Confessions Tour

Madonna's Confessions Tour has begun. The headline-grabber this time is her performance of Live To Tell, during which she wears a crown of thorns and appears crucified on a giant cross. Confessions concentrates primarily on her latest album; it doesn't even include the once-traditional Madonna tour encore, Holiday.

The tour set-list is: Future Lovers, Get Together, Like A Virgin, Jump, Live To Tell, Forbidden Love, Isaac, Sorry, I Love New York, Ray Of Light, Let It Will Be, Drowned World/Substitute For Love, Paradise (Not For Me), Music, Erotica, La Isla Bonita, Lucky Star, and Hung Up.

South Park: Cartoon Wars I-II

An episode from the current season of South Park has been censored by Comedy Central in the US.

The episode - Cartoon Wars II, broadcast on 12th April - was a comment on the American media's refusal to reproduce the Jyllands-Posten Mohammed caricatures. The short sequence featuring Mohammed was replaced by a black screen. Both this episode and the one preceding it (Cartoon Wars I, 5th April) also include parodic censorship of other Mohammed images.

Ironically, however, Mohammed can be seen at the start of every episode in the 2006 season, as he appears in the opening titles sequence. Also, he appeared prominently in the 2002 season's opening titles and the episode Super Best Friends (4th July 2001), and these appearances are not censored when the episodes are repeated or syndicated.

The Film Snob*s Dictionary

This little book (titled The Film Snob*s Dictionary, written with an asterisk instead of an apostrophe) is a crib-sheet for wannabe cineastes. But, while you could flick through this book and gain a basic knowledge of cult cinema, it's always better to actually watch the films themselves.

The entries (by David Kamp and Lawrence Levi) are all slightly critical: mainstream films are derided as populist, and intellectual films are derided as elitist. It seems that there's an agenda to everything, with passion for cinema replaced by reservation and sometimes cynicism. The list of differences between 'films' and 'movies' is very funny, though.

Same Sky

The October-December 2005 issue of Same Sky, a radical left-wing Thai journal, has been banned. The editor has been contacted by the police, who claim that the magazine (specifically its interview with Sulak Sivaraksa) constitutes lese majeste. The banned issue examines the business interests of the Thai monarchy, and its cover illustration (an adaption of the Coca-Cola logo) presents the royal family as a corporation.