, 1927 - July 10, 1983) was a science fiction illustrator (The Ant Men, above), a special effects artisan, and an inspired designer of imaginative costumes and props for a series of low-budget horror, monster, and sci-fi films released by American International Pictures and Allied Artists in the 1950s.
An Athiest's Guide to "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"
Bright Lights After Dark Oct 30 09When you believe in things you don’t understand, you suffer. –Stevie WonderIn 1949 Walt Disney Studios produced the last, and arguably the best, of their “package” films – barely-feature length vignette collections made on reduced budgets during World War II for theatrical distribution – though the dyad of animated novellas included are improved little by their seemingly haphazard juxtaposition.
The Beautiful and the Darned: Avenging TWILIGHT
Bright Lights After Dark Oct 28 09It's massively popular, it's ridiculously mopey, yet it's also brooding, purple and relatively un-headache-inducing.
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