We are pleased to offer an excerpt from the October 2024 issue of the online magazine Bright Wall/Dark Room. Their theme for October is Screwballs, and they’re devoting the entire month to screwball comedies, past and present. In addition to Olympia’s piece on Lombard, the issue also features new essays on “The Thin Man,” “The Palm Beach Story,” “The Awful … Read more
Ramsey and Hunter’s conflicting philosophies are put to the ultimate test under the direst possible circumstances. They’re already on high alert thanks to a Russian separatist group that has taken control of a nuclear missile battery. The Alabama is ordered to fire its nukes to stop the seemingly imminent attack. But this already-dire situation is … Read more
One teacher (James Le Gros) even calls out the value of surprise in his own work. “There’s spontaneity in that pot. It’s its own thing,” he says, as he passes a vase around a circle of students. The sentiment applies to all of the art in the film: the way Lizzy intends for her sculptures … Read more
But it’s also synthetic—a resin dream that can only stave off corporeality so long. Isn’t that childhood, too? It’s girlhood almost certainly. Ephemeral and abrupt. Irretrievable once you’ve left it behind. I. Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes Silver-white winters that melt into springs These … Read more
– Process filmmaking is crucial to the heist plot: the heist is only exciting if the audience understands just how difficult the job is in the first place. The stakes and constraints must be set up, just so; the thieves need to be competent at their jobs in order to make the heist’s stakes plausible, … Read more
“So why was I born a woman?” “Even Heaven makes mistakes.” This feels so distinctly a trans narrative that I actually gasped when I read it. When I was young, I too thought heaven had made a mistake in the form given to me. I asked this question, about whether that form was a mistake, … Read more
David Wojnarowicz was born in Red Bank, New Jersey in 1954. Red Bank is located in Monmouth County, a suburban subset just west of the New Jersey shoreline. The borough is bound on its north edge by the Navesink River, an estuary that made Red Bank a popular site for shipbuilding in the early 17th … Read more