Bright Lights. 50.

The Voice isn't the only publication to have just hit the big Five-O. In the case of Bright Lights Film Journal, "a print and online mag, stretching back, serendipitously, to the year Nixon resigned, 1974," as editor Gary Morris notes, we're measuring not in years but in issues. And the first thing you'll notice about this one (besides the absence of Gary's "little stabs," which will be sorely missed until the next round) is that there's just a whole lotta horror.

"We know, we know," writes Gary, "there's so much real horror around these days, why devote an entire 'hallway' to it? Why not, say, a shelf or a corner? But let's face it - horror is an inexhaustible subject and genre and the reigning mood of all jaded moderns, and we had to have our say on it again."

RKO producer Val Lewton is the runner in the hallway, which is both fitting and helpful now that that five-disc collection (nine movies and a doc!) has just come out. Mark A Viera tackles the major overview, tracing Lewton's steady rise and fall and, in between, tells engaging, quote-spiced tales behind the now-classic features.

Erich Kuersten zeroes in on The Leopard Man, but along the way, notes: "It takes a very level-headed and generous Hollywood artisan to pull off the hat trick of being entertaining and 'healing' without being corny. You can count them on one mangled hand: Hawks, Ford, Lewton." And Roderick Heath: "To watch [Jacques] Tourneur's The Leopard Man and [Henri-Georges] Clouzot's Le Corbeau is to see two almost concordant minds, within the same year (1943), conjure two films of fascinating similarity, reflecting on the nature of evil, with some moments that are virtual replicas, though there is no possibility of their having influenced each other."

Tom Sutpen on The Innocents: "Jack Clayton's film still manages to have its way with us, ravishing the viewer to a degree many films of its genre never dreamed possible." Outside the "hallway" (though it might as well have one foot in), Sutpen opens a piece on Robert Altman's Secret Honor by noting that the American people's relationship with Richard Nixon could well be considered "codependent, borderline sadomasochistic."

While focusing on The Guardian, John C Turner notes that the horror of both that film and The Exorcist is that, "You can't control yourself, and there's nothing that can be done about it. Even the tools you would use to climb out of the pit end up deepening the hole. If [William] Friedkin wasn't so dedicated to the search for knowledge, his ideas could be mistaken for nihilism."

Stephen Harper recognizes that much has been written about Night of the Living Dead, "my discussion (I might almost say disinterment and dissection) of the film offers some original contributions to the film’s generic, stylistic, and structural analysis and explores some of the reasons for its continuing popularity at a time of renewed cultural and cinematic fascination with zombies."

Keursten argues that the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre serves "as a post-mortem of free love, illuminating why the return to Eden never panned out like we wanted."

And that would wrap the horror section if it weren't for Andrew Grossman's strange dream of an orbiting multiplex, which he offers as a launching pad of sorts from which to explore the history and current state of the gaze, among many, many other things.

Grossman's feature goes long but its relevancy keeps popping up throughout the issue. Compare and contrast: Gordon Thomas and, over at Flickhead, Ray Young, who finds that Olive Thomas "lumbers across the screen, graceless and bovine." Gordon Thomas, on the other hand, who tells the tale of this life cut short well: "In the end I'll admit that I'm infatuated with Olive Thomas, and why not? Just look at her."

Then there's Alan Vanneman suggesting that we could ignore the inferior choreography of The Barkleys of Broadway if Ginger Rogers had just dropped ten pounds.

Another exercise in compare-n-contrast from Anya Meksin: Leni Riefenstahl and Fred Wiseman. Both have "used reality to construct elaborate allegories of the human condition" and both " insist, shockingly, that art cannot be used for moral and ideological ends." And yet "theories of how the individual exists socially and physically couldn’t differ more."

For Richard Armstrong, The Last Days of Chez Nous is "one of the most underrated Australian films to be shown in the west in twenty years."

The interviews:

• The centerpiece of the section is clearly Bert Cardullo's wide-ranging 1989 talk with Satyajit Ray. I'd start listing the topics they cover, but no, just go.

• Boris Trbic with Fruit Chan, talking mostly about Dumplings, but also about the general state of things. "Even triads are not investing in Hong Kong film anymore," notes Chan.

• Karin Badt has a shortish talk with Michael Haneke about Caché (Hidden).

"Recent Cinema Roundabout":

• Vanneman is unmoved by Capote. Also: Laughing off Domino. Plus: Pissing off the Whedonites. And: "Good Night, and Good Luck sells its melodrama with a soupçon of honor," but Vanneman entirely disagrees with George Clooney's assessment of what's to be done.

• Lesley Chow makes a case for Bewitched: "I would say that, in short, the triumph of this film is that it manages to make witchcraft and LA seem like a natural match."

• Dan Callahan: "Forty Shades [of Blue] is not a movie about other movies, like so many of the most ambitious films of the past ten years. [Director Ira] Sachs has something to say and as an artist he is using film to say it; he remains dedicated to a humanist investigation of overlooked people."

• "Despite the unconvincing pairing of [Gwyneth] Paltrow and [Jake] Gyllenhaal," Proof basically works for Page Laws.

• Ian Johnston offers one of the most thorough readings yet of The Wayward Cloud (spoilers and all, it should be noted) and concludes: "It is another superb piece of filmmaking from Tsai Ming-liang, even if this time we might be inclined to resist its final confused and confusing message."

Festivals:

• Cannes is always exciting, explains Karin Badt: "The films were not, however, themselves at the peak this year, none shining with genius in either execution or story, a view shared by many, even by the festival jury president, Emir Kusturica."

• Each of the highlights of the New York Film Festival gets a smart paragraph from Megan Ratner, then: "Overall, a festival with some real delights. The disappointments, as in years past, are often very mainstream films that don't need the NYFF clout to find an audience."

• Robert Keser in Chicago: "With 2005 shaping up as America's annus horribilis, a year that saw a great native city reduced to a FEMA-ville of trailers parked amongst the wreckage, its inhabitants scattered in every direction, and the national culture heedlessly bent on closing itself off from the world (except for buyers and sellers of its products), letting the vault door slam shut, this film festival acts as an essential foot planted in the door, an annual intervention to keep communication open with other cultures, their ways of seeing and their ways of thinking." Then, his take on nine films.

In the video section, Matthew Kennedy - "It is too easy to call Boudu Saved from Drowning a straightforward assault on the bourgeoisie" - and Vanneman on Monk, "a show whose quality and consistency are almost too good to be true."

And, saving an appreciation for last, Callahan: "[Joel] McCrea's sexual charge in his early and middle movies is exciting because he is completely natural about it and sometimes bashful. It is a kind of sex appeal that is founded on diffidence. It is in short supply today."

Posted by dwhudson at November 1, 2005 8:07 AM