30 September 2009
2009 Bangkok International Film Festival
The Festival also included Lars von Trier's provocative Antichrist (25th and 26th September), Giorgos Lanthimos's similarly explicit Dogtooth (26th and 29th September), Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces (28th and 29th September), and Pen-ek Ratanaruang's Nymph (the short version rather than the Cannes version; 27th and 29th September). (Pen-ek's Ploy was screened in 2007, and his Invisible Waves opened the Festival in 2006.) The Festival's poster (Beauty Eternal) has been designed by Wisit Sasanatieng, who also designed the 2008 poster.
24 September 2009
Celebration
The double-disc album track-list is: Hung Up, Music, Vogue, Four Minutes, Holiday, Everybody, Like A Virgin, Into The Groove, Like A Prayer, Ray Of Light, Sorry, Express Yourself, Open Your Heart, Borderline, Secret, Erotica, Justify My Love, Revolver, Dress You Up, Material Girl, La Isla Bonita, Papa Don't Preach, Lucky Star, Burning Up, Crazy For You, Who's That Girl, Frozen, Miles Away, Take A Bow, Live To Tell, Beautiful Stranger, Hollywood, Die Another Day, Don't Tell Me, Cherish, and Celebration. A single-disc version is also available, with fewer tracks. It's So Cool is available as a digital bonus track.
The video track-list is: Hung Up, Music, Vogue, Four Minutes, Holiday, Like A Virgin, Into The Groove, Like A Prayer, Ray Of Light, Sorry, Express Yourself, Open Your Heart, Borderline, Secret, Erotica, Justify My Love, Material Girl, La Isla Bonita, Papa Don't Preach, Lucky Star, Burning Up, Crazy For You, Who's That Girl, Frozen, Miles Away, Take A Bow, Beautiful Stranger, Hollywood, Die Another Day, Don't Tell Me, Cherish, Celebration, Deeper And Deeper, I'll Remember, Rain, Secret, Bedtime Stories, I Want You, You'll See, The Power Of Goodbye, American Pie, What It Feels Like For A Girl, Love Profusion, Get Together, Jump, Give It 2 Me, and True Blue.
Antichrist
The film is divided into a series of chapters, and also includes a prologue and epilogue. In the prologue, which is filmed in slow-motion and black-and-white, a man and woman have sex while their son falls to his death. The man, who is a psychotherapist, helps the woman overcome her grief (though his psychobabble is ineffective), and the couple take a trip to their cabin in the woods. The cabin is called Eden; the names of the protagonists are never revealed, though the Biblical reference is clear enough.
The woman is writing a thesis on gynocide (the systematic murder of women). 'Gynocide' was coined by the feminist writer Mary Daly in her excellent book Gyn/Ecology, though Antichrist is arguably an anti-feminist film. Like Eve, the woman becomes increasingly unsympathetic as a character, most obviously when she (unconvincingly) drills a hole through the man's leg. The film's ending suggests that, as in medieval witch trials, feminine evil must be destroyed.
Though most of the film is shot realistically with hand-held cameras and jump-cuts, there are some inexplicable fantasy sequences involving wild animals, notably a ludicrous talking fox who, in the director's voice, says "Chaos reigns!". There are also three close-up inserts which are included purely for shock value, featuring hardcore sex (as in The Idiots) and female circumcision.
22 September 2009
Sex No Go
The Lego picture actually shows two Israelites, and was created by The Brick Testament website; it was used as a Mohammed parody in 2006, one of many satirical Mohammed images produced following the controversy surrounding twelve Mohammed caricatures published by Jyllands-Posten.
Mohammed married Aisha when she was a child; their relationship has previously been portrayed in a Dutch cartoon and an American novel. Mohammed has also been depicted in other sexual situations: with Jesus, in a Canadian magazine; and with Jesus, Moses, and Buddha, in an Israeli magazine.
Bodyworlds
This year, two corpses posed in mid-coitus were added to the exhibition, though they had to be removed before the exhibition was shown in Cologne (Germany), Augsburg (Germany), and Zurich (Switzerland). (A Bodyworlds imitator, Our Body, was banned in France earlier this year.)
18 September 2009
The 100 Best Films
1. All About Eve
2. Double Indemnity
3. Singin' In The Rain
4. The Wild Bunch
5. The Lady Eve
6. The Battle Of Algiers
7. Great Expectations
8. Vertigo
9. The Conformist
10. Chinatown
11. Brief Encounter
12. Kind Hearts & Coronets
13. This Is Spinal Tap
14. The Night Of The Hunter
15. To Have & Have Not
16. The Godfather I-II
17. Notorious
18. Sweet Smell Of Success
19. A Man Escaped
20. Citizen Kane
21. The Big Sleep
22. Raging Bull
23. Sherlock Jr
24. The Third Man
25. The Rules Of The Game
26. Fear Eats The Soul
27. Casablanca
28. The Red Shoes
29. Alien
30. The Magnificent Ambersons
31. On The Waterfront
32. Groundhog Day
33. The Apartment
34. The Last Detail
35. Duck Soup
36. L'Enfant Sauvage
37. Manhattan
38. Once Upon A Time In America
39. Breathless
40. Blue Velvet
41. Taxi Driver
42. Oliver!
43. It Happened One Night
44. Nashville
45. L'Atalante
46. Touch Of Evil
47. Gone With The Wind
48. The Conversation
49. Sunset Boulevard
50. Meet Me In St Louis
51. Overlord
52. Ball Of Fire
53. Sullivan's Travels
54. There Will Be Blood
55. LA Confidential
56. His Girl Friday
57. The Chant Of Jimmie Blacksmith
58. The Fallen Idol
59. The Garden Of The Finzi-Continis
60. Psycho
61. The Life & Death Of Colonel Blimp
62. Toy Story
63. The Dark Mirror
64. Downfall
65. Tokyo Story
66. Rashomon
67. Wild Strawberries
68. Rebecca
69. Aguirre: The Wrath Of God
70. The Lost Weekend
71. Barry Lyndon
72. Smiles Of A Summer Night
73. In A Lonely Place
74. Rumble Fish
75. The Passion Of Joan Of Arc
76. The Deer Hunter
77. Rififi
78. The Lives Of Others
79. The Adventures Of Robin Hood
80. Duel
81. Mean Streets
82. The Lusty Men
83. The Searchers
84. The Reckless Moment
85. Ridicule
86. Diner
87. Peeping Tom
88. The Leopard
89. Trainspotting
90. La Kermesse Heroique
91. I Am Cuba
92. Nights Of Cabiria
93. Together
94. Picnic At Hanging Rock
95. Don't Look Now
96. Los Olividados
97. Election
98. Unforgiven
99. The Wages Of Fear
100. Army In The Shadows
10 September 2009
Bangkok International Animation Festival 2009
08 September 2009
1001 Movies
You Must See Before You Die
06 September 2009
Ponyo On The Cliff By The Sea
Miyazaki begins the film with a clear warning about marine pollution, depicting the sea and coastline littered with rubbish. Also notable is the portrayal of Sosuke's mother, Lisa; her frustration when she is late for work, and when her husband is late home, is surprisingly realistic, given the otherwise innocent nature of the film.
As in many of Miyazaki's films, there are magical elements which are never fully explained. Ponyo's father, for example, is a kind of Captain Nemo figure, a wizard who lives underwater; her mother is a sea goddess. At the end of the film, the wizard appears to rejuvenate a group of elderly people in a magical water-bubble, in an odd and surely unintentional echo of the film Cocoon.