High concept

How's this for a pitch: FBI special agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully join forces with federal marshal Jennifer Lopez to track down escaped convict George Clooney, who has fled to Manhattan with his gargantuan reptilian co-conspirator, Godzilla. All converge on Studio 54, where they are lured by the beat of the music and the flash of neon. There they meet 1970s disco icons such as Steve Rubell and Thelma Houston, not to mention Andy Warhol. But it is only when they come across an addled Jim Carrey, insisting his name is Truman, that they realize... it's only a TV show! Or, in this case, a movie.

Once again, it is summer at the nation's air-conditioned multiplexes, with all the shooting, speeding, crashing, exploding, and monster-stomping that implies. This year, LD tours a couple of the biggest upcoming films and a few of the medium-sized ones, with excursions into the netherworld of the indies and a stop at the offices of Arriflex Corporation.

And guess what we discovered, among other things? Lighting instruments can be movie stars, too. In the following pages, just get a load of those on-camera Musco Lights and Maxi Brutes illuminating the Flatiron Building, of those lighting columns evoking nostalgia for a bygone club, of Jim Carrey cradling a Cinemills fixture. Eat your heart out, Salma Hayek. You, big lizard, step aside. LTM, Mole-Richardson, Kino Flo: Places, please. Action.