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November 2011 | Issue 74
From the Editor
Features
Religious Allegory and Cultural Discomfort in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky: And Why Larry Crowne Is One of the Best Films of 2011
J. D. Markel
"You can laugh while Rome is burning, but believe you me, Poppy, it is burning, and if you don't wake up, then you will be burnt to a cinder . . . I mean, look around you. What do you see? Do you see a policy of bringing happiness to people?" – Scott in Happy-Go-Lucky
Happy-Go-Lucky

Going to AlaskaGoing to Alaska: Vision Quests, Quasi-Indians, and Great Escapes on the Last Frontier
Gregory Stephens
"He said he might not survive, and ended with the ritual declaration: 'I now walk into the wild.' Civilization had 'poisoned' him, but the best of civilization gave him words to describe both what he was fleeing, and what he intended to embrace."
Articles
Exit Through the Gift Shop:
Cavemen to the Right
Norman Ball
"Are we watching a faux-documentary within an entertainment vehicle? One suspects only Banksy knows. And he's too busy painting to tell us."
Exit Through the Gift Shop

National Rifle AssociationPseudo-Innocence and Encased Fantasies: Inside the Unconscious of the National Rifle Association
Andrew Grossman
"I like this exhibit . . . it's very familiar."
mind the gapBetween the Idea and the Reality: The Shadow Falls
D. J. M. Saunders
So please mind the gap
LogoThe Perverse Privilege of Degradation: American Politics in the Age of Assimilation
Andrew Grossman
A Final Statement of the Obvious
Moving Camera MoviesOn Dangerous Ground: Some Noteworthy "Moving Camera Movies" of 2010
Alan Jacobson
Whether neo-noir or horror, underexposed or ignored, several films of 2010 employed devilishly motivated moving camera to disturbing effect.
Movies
The Tortoise and the Hare: My Dinner with Andre
Graham Daseler
"For the performer, the movie offers an even more metaphysical quandary: how do you play yourself? 'The thing that drove me nuts,' Andre explained, 'is that I'm playing a character based on me. So then the question is, who am I? And which Andre?'"
Dinner with Andre

IncendiesBurning the Candle at Both Ends: Denis Villeneuve's Incendies (2010)
David L. Pike
"There are truths that can only be revealed on condition of having been discovered."
–  Wajdi Mouawad, Incendies (2003)
The Darjeeling Limited"Filled with Ritual": Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited
Barry Stephenson
"[B]ecause the story is filled with ritual and religion, we were always going into temples. I was particularly obsessed with participating in any religious ceremonies I could get involved with."  – Wes Anderson, on the making of The Darjeeling Limited
InceptionWhen We Dream, Do We Accumulate Capital? On Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010)
William Anselmi and Sheena Wilson
"Nolan is making evident, both through form and narrative, his criticism of the sweeping radicalization of cinematic work that has privileged the technological wonder of the movies over formulations of innovative and complex narratives that deal with human existence."
La PianisteLa Pianiste: Michael Haneke's Aesthetic of Disavowal
Mark Chapman
"At no point are Erika's fantasies visualized, and so the spectator's reference points are the same as Erika's — the extremes of hardcore pornography and the austerity of bourgeois Vienna."
The Color of MoneyThe Way That You Use It: Reassessing The Color of Money in the Scorsese Canon
Alex Kirschenbaum
"This film is about process, about transitory states, about the journey in between the grimy Chicago pool halls that serve as Vince and Eddie's intellectual and physical training grounds."
Experimental/Avant Garde
Fractured Synthesis: The Blender Aesthetic of Outsider Filmmaker Bob Moricz
Robert Smart
"Moricz's work assaults the viewer with a whiplash barrage of familiar plot lines, trite turning points, and cliché characters spouting simultaneously banal and inflated rhetorical dialogue, all infusing narratives propelled by a poignant and urgent anxiety derived from the tensions of everyday life."
Bob Moricz

Television
Ernie Kovacs: An American Secret
Frank Bren
"Ernie's contract is reported to contain a clause forbidding him ever to consult a psychiatrist. The network is afraid if he ever became normal he'd be ruined." – Dorothy Kilgallen
Ernie Kovacs

How to Play a SuperheroHow to Play a Superhero: Lynda Carter, Popular Culture Feminism, and the Search for Wonder Woman
William Leung
After three decades of searching in vain for another Wonder Woman, it's time to reiterate the importance of Lynda Carter's iconic portrayal and its meaning to popular culture feminism.
Stars
Looking at Charlie – The Year at Keystone, Part 1: An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin
Alan Vanneman
Charlie, Mack, and Mabel
Looking at Charlie

Directors
Bergman's Women: The Representation of Patriarchy and Class in Persona (1967) and Cries and Whispers (1972)
Mark Cresswell and Zulfia Karimova
"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are."
– F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Rich Boy"
Bergman's Women

John HustonMeet the Devil:
Remembering John Huston
Graham Daseler
"Huston once described his job to John Milius like this: 'You will confer with generals, you will dine at the table with kings, and you will sleep with titled women. All of this you will do while being dead broke. That's what being a director is.' Should we even feign surprise that when it came time to make The Bible he cast himself as the voice of the Almighty?
Festivals
The Biggest and Smallest: Melbourne International Film Festival 2011
Lesley Chow
"Eve is like a cat, attracted by textures – stroking a violinist's hands with chiffon and becoming entranced by a piece of fruit. She spends most of her time in ecstatic graceless dancing; even though anger and jealousy are present, they are rendered painless."
Melbourne International Film Festival

Busan International Film FestivalWho Blinks First? Isabelle Huppert and the Pope at Busan International Film Festival 2011
Lesley Chow
"Moretti's aim in We Have a Pope is to unleash as many dissenting voices on the airwaves as possible — to create space within the tightness and enclosure of historical memories."
Fifth Abu Dhabi Film FestivalDispatch from the Desert: The Fifth Abu Dhabi Film Festival (2011)
Robert Keser
"The cinema exists to record the moment when souls become visible." –Jean-Michel Frodon
Columns
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs
Gordon Thomas
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
Bright Sights

Books
Death Wish by Christopher Sorrentino
Reviewed by Chad Trevitte
Recent Posts

The Yes MenAn excerpt with the wildly gymnastic "big-mouth" comic Joe E. Brown, from the film whose name inspired this magazine.

Watch on Youtube »

Gordon Thomas, and other BL staff, check out the eye- popping pleasures of Blu-Ray.

» Monsoon Wedding (Mira Nair)
» The General (Keaton)
» Sunrise (Murnau)
» 8-1/2 (Fellini)
» Playtime (Tati)
» Winstanley (Brownlow & Mollo)
» Permissive (Shonteff)
» Lola Montes (Ophuls)
» My Childhood, My Ain Folk ... (Bill Douglas)
» In the Realm of the Senses (Oshima)
» Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Disney)
» Repulsion (Polanski)
» Institute Benjamenta (Brothers Quay)
» Everlasting Moments (Troell)

BL Associate Editor Alan Vanneman and others watch (and review) television shows so you don't have to. Click if you dare.

» 30 Rock
» Batman: The Animated Series
» Broadway Theatre Archive
» Charlie’s Angels
» Cowboy Bebop
» Death of a Salesman
» Dollhouse
» Freaks and Geeks
» Have Gun Will Travel
» Mad Men
» Magnum P.I.
» Monk
» Pamela Anderson Roast
» Renegade
» Sex and the City

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