The Public Mind’s Eye. Deeper Into The Page: Writers and Poets On Film, Part I, An Intro.

Deeper Into The Page: Writers and Poets On Film
By Simon Augustine
Introduction: The Public Mind’s Eye
Could writers working prior to the 20th Century have imagined their creations and characters being expressed in films, with all the dramatic innovations that moving pictures afford?  With the advent of film, the literary arts, ancient by comparison, were instantaneously afforded [...]

Protest Film Politics: Revisiting Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude

I saw Harold and Maude the other night for only the second time, and for the first time in about 8 years. What an extraordinary piece of work it is: only a handful of mainstream American films have attempted, and carried off, such absolutely pitch black and dangerous humor, tenderness, pathos, and hilarity within the [...]

Cronenberg To Finally Release “The Man With Vaginas Growing On His Arms?”

Here at Somebody Hit The Lights! we are really excited about our upcoming feature on legendary horror director David Cronenberg, and the rumored release of his much anticipated and much debated film that almost wasn’t: “The Man With Vaginas Growing On His Arms.”  Based on a script he originally wrote while taking a break from [...]

Surprisingly Spiritual Films #2: Bad Lieutenant and Last Shot Redemption

Surprisingly Spiritual Films:

Bad Lieutenant and Last-Shot Redemption

By Simon Augustine, Dr. Mal Sardonicus III and research by Lights! Editorial Staff
Abel Ferrara started his career as one of the directors you would leasts expect to make a serious-minded, even devout, Christian film. Ferrara, like fellow filmmaker Martin Scorsese, built his reputation with an oeuvre of gritty New [...]

Sucker Punch: The Hidden Hero of The Dark Knight Part I, Section I

An idiosyncratic look at The Dark Knight, the Star Wars Generation, Jonathan Lethem and subtle heros.

Disturbing Night At The Movies: The 25 Most Upsetting Movies Of All Time

Disturbing Night At The Movies:” The Ultimate List of Dangerous Films (or How I Misspent My Youth Watching Slashers, Sickos, and Psychos Instead of Reading Shakespeare)
One should judge a man mainly from his depravities. Virtues can be faked. Depravities are real.-Klaus Kinski, disturbing actor, target of Werner Herzog murder plot
Please Do Not Read This Article [...]

Fat Girl: Breillat’s Authentic “Piece of Shit”

Few films deserve the grand appellation “piece of shit,” and I am perhaps even more recalcitrant than other filmgoers to throw that kind of judgment around loosely; after all, I do not subscribe, as many do these days, to the almost default critical persona that assumes a condescending superior distance to any work of art [...]

“Disturbing Night At The Movies” Is Knocking On The Bedroom Door…

The Mystical Dashboard: Primer and The Frontiers of the Low Budget

The Mystical Dashboard: Primer and the Frontiers of the Low Budget
By Simon Augustine
When I was about seven, I went through a period of rapt fascination with “drugstore magic” – trick cards, plastic contraptions that pushed a spike through a quarter or made a small red ball disappear, floating handkerchiefs that barely concealed the thin wires [...]