Jaipur Literature Festival

This year's Jaipur Literature Festival in India attracted considerable controversy after announcing that Salman Rushdie would be among its guest speakers. Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses sparked international protests in 1988 and is still banned in India.

After confirming that he would speak at the Festival, Rushdie was informed by Jaipur police that assassins were planning to kill him. (For over a decade, Rushdie had been the subject of a fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran.) Due to the apparent assassination plot, Rushdie pulled out of the Festival, though he planned to address the event by video instead. Several Muslim organisations in Jaipur began demonstrating against Rushdie, so even the video appearance was cancelled in the interests of Festival security.

Some of the Festival's speakers, including author Hari Kunzru, recited passages from The Satanic Verses in solidarity with Rushdie, though one of the Festival's organisers, Namita Gokhale, requested that they stop. They were subsequently interviewed by police, and Kunzru fled the country fearing arrest.

After further investigation, Rushdie now believes that the assassination plot was a hoax perpetrated by the police, in an effort to stop him attending the Festival. Questions are also being asked of the Festival's organisers, and their refusal to defend Rushdie.

6th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival

The 6th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival opened today, and runs until 5th February. The Festival includes a screening of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's short video 0116643225059 on 4th February. The film was previously shown at Tomyam Pladib. (Apichatpong is one of the Festival's co-directors.)

Whereas the 5th Festival took place at Esplanade, the 6th Festival will be held at BACC. Screenings are free, and this year's theme is Raiding The Archives.

9th World Film Festival of Bangkok

The 9th World Film Festival of Bangkok opened yesterday, and runs until 27th January. (It was originally scheduled for 4th to 13th November last year, though the dates were postponed due to flooding in Bangkok.) Whereas the 6th, 7th, and 8th Festivals were held at Paragon, the 9th will return to the Festival's older venue, Esplanade Cineplex. The 5th Festival (the last Festival at Esplanade) featured several retrospectives and sidebar events, though subsequent Festivals have been less extensive.

The 9th Festival includes Cave Of Forgotten Dreams, Werner Herzog's documentary about primitive art filmed at Chauvet, France, which will be screening in 3D on 23rd and 25th January. Exceptionally, Herzog was granted permission to film inside the Chauvet cave, which contains the earliest paintings ever discovered. The cave walls contain paleolithic images of wild animals painted approximately 32,000 years ago, and the 3D camera captures the undulations of the cave's geology. Surprisingly, some of the paintings are proto-Futurist, such as a bison painted with eight legs to suggest movement. As examples of figurative art, the Chauvet paintings are predated only by the Venus sculpture discovered at Hohle Fels, Germany, which is more than 35,000 years old and is also included in the documentary.

It's Time

Zhu Yufu has been arrested in Beijing and charged with subversion, after he wrote It's Time, a poem calling for a Jasmine Revolution. The poem was originally published last year, and has been printed today in The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune. Other Chinese dissident artists, including Zhao Zhao, Wang Jun, and, most famously, Ai Weiwei, have also been arrested within the past year.

Hiroshima Mon Amour

Last week, Bangkok's Alliance Francaise screened the horror classic Les Diaboliques, and this week's classic film is Hiroshima Mon Amour. Directed by Alain Resnais, who also made the disturbing Nuit & Brouillard and the cryptic L'Annee Derniere A Marienbad, Hiroshima Mon Amour is set in the aftermath of the Hiroshima bomb; it will be shown on 18th January, and the screening is free.

Criss+Cross

Criss+Cross: Design From Switzerland 1860-2012 features a broad range of Swiss designs, from fashion to safety equipment. Familiar brand names, such as Victorinox and Swatch, are displayed on appropriately Scandinavian pine crates. The exhibition opened at TCDC last year, on 25th November, and will close on 22nd January.

Les Diaboliques

The classic horror film Les Diaboliques will be screened at Alliance Francaise, Bangkok, on 11th January. Les Diaboliques is a masterpiece of Hitchcockian suspense, and the screening is free.

100 Greatest Films

• Workers Leaving The Lumiere Factory (Louis Lumiere, 1895)
• A Trip To The Moon (Georges Melies, 1902)
  
• The Great Train Robbery (Edwin S Porter, 1903)
• Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone, 1914)
  
• The Birth Of A Nation (DW Griffith, 1915)
  
• Intolerance (DW Griffith, 1916)
  
• The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1919)
  
• Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror (FW Murnau, 1921)
  
• Nanook Of The North (Robert Flaherty, 1922)
  
• The Gold Rush (Charlie Chaplin, 1925)
  
• Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
  
• Napoleon (Abel Gance, 1927)
  
• Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
  
• Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans (FW Murnau, 1927)
• Un Chien Andalou (Luis Bunuel, 1928)
  
• Man With A Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
  
• The Public Enemy (William Wellmann, 1931)
  
• 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933)
  
• It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934)
  
• Bride Of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935)
  
• Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1935)
  
• Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs (David Hand, 1937)
  
• Port Of Shadows (Marcel Carne, 1938)
  
• Gone With The Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939)
  
• The Rules Of The Game (Jean Renoir, 1939)
  
• Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939)
  
• The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941)
  
• Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
  
• His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1941)
  
• Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)
  
• Meet Me In St Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944)
  
• Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944)
  
• Rome: Open City (Roberto Rossellini, 1945)
  
• Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946)
• The Lady From Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947)
  
• Out Of The Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947)
  
• Kind Hearts & Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1948)
  
• Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio de Sica, 1948)
  
• The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949)
  
• Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950)
  
• Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
  
• Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, 1952)
  
• Singin' In The Rain (Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly, 1952)
  
• Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)
  
• Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
  
• On The Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954)
  
• Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)
  
• The Night Of The Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)
  
• The Incredible Shrinking Man (Jack Arnold, 1956)
  
• The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
  
• The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
  
• Touch Of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958)
  
• Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
  
• The 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut, 1959)
  
• Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959)
  
• Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
  
• La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini, 1960)
  
• Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
  
• Black Sunday (Mario Bava, 1960)
  
• Lawrence Of Arabia (David Lean, 1962)
  
• A Fistful Of Dollars (Sergio Leone, 1964)
  
• Dr Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
  
• The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966)
  
• The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967)
  
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
  
• Bonnie & Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1968)
  
• Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969)
  
• A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971)
  
• The Godfather (Francis Coppola, 1972)
  
• Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
  
• One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (Milos Forman, 1975)
  
• Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
  
• Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
  
• In The Realm Of The Senses (Oshima Nagisa, 1976)
  
• Star Wars IV: A New Hope (George Lucas, 1977)
  
• Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)
  
• Apocalypse Now (Francis Coppola, 1979)
  
• Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979)
  
• Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
  
• Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)
  
• Fitzcarraldo (Werner Herzog, 1982)
  
• Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo, 1987)
  
• Crimes & Misdemeanors (Woody Allen, 1989)
  
• Edward Scissorhands (Tim Burton, 1990)
  
• GoodFellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990)
  
• Raise The Red Lantern (Yimou Zhang, 1991)
  
• Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992)
  
• Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
  
• Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995)
  
• The Usual Suspects (Bryan Singer, 1995)
  
• Fargo (Joel Coen, 1996)
  
• Scream (Wes Craven, 1996)
  
• Funny Games (Michael Haneke, 1996)
  
• Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2001)
  
• Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)
  
• Hero (Yimou Zhang, 2002)
  
• City Of God (Fernando Meirelles & Katia Lund, 2002)
  
• Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004)
  
• Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)
  
• Avatar (James Cameron, 2009)

The 100 Greatest Films are listed in chronological order. After much deliberation and revision, the list hopefully reflects the full spectrum of international cinema history.

Hollywood inevitably dominates the list, though 36% are foreign-language films from Europe and Asia. There is a slight bias towards older titles: 56% are black-and-white and 55% are pre-1960, including sixteen silent films. The list also includes four animations, four shorts, three documentaries, and one 3D film.

Inferno

Inferno, a photograph by Sergio Parra, was removed from public display in Madrid in July last year. The photo, a portrait of Asier Etxendia with a picture of Jesus covering his genitals, is currently back on display in the city, at the Teatro Espanol.

The Visual Dictionary Of Photography

The Visual Dictionary Of Photography, by David Prakel, is an alphabetical guide to the art and technology of photography. It includes definitions of technical terms and capsule profiles of famous photographers. Each entry occupies a single page, typically with a large photograph or diagram illustrating a few sentences of text.

Primarily a guide to terminology and techniques, the book explains crucial variables such as shutter speed, aperture size, and ISO. It also provides an overview of photographic equipment and camera accessories.

This is a handy little reference guide to the practicalities of photography, covering both analogue and digital technologies. For more comprehensive studies of the art and history of photography, see Photographers A-Z and A World History Of Photography.

Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei, part of Phaidon's Contemporary Artists series, is the first book to explore Ai Weiwei's entire artistic career. Ai is China's most famous artist, and one of the leading names in international contemporary art.

The book features an interview with Ai by Hans Ulrich Obrist, a survey of Ai's oeuvre by Karen Smith, and a profile of Ai's sculpture Descending Light by Bernard Fibicher. Descending Light resembles Vladimir Tatlin's Monument To The Third International, the never-constructed Constructivist tower; it also looks like an enormous red lantern, and the director of Raise The Red Lantern, Yimou Zhang, was a contemporary of Ai's at the Beijing Film Academy.

Ai co-curated the notorious Bu Hezuo Fangshi exhibition (the Chinese equivalent of Charles Saatchi's Sensation), which introduced a new generation of provocative and taboo-breaking Beijing artists. Always an iconoclast, he was originally known for smashing priceless Han vases. He has also produced Duchampian 'readymades', beautiful porcelain sculptures, and large-scale wooden installations constructed from ancient Ming and Qing furniture.

Phaidon's monograph is a necessary introduction to Ai's background and early work, though Ai is now better known for his political activism. He has become a vocal critic of the Chinese government (unlike Yimou Zhang, who has been accused of producing propaganda), exposing state corruption and cover-ups. He was jailed earlier this year on (presumably trumped-up) tax-evasion charges; he was eventually released, though discussion of his arrest is suppressed and his associates continue to be harassed.

The Sniper

A man convicted of threatening a presidential candidate has been sentenced to thirty-three months in jail by a federal court in Kentucky. Johnny Logan wrote a poem titled The Sniper, describing the assassination of a black American president, and posted it online in August 2007. (Of course, this was before Barack Obama actually became President.)

There were aggravating circumstances that contributed to the jail sentence, as Logan had previous convictions for drug offenses and failed to attend a parole appointment. However, the First Ammendment protecting freedom of speech does not extend to threats against presidents or presidential candidates.

The poem is racist and offensive, though it's also a work of fiction. It's similar to Ice-T's controversial song Cop Killer (which was removed from his Body Count album in 1992) and the apartheid-era song Ayesab' Amagwala (which a court in South Africa ruled was illegal last year).

Sex

Sex, a group exhibition at Toot Yung Gallery in Bangkok, opened yesterday after several delays due to the recent Bangkok floods. The exhibition includes Thunska Pansittivorakul's video The Altar (from last year's Another Side), though as of today the video had not yet been installed.

Sex will close on 20th January next year. It borrows its title from Madonna's controversial book of erotic photographs (Sex, 1992). Also, Mae West wrote a play with the same title (Sex, 1926), for which she was jailed for eight days.

4th French Open Air Cinema Festival

The 4th French Open Air Cinema Festival begins tomorrow, with a screening of Jean Cocteau's classic fantasy La Belle & La Bete at Lumpini Park, Bangkok. While last year's Festival ran for over a week, this year's has been reduced to only two days: it will close on 17th December.

The French Open Air Cinema Festival is organised by Alliance Francaise, and screenings are free. La Belle & Le Bete was also screened earlier this year, as part of Thammasat University's Que Reste-T-Il De Nos Amours season.

Headshot

To promote Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's Headshot, Au Bon Pain restaurants in Bangkok are selling a dossier containing booklets, posters, photographs, sketches, and stickers related to the film. This unusual film souvenir is limited to 1,000 copies (mine being #584).

Who's There?

The director (Ejaz Ahmed), producer (Washim Sheikh), and publicist (KA Jauhar) of the Hindi horror film Who's There? have been arrested in Mumbai. The three men are facing charges of blasphemy, as a newspaper advertisement for the film depicts Jesus being stabbed while he is crucified. The advert was published by two Indian newspapers, DNA Suday and Sunday Mid Day, on 13th November.

Headshot

Headshot, the new film by Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, stars Nopachai Jayanama as Tul, a hitman who wakes from a coma to find that his vision is upside-down. Tul, a former police officer, was framed for murder when he refused to drop an investigation. After serving time in prison, he is hired to assassinate well-connected organised criminals. (As in The Red Eagle, Headshot's sub-plot highlights and condemns Thailand's endemic political corruption.)

Headshot is a self-styled 'crime Noir', and it does feature many Film Noir characteristics: the plot is told in a series of flashbacks, betrayal and deception are major themes, the female characters are femme fatales, and much of the action takes place at night. Although Tul is an ex-cop, his brutal intensity is far removed from the suave detectives of classic Noir (epitomised by Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep). Headshot shares its inexorable fatalism and moral complexity with Double Indemnity, Touch Of Evil, and Out Of The Past.

The film begins as an exhilarating and violent thriller, establishing its Noir credentials and revealing Tul's motivations and loyalties. In these early sequences, Tul's obsessions with guns and exercise, and his shaved head, are presumably inspired by Taxi Driver. Pen-Ek is in familiar territory here, as his previous films Fun-Bar Karaoke, 6ixtynin9, Last Life In The Universe, and Invisible Waves have also dealt with crime and murder. Headshot is a return to those earlier themes, after his recent films Ploy and Nymph (the latter also starring Nopachai).

Unfortunately, Headshot's second half can't quite sustain its initial energy and inventiveness: the plot twists seem like excuses for unconvincing story elements, and Joey Boy is an unthreatening bad guy. Joey Boy's character tortures Tul by dripping candle wax onto his crotch, though the scene reminded me of the risible Body Of Evidence; riding a bicycle and wearing tennis whites (in a tribute to Funny Games?) further undermine Joey Boy's potential menace.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the catalogue to Apichatpong's Primitive exhibition, is edited by Gary Carrion-Murayari and Massimiliano Gioni. The slim monograph includes an interview with Apichatpong, behind-the-scenes stills, and even a glossary of Thai spirits; it was published to accompany the Primitive exhibition in New York.

Primitive

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's multi-screen Primitive video installation opened today at The Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok, and will close on 29th February 2012. The exhibition was slightly delayed due to the Bangkok flood last month.

Primitive is an inter-disciplinary project that includes the short films A Letter To Uncle Boonmee and Phantoms Of Nabua. Apichatpong's feature-length Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, which won the Palme d'Or last year, is also part of the Primitive project. The exhibition itself features seven videos: Primitive, Nabua, Making Of The Spaceship, A Dedicated Machine, An Evening Shoot, I'm Still Breathing, and Nabua Song.

Apichatpong has collaborated with The Jim Thompson Art Center before: he gave a talk at the Center in 2008 (Apichatpong On Video Works, part of Tomyam Pladib). He gave similar talks last year at MBK and this year at the National Film Archive.

Aside from Uncle Boonmee, Apichatpong's greatest films are Tropical Malady and Syndromes & A Century. His numerous short films include Mobile Men, Prosperity For 2008, Vampire, For Alexis, The Anthem, and Luminous People.

Strangers On A Train (preview)

Strangers On A Train, one of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest films, was previewed in a form that's slightly different from the final release version. The preview version is sometimes mistakenly described as the British version, though the film's final American version was the only one shown on general release.

Hollywood studios routinely modify films after they are previewed, though the preview versions are seldom released commercially. The Big Sleep, My Darling Clementine, and Blade Runner are notable exceptions.

There are relatively few differences between the two versions. One rather superfluous sequence from the preview - in which Bruno and Guy order food - was shortened in the final version, to reduce the overall running time. Also, the build-up to Guy entering Bruno's father's room is more suspenseful in the preview version: a brief additional sequence, with shadowy lighting and ominous music, misdirects the audience by implying that Guy actually intends to murder Bruno's father.

The film's ending represents the most significant alteration. The preview version ends rather blandly, with Guy's telephone call to his fiance; the final version inserted a new coda in which Guy is recognised by a vicar on a train, a more ironic and amusing ending.

Persepolis

Nabil Karoui, the CEO of Nessma TV in Tunisia, is on trial for blasphemy after he broadcast the animated film Persepolis on 7th October. The film, directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, includes comical sequences showing Allah in heaven, and visual depictions of Allah are forbidden under Islamic law. (Depictions of Mohammed are also considered blasphemous, of course.)

After the television broadcast, arsonists attacked Karoui's home and demonstrators protested outside the TV station. (Previously, the film was banned from the 2007 Bangkok International Film Festival, following a request by the Iranian government.)

The 57th National Exhibition Of Art

The 57th National Exhibition Of Art opened at BACC, Bangkok, on 1st October. It was originally scheduled to close on 5th November, though it was extended until today. The show has been held annually since 1949.

One of the highlights this year is Body Openings, a group of erotic/grotesque resin figures with displaced mouths resembling vagina dentatas, by Nisa Sirisre. Similar to the national exhibitions of previous years, there is a large quantity and range of entries on display, from (mostly figurative) paintings to (mostly mixed-media) sculptures and small installations.

Indeed, many artists from last year's 56th National Exhibition are also represented this year, and have produced surprisingly similar works. For example, Suporn Kaewda won first prize last year for an abstract landscape resembling an oil puddle, and he won second prize this year for a similar painting; and Karuna Panumes's triptych, of women with symbols reflected on their faces, resembles her impressive portrait from last year.

One Tiger, Eight Breasts

Chinese photographer Zhao Zhao has been questioned by police in Beijing as part of a pornography investigation. The authorities claimed that Zhao's photograph One Tiger, Eight Breasts is pornographic, though Zhao defended the work and he has not been formally charged. The photo is a portrait of the artist Ai Weiwei and four women.

The questioning of Zhao is presumably an attempt to intimidate Ai and disrupt his political activities. Ai was detained for several months earlier this year on charges of tax evasion, and other artists associated with him have also been targeted by the authorities.

Let's Panic!

The group exhibition Let's Panic! opened at BACC, Bangkok, on 20th October. It will close on 25th November.

The exhibition is a response to recent global natural disasters, particularly the current floods in central Thailand. Many of the works involve innovative multi-media technology: there is a 3D film, a motion-controlled interactive animation, a slidable LCD display, and a magnetic audio installation.

Manon Taranurak's animation Survival Food Supply is a particular highlight. Animated images of various dangerous or infectious animals are projected onto boxes representing fast-food containers. Each surface of the three boxes displays a different image, yet this impressive multi-panel presentation is controlled by a single projector.

The Two Fridas

A performance by Indian artist T Venkanna was cancelled in Singapore earlier this year. The artist sat naked in front of a reproduction of Frida Kahlo's painting The Two Fridas, posing with visitors in a recreation of the painting.

The performance, at Gallery Maskara, was part of the Art Stage Singapore art fair, which opened on 12th January. Public nudity is illegal in Singapore, thus police questioned the artist and terminated the performance. This was followed by another instance of art censorship in Singapore a few months later, when the installation Welcome To The Hotel Munber was closed.

Welcome To The Hotel Munber

Simon Fujiwara's installation Welcome To The Hotel Munber, a recreation of a 1970s Spanish hotel, was censored earlier this year in Singapore. The work was shown at the Singapore Art Museum, as part of the Singapore Biennale, though gay erotic magazines were removed from the installation for violating Singapore's anti-pornography law.

After the magazines were removed on 13th March, the artist requested that the exhibit be temporarily closed. However, subsequent negotiations between the artist and the Art Museum failed to reach an agreement, and the installation remained closed for the entire Biennale.

Maportaliche

Algerian artist Mustapha Benfodil's installation Maportaliche: Ecritures Sauvages was removed from the Sharjah Biennal earlier this year, after complaints from the public. The installation featured mannequins wearing football shirts, surrounded by walls containing graffiti. Arabic and French slogans on the football shirts, and on the walls, included provocative phrases such as "the sperm of his prophets" (a reference to Allah) and "vaginal sacrifices for lustful gods".

Public complaints accusing the artist of blasphemy led to the installation being removed from the Biennal shortly after it opened on 16th March. The director of the Biennal, Jack Persekian, was fired after he admitted that he had not pre-vetted the installation.

Scorsese On Scorsese

Scorsese On Scorsese, by Michael Henry Wilson, is a book of interviews conducted with Martin Scorsese over the past thirty years. It was originally published in French, as Entretiens Avec Martin Scorsese. The English-language version has been updated to include Scorsese's most recent films (The Departed, Shutter Island) and his music documentaries (No Direction Home, Shine A Light).

The in-depth interviews are supplemented by on-set stills, correspondence, and annotated script pages supplied by Scorsese. As a result, this is probably the ultimate Scorsese book. Its title, Scorsese On Scorsese, was previously used by Ian Christie for his own Scorsese interview book, and by Richard Schickel for his Scorsese interview documentary.

Wilson and Scorsese co-directed the excellent documentary A Personal Journey Through American Movies. Wilson's book is a collaboration between Cahiers Du Cinema and Phaidon, as are the Masters Of Cinema (Hitchcock, Kubrick, etc.) and ...At Work (Welles, Hitchcock, etc.) series.

Francois Truffaut's study of Alfred Hitchcock was the first book-length interview with a major film director. Peter Bogdanovich's Welles interview, This Is Orson Welles, was as impressive as Truffaut's. Richard Schickel has recently released several such books, including Conversations With Scorsese and Woody Allen: A Life In Film. Conversations With Woody Allen, by Eric Lax, is another recent example. Faber & Faber issued an entire series of Directors On Directors interviews, including Woody Allen On Woody Allen.

Charia Hebdo

Arsonists destroyed the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris this week, after the satirical magazine published a special edition 'guest-edited' by Mohammed. The issue, titled Charia Hebdo, in a pun on Islamic Sharia law, featured a front-page caricature of Mohammed saying: "100 lashes if you don't die laughing!", and a back-page cartoon of him with a red nose. (Visual depictions of Mohammed's face are strictly forbidden by the Koran.)

The provocative cover image was reprinted in various newspapers yesterday, including the New York Post, the London Evening Standard, Tribune De Geneve, Le Monde, Liberation, Le Figaro, Blick Am Abend, and La Repubblica. It was also shown on the French TV channels TF1 and BRM-TV, though it was censored by CNN. Charlie Hebdo also caused controversy in 2006 with its previous Mohammed cover, printed in reaction to Muslim protests against Mohammed caricatures in Jyllands-Posten.

Jyllands-Posten, in Denmark, published twelve Mohammed cartoons in 2005, causing protests around the world. Many publications subsequently printed their own Mohammed cartoons in solidarity with Jyllands-Posten: Weekendavisen, France Soir, The Guardian, Le Monde, Het Nieuwsblad, The Daily Tar Heel, Akron Beacon Journal, The Strand, Nana, Gorodskiye Vesti, Misselijke Grappen, HP/De Tijd, Lapo Tuak, Dagbladet, Skanepartiet, and Harper's.

The Jyllands-Posten cartoons were reproduced in the books L'Affaire Des Caricatures, Manden Bag Stregen, Tavshedens Tyranni, Blasphemy, The Offensive Art, and Muhammad: The 'Banned' Images. They were broadcast by the BBC in 2007, reprinted by several newspapers in 2008, and reprinted by Aftenposten in 2010.

Equally provocative drawings of Mohammed as a dog were reprinted in 2010. The short film Fitna also includes a Mohammed cartoon, and there was an Everybody Draw Mohammed Day! event last year.

Steve Jobs

Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs is based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted during the last two years of his life. (Jobs died of cancer last month.) Jobs is generally regarded as the most influential technology and business leader of his generation, a perfectionist and a visionary, the head of the world's largest company. Isaacson's biography confirms this view, though also presents Jobs as an obsessive, bad-tempered control freak.

In addition to regular tirades at Apple employees, Jobs also rants to Isaacson that Google's Android software copied the iPhone's operating system: "I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this". Unfortunately, Isaacson doesn't interject to remind Jobs that Apple's graphical user interface and mouse were both copied from research by Xerox.

Isaacson chronicles the now-familiar Jobs trajectory: co-founding Apple Computer with Steve Wozniak, launching the Apple and Macintosh computers, leaving Apple then returning a decade later, pioneering computer animation with Pixar, and finally producing a ground-breaking series of iProducts. The narrative is supplemented by first-hand accounts from everyone involved: Isaacson has interviewed all the key players, including John Sculley, Tim Cook, John Lasseter, Bill Gates, Michael Eisner, Jony Ive, Eric Schmidt, and Rupert Murdoch. (Isaacson is a former CNN chairman and Time managing editor, and therefore extremely well-connected.)

The first Apple desktop computers now seem like antiques; to the current generation, Jobs will be remembered instead for the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Even the iMac, a desktop computer with a CRT screen, looks like a relic today when compared with Apple's recent devices. But the Macintosh and iMac were both revolutionary: the Macintosh was the first intuitive, user-friendly computer, and the iMac was arguably the first computer to become a design icon.

The iMac and its successors, the unique G4 (on which I am writing this blog post) and the powerful G5, were designed by Jony Ive. He also designed the sleek MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops, and the various portable iGadgets. Though it was Jobs who insisted on meticulous perfection, Ive deserves the credit for the designs themselves. He is probably the most important industrial designer since Dieter Rams, who produced a line of similarly stylish yet functional devices for Braun in the 1960s. In a world of disposability and cheap plastic, Apple's unibody aluminium, steel, and glass products feel reassuringly well-crafted.

Isaacson is ultimately in awe of Jobs. He makes no mention of the basic functions missing from the original iPhone. He lavishes excessive praise on even tangential Apple products: Pixar is a "miracle", iTunes "saved the music industry", and Apple stores "reinvented the role of a store in defining a brand". He does address concerns about Apple's lack of openness, though he explicitly sides with Jobs against the critics: "Sometimes it's nice to be in the hands of a control freak".

20th Century Pattern Design

20th Century Pattern Design: Textile & Wallpaper Pioneers, by Lesley Jackson, was originally published in 2002, and an updated edition was issued this year. There seems to be only minimal revision of the previous edition, with no new examples from the past decade, though the comprehensive bibliography has been updated.

The book's chronological survey begins with Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau, though cultural appreciation of wallpaper and domestic decoration flourished a decade earlier during the Aestheticism movement. ("Modern wallpaper is so bad", the aesthete Oscar Wilde famously observed, "that a boy brought up under its influence could allege it as a justification for turning to a life of crime".)

Jackson's coverage is almost exclusively British, European, and American, and she profiles the key designers and studios of each decade. Her approach is largely ismatic, and she identifies trends such as Functionalism, Ruralism, Revivalism, and (more contentiously) Giganticism. She also links pattern design to the major cultural paradigms of the 20th century: Proto-Modernisn, Modernism, and Post-Modernism.

The Man Who Owns The News

Judging by the volume of information he controls, and the amount of money and influence he has accumulated, Rupert Murdoch is one of the world's most powerful individuals. His company, News Corp., was one of the first media corporations to vertically integrate media production and distribution, and is one of the most powerful global media conglomerates.

Murdoch is the last of the press barons, with a portfolio of prestigious (The Times, The Sunday Times, The Wall Street Journal) and popular (The Sun, the New York Post) newspaper titles. At a time when digitisation threatens the existence of print journalism, Murdoch remains reassuringly committed to his newspapers. Indeed, his forays into digital media (selling MySpace for a fraction of the price he paid; the underwhelming release of The Daily) are uncharacteristic misjudgements, while his television businesses remain highly profitable.

Michael Wolff was given unprecedented access to Murdoch, his executives, and even his family. As he writes in the current issue of GQ: "I know what he is thinking; I know how he is thinking it; I know the rhythms of the way he talks about what he thinks; I know what he remembers and I know what he forgets. What's more, all of the people who are as obsessed with Murdoch as I am talk to me about him. I am the father confessor of Murdoch obsessives. If there is anything that can be known about him, I know it. Where he is at any given moment, his mood, his health, his diet, the state of his various relationships, I know. And, of course, Rupert knows that I know all of this and more".

Wolff charts the rise of Murdoch's international empire since the late 1960s, though the acquisition of The Wall Street Journal, the thread that runs throughout the book, receives such close attention that it marginalises other events. Wapping and the print unions, for example, are covered in a single page. Despite the hours of interviews Murdoch granted, Wolff quotes him only sparingly; also, Wolff has a strange (magazine-writer's?) habit of writing every sentence in the present tense, even when describing historical events: "Murdoch is born in 1931...".

The book (and its expanded paperback edition, with Wolff's personal account of Murdoch's reaction to the original version) came out before Murdoch's extraordinary appearance before a House of Commons committee this summer. A revelation by Nick Davies (author of Flat Earth News), that Murdoch's News Of The World paid a private investigator to hack into the voicemail messages of murdered teenager Milly Dowler, exposed widespread illegal practices at Murdoch's tabloids and put pressure on politicians to distance themselves from Murdoch and his inner circle.

Murdoch had long been blamed for what Wolff calls the "tabloidism" of journalism, though the level of condemnation in the Dowler case was so high that News Corp. shut down the News Of The World altogether. Murdoch, appearing frail yet determined, apologised to the parliamentary committee, announcing that it was "the most humble day of my life". (He was then attacked by a protester with a custard pie.) However, Murdoch has expressed no such regret for the reactionary scare-mongering broadcast by his Fox News channel (practically the official mouthpiece of the insane Tea Party), whose "Fair and balanced" slogan must surely be a deeply ironic joke.

In Glorious Technicolor

Francine Stock and Stephen Hughes (credited as co-author on the title page but not on the jacket) have selected three films from each decade of cinema's history for their book In Glorious Technicolor: A Century Of Film & How It Has Shaped Us. Their title comes from Cole Porter's song Stereophonic Sound, from the musical Silk Stockings:

"Today to get the public to attend a picture show,
It's not enough to advertise a famous star they know.
If you want to get the crowds to come around
You've gotta have glorious Technicolor,
Breathtaking CinemaScope,
And Stereophonic sound".

The list includes a handful of essential classics: The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari, Nanook Of The North, The Searchers, 2001, and Annie Hall. Some titles - for example, Top Gun and Basic Instinct - were seemingly chosen because they are representative of cinematic trends, rather than for their artistic merit.

The obscure Afgrunden is a surprising first entry, though it's good to see semi-neglected films such as Flesh & The Devil and The Gold-Diggers Of 1933 on the list. It's odd that Hitchcock is represented by Spellbound when he directed so many superior films, and I can't fathom why Carrie, by Hitchcock-obsessed Brian de Palma, is included.

The triumvirate from the last decade is arguably the most appropriate. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, Avatar, and Uncle Boonmee are all excellent films reflecting different trajectories of contemporary cinema.

Despite the book's title, almost half of the films are black-and-white, and the landmark Technicolor films (The Adventures Of Robin Hood, Gone With The Wind, The Wizard Of Oz) are not included. Also, the list of thirty films actually features thirty-two, because the Three Colours trilogy is counted as a single entry.

This is the In Glorious Technicolor list, in chronological order:

• Afgrunden
  
• The Birth Of A Nation
  
• The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari
  
• Nanook Of The North
  
• Flesh & The Devil
  
• The General
  
• Scarface
  
• Gold-Diggers Of 1933
  
• La Bete Humaine
  
• Bambi
  
• In Which We Serve
  
• Spellbound
  
• La Strada
  
• The Searchers
  
• Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
  
• Peeping Tom
  
• Bande A Part
  
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
  
• Aguirre: Wrath Of God
  
• Carrie
  
• Annie Hall
  
• ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
  
• Top Gun
  
• When Harry Met Sally
  
• Basic Instinct
  
• Three Colours: Blue/Red/White
  
• Natural Born Killers
  
• Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
  
• Avatar
  
• Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives