Bright Lights. 52.

Where to begin, where to begin. I'll certainly not be offering a better way into the new issue of Bright Lights Film Journal than Gary Morris's, but I've been spending the weekend paging through it and can't help telling you that the first item to catch my eye was Bo-Myung Seo's argument that "there is a definite connection between the new attitude in Korean movies toward North Korea and the United States and the success of the South Korean movies. But I think this connection is a complicated one, which can only be explained by giving an account of the history of division in Korea in general and the subsequent history of cinema in South Korea in particular." See, that's a read you need.

In the other two features, David L Pike takes a long hard look at Atom Egoyan's "recent turn to the popular" and Gordon Thomas peers deeply into that "1959 phenomenon," Ben-Hur.

Alan Vanneman is all over the new issue again, turning in another piece on a Fred Astaire movie, Three Little Words, "lots of snappy tunes, a fair amount of good dancing, but nothing great," and "skewerings" (Gary Morris) of Brick, Transamerica and Thank You for Smoking.

"Kay Francis movies can become an addiction," writes Dan Callahan, reviewing Lynn Kear and John Rossman's Kay Francis: A Passionate Life and Career. Also: "Audiences lucky enough to see [Mikio] Naruse's cutting, comic, valiant defeatism in action have recognized his body of work as an essential film experience. When his movies are made more available, he will take his rightful place with the masters of the medium."

Gary Morris reviews Chris Vermorcken's Leonor Fini: Portrait of an Artist and Marilyn Rivchin and Kells Elmquist's short, Kay Sage, and argues that both women were "major visual artists wrongly lumped in as minor lights of the surrealist movement." Also: "Red Beard illustrates some of Kurosawa's weaknesses alongside his obvious strengths." And: "[T]o separate or assimilate?... The ground-breaking documentary Word Is Out, produced by filmmaker Peter Adair and directed by Rob Epstein, is considered by some a key work in the assimilationist canon."

Robert Keser offers his takes on the films he caught at the 9th annual European Union Film Festival. Also, Moments Choisis des Histoire(s) du Cinéma, "less a summary than a tasting menu of the greater work, [Godard's] attempt to place cinema 'against the unfeeling vastness of time.'"

"An order to the sequels universe can be found and clung to," writes Robert Castle, "Until you consider The Exorcist sequels." Also, a definition, with illustrative examples, of the "Un-Movie."

Following a list of actresses who can switch on the sex "on demand," Lesley Chow celebrates Sigourney Weaver in Heartbreakers, "one of the finest screwballs of the last decade - certainly the dizziest and most exhilarating." Also: "Watching Dance of a Dream led me to think about the way male stars act: how do they move back and forth onscreen - what kind of charge are they expected to bring?"

"Still living in his beloved New York City, [James] Bidgood [Pink Narcissus] is finally coming into the limelight as a recipient of a Guggenheim grant that will allow him to continue his photographic work which is just starting to garner attention as an overlooked and influential part of gay iconographic history." Sean Fredric Edgecomb gets him on the phone.

Matthew Kennedy on the Busby Berkeley Collection: "Has any such collection held up better for sheer entertainment value? Nowhere will you find a more paralyzing succession of archetypal 1930s pop culture moments." Also: "I confess a strange affection for Ryan's Daughter, not because it's Lean's red-headed stepson, but because of its intersection with my life."

Tom Sutpen: "God's Angry Man is neither an exposé nor a malediction, and [Dr Gene] Scott is never branded a crackpot - which is not only the easiest road [Werner] Herzog could have gone down but also the most decrepit... The only meaningful difference between the missions of Dr Gene Scott and, say, Klaus Kinski's Don Lope de Aguirre is one of scale, that's all."

Into the The Aviator and back out again via Jour de fête? DJM Saunders gives it a go.

Erich Kuersten has had more than enough of Cameron Crowe, Wes Anderson and Zach Braff's "mix CD movies."

Victoria Large revives The Pirate, "alternately hailed as an underappreciated gem or written off as a dismal financial and artistic failure for its stars and for director Vincente Minnelli. Like the other Garland-Kelly pictures, this one’s far from perfect."

Andrew Culbertson revisits Sunset Boulevard, the "film about Hollywood without the Hollywood ending."

Glory Road "shouldn't work," notes Tony Macklin, "But in the latter parts of the movie the power of the event takes over. There's racism, conflict, and emotion. Even Bruckheimer can't ruin that."

Jayson Harsin "was thoroughly entertained" by Walk the Line, even if he finds the narrative too neat and tidy.

Posted by dwhudson at May 14, 2006 12:10 PM