Ken AdamThe Art Of Production Design

Christopher Frayling has written an excellent new book about Ken Adam, who worked as a designer for Stanley Kubrick on Dr Strangelove and Barry Lyndon. Ken Adam: The Art Of Production Design includes photos of Kubrick taken by Adam, and photos of Adam taken by Kubrick.

Amazingly, Adam says that "a few years ago" he was taken to the British Film Institute archive in London where he watched the custard-pie-fight epilogue from Dr Strangelove. This sequence, which Kubrick removed from the film at the last minute, had always been considered lost or destroyed, though Frayling's book appears to confirm for the first time that the scene is still extant.

Full Metal Jacket Diary

Matthew Modine, star of Full Metal Jacket, has published a journal about the making of the film, Full Metal Jacket Diary. There are plenty of previously-unseen Kubrick photos, and transcripts of conversations between Modine and Kubrick. It's limited to 20,000 copies, and has metal covers (i.e., a 'full metal jacket'). Highlights were previously available as a PDF download, titled Full Metal Dairy [sic], from the Kubrick Exhibition website.

Sooklek

Prayoon Chanyawongse, widely known as ‘the king of Thai cartoons’, was born 100 years ago, and the new commemorative book Sooklek (ศุขเล็ก) has been published to mark his centenary. It features reprints of classic comic strips, caricatures of several prime ministers, and some of the political cartoons that raised the hackles of the military government in the early 1970s. (Prayoon was warned several times to stop satirising the government. He responded by drawing the Sooklek character, his alter ego, with his mouth sewn shut.)

Confessions on a Dance Floor

Madonna’s new album Confessions on a Dance Floor features a dozen tracks: Hung Up, Get Together, Sorry, Future Lovers, I Love New York, Let It Will Be, Forbidden Love, Jump, How High, Isaac, Push, and Like It or Not. A deluxe edition contains the bonus track Fighting Spirit. An extra song, History, is available as the B-side to the single Jump. An additional track, Superpop, is available as an MP3 download for members of Madonna’s Icon fan club.

The Pocket EssentialFilm Soleil

D.K. Holm’s new book Film Soleil discusses a subgenre of neo-noir films coined by the author: “For want of a better term I have called it “film soleil” to distinguish it from noir proper.” Holm contrasts film soleil with film noir: “If traditional film noir is night and shadows, then film soleil is daytime and sunny.” He cites Chinatown as the key transitional film separating noir from soleil, though he argues that Blood Simple marks the true birth of the subgenre: “The string of sunlit crime films officially began in 1984 with the release of Blood Simple... heralding the arrival of a new cinematic style.”