The Departed

Martin Scorsese's latest film, The Departed, won 'best picture' at this year's Oscars (and Scorsese finally won 'best director'). Leonardo DiCaprio plays Costigan, an undercover cop who infiltrates the crew of gangster Frank Costello (played with enormous relish by Jack Nicholson). Matt Damon is Sullivan, Costello's protege, a mole in the Boston police department. The film is a remake of the Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs.

Scorsese has directed some of the most acclaimed (Taxi Driver and Raging Bull), and most controversial (The Last Temptation Of Christ) films of the past thirty years. He is primarily associated with gangster films such as Mean Streets, GoodFellas, and Casino. His Hollywood biopic The Aviator was unusually glamorous for a Scorsese film, though The Departed takes him back to gritty crime territory.

There are parallels with GoodFellas - both films begin with a young boy initiated into gangsterhood, then cut to him as a man (Ray Liotta in GoodFellas, and Matt Damon in The Departed). There are also references to the classic Warner gangster film Scarface, with an 'X' appearing as a backdrop whenever a character dies. The Third Man is also referenced, by the shadows on the wall as Costigan is chasing Sullivan and when Sullivan's girlfriend walks past him after a funeral.

The Departed is DiCaprio's third Scorsese film, after Gangs Of New York and The Aviator. This is his best performance for Scorsese thus far, certainly better than his cherubic, unconvincing role as Howard Hughes in The Aviator. In The Departed, DiCaprio's character has the widest emotional range, from psycho violence to paranoia to vulnerability, all of which he pulls off successfully. In contrast, Damon's character is simply required to look smug most of the time.

Scorsese was apparently happy to indulge Nicholson's wild improvisations. So, Costello grins that trademark Nicholson grin and takes coke by the handful. (Nicholson's most famous addition, a rubber prosthesis, was censored in Thai cinema prints.) This performance, in which, at one point, he is up to his elbows in blood, is the direct opposite of About Schmidt.

The supporting cast is equally impressive. Martin Sheen is totally convincing as middle-aged detective Queenan. Mark Wahlberg is Queenan's abrasive deputy, Dignam. Costello and Dignam both swear more explicitly, more profusely, and more inventively, than characters in any other American studio film.

Dial M For Murder (2D)

Dial M For Murder is a fascinating, though not premiere league, Alfred Hitchcock film. It was adapted from a play of the same name, and is classic Hitchcock material: the suave villain (played by Ray Milland) has hints of Charlie in Shadow Of A Doubt and Vandamm in North By Northwest, and the plot, involving a pact to murder a man's wife, is similar to Strangers On A Train.

The wife in question is Grace Kelly, the archetypal 'Hitchcock blonde'. Kelly worked with Hitchcock three times, on Dial M For Murder, Rear Window, and To Catch A Thief, and, of these, only Rear Window is truly outstanding, yet she has since become synonymous with the director's preferred female character: a blonde woman with a cool exterior and passion beneath the surface. It could be argued that, with his subsequent moulding of actresses (such as his total control over Tippi Hedren), he was attempting to recreate the Grace Kelly look (in the manner of Scottie in the quasi-autobiographical Vertigo).

In Dial M, Kelly wears pure white with her husband and bright red with her lover - a literal scarlet woman. As the film progresses and her plight increases, her clothes become increasingly plain. This choice of symbolic costumes was later echoed in Psycho, as Marion first appears in a white bra, though after she steals $40,000 she is seen in a black bra representing her loss of innocence.

Like Rope and Rear Window, Dial M's action is confined almost exclusively to a single apartment. It is one of Hitchcock's most theatrical films, with little attempt at innovative camera movement or montage. This style was dictated by the cumbersome 3D cameras used for the film. Hitchcock had no interest in 3D, though after the success of Bwana Devil, and with TV reducing cinema audiences, the studio requested that Dial M be a 3D film. Perhaps they wanted to lend credibility to the gimmicky format, which had previously been utilised only for cheap exploitation films.

Certainly, Dial M was one of the few prestige 3D productions. (I have only seen the 2D version, however.) Hitchcock framed the actors behind props such as lampshades and railings, to give a stereoscopic illusion of depth, and, during the murder scene, Kelly's hand reaches out into the audience in a dramatic 3D shock effect.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated

Kirby Dick's documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated is a critical examination of the MPAA, the organisation that controls America's film rating system. Ironically, it was submitted to the MPAA and rated 'NC-17', though the version in current circulation is longer than the original (with additional material concerning the director's reaction to his 'NC-17' rating), and is unrated

The MPAA (previously MPPDAA, whose founding president Will Hays instigated the prohibitive Hays Code in the 1930s) classifies films both at the cinema and on video (VHS, DVD, etc.). The organisation was established by the major Hollywood studios to self-regulate the film industry. Its current rating system dates from 1968, when increasing realism in studio films rendered the old Production Code obsolete.

MPAA film ratings are not a legal requirement, though in practice it is almost impossible for an unrated film to attract advertising or theatrical distribution. On video, unrated titles are not stocked by the largest chain stores, Blockbuster and Wal-Mart, as a matter of policy. So an MPAA rating is a commercial necessity.

The documentary concentrates almost exclusively on the 'NC-17' rating, which was introduced in 1990 as an alternative to the previous porn-tainted 'X' certificate. The problem with 'NC-17' films is the same as that of unrated films: mainstream media will not advertise them, and retailers will not sell them. Thus, 'NC-17' is a substantial commercial liability.

In the documentary, several filmmakers recount their frustrating experiences of receiving 'NC-17' ratings, unsuccessfully appealing against the decision, and cutting their films to reduce the rating from 'NC-17' to 'R'. (This was also the case with Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, and brief clips from the film are included in this documentary.) They contend that the MPAA operates a series of double standards regarding independent versus studio films and 'normal' versus 'unusual' sex scenes.

Matt Stone, co-creator of South Park, discusses his involvement with the MPAA both inside and outside the studio system. He submitted the independent film Team America and received an 'NC-17', and when he asked why, he was told that specific details could not be provided. However, when he later submitted South Park as a studio production, and again received an 'NC-17', he was given a specific list of cuts required to achieve an 'R'. This kind of preferential treatment for studio films has always been (unconvincingly) denied by the MPAA.

Less persuasive is a series of juxtaposed gay and straight sex scenes of roughly equal explicitness, the gay scenes being rated 'NC-17' and the straight scenes 'R'. The MPAA may well be homophobic and sexist, as the juxtaposition suggests, though the sex scenes included in the documentary are decontextualised, so we have no idea what specifically necessitated the 'NC-17' ratings. (Partly, of course, this is because the MPAA does not disclose specific rating criteria.)

Generally, the MPAA tolerates graphic violence yet forbids sex and nudity. In contrast, the BBFC (Britain's classification board) takes the opposite approach. The MPAA is also more secretive than the BBFC. Jack Valenti, MPAA president from 1966-2004, was the public face of the organisation, defending its decisions though refusing to open it up to scrutiny. James Ferman, BBFC president from 1975-1999, similarly personally courted the media yet maintained the privacy of the BBFC itself. Now, however, the BBFC is a much more open organisation, while the MPAA still refuses to let down its guard.

Kirby Dick challenges the secrecy of the MPAA by hiring a private investigator to uncover the names of the raters who decide each film's classification. The investigator stakes out the MPAA headquarters, following raters and filming them surreptitiously, even going through their rubbish bins in the middle of the night. No laws are broken during the investigation, though when the same tactics were used by the Daily Mail on the BBFC in 1996 (after Crash was passed for UK exhibition), they were strongly condemned.

An 'NC-17' is box-office poison in America, though the reason for this (as A Dirty Shame director John Waters points out in the documentary) is not the rating itself but the stigma attached to the rating (the same stigma associated with the previous 'X' rating), with distributors bowing to conservative/religious pressure-groups. If retailers stocked 'NC-17' films, the rating would be largely unproblematic. The alternative, to rate every adult film 'R', is unsatisfactory, as children can see 'R'-rated films if accompanied by adult guardians. Adding an extra classification, to denote explicit art films, is un-necessary, as that was the purpose of the 'NC-17' classification in the first place.

Jerry Maguire

Tom Cruise is Jerry Maguire, a ruthless sports agent who has an epiphany. He writes a long "mission statement", accusing his company of chasing profits at the expense of quality service. Naturally, he's fired soon after, and sets himself up as an independent agent. After his dismissal, he calls his old clients to reassure them that he is still in business, though only Rod Tidwell (played by Cuba Gooding Jnr) sticks with him. (This is the scene with "Show me the money!", one of the most famous lines in contemporary cinema.)

With a single client (Tidwell) and a single assistant (Dorothy Boyd, played by Renee Zellweger), Maguire seems washed up, but all 3 of them are determined to make it work. And, of course, they do. But this is more than the usual love-against-the-odds, anti-corporate-greed story. Renee Zellweger is genuinely moving as Dorothy, Jonathan Lipnicki is great (and never annoying, unlike many child actors) as her young son, and Cruise's familiar cocky smiles are at least in keeping with his character. (He has plenty to be cocky about, of course, being the world's most popular actor. But generally he's better in serious films like Magnolia.)

Cameron Crowe, who hasn't directed anything else this good since, has produced a long (but not over-long) and emotionally rich romantic comedy.

About Schmidt

About Schmidt (directed by Alexander Payne) stars Jack Nicholson as Walter Schmidt, an insurance actuary who reassesses his life following his retirement and the death of his wife.

Nicholson is almost unrecognisable as Schmidt. His trademark grin and wild mannerisms are gone, and his body language is totally transformed. If The Departed showed how manically excessive he can be, About Schmidt demonstrates that he can also be subtle and subdued. It must be one of his best performances since Chinatown and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. (When he orders a drink, the framing is the same as Nicholson's hotel bar scene in The Shining.)

Schmidt is a man who keeps his feelings to himself. It's a completely believeable against-type performance, capturing the frustration, bewilderment, and loneliness of late-middle-age. Only at the very end of the film is Schmidt given an emotional release, making this final scene incredibly moving.

The bland suburban locations (Colorado, Kansas, and Nebraska) and slow pacing add to the film's realism, as do the naturalistic performances of the supporting cast. Numerous tiny observations (such as Schmidt's wife holding his hand at his retirement party, and the answerphone cutting out before he can finish recording a message) combine to create a wonderful, sad, funny, character-driven film.

Scoop

Scoop is Woody Allen's second film set and filmed in London, after Match Point. Both films star Scarlett Johansson; in Scoop, she plays Sondra Pransky, a slightly nerdy journalism student.

Pransky volunteers to take part in a magic act and, when she is alone in the magician's cabinet, the ghost of a dead journalist (Joe Strombel, played by Ian McShane) appears to her. Strombel passes on a scoop that he was unable to follow up before he died: that aristocrat Peter Lyman (played by Hugh Jackman) may be the 'tarot card killer'.

With the magician (Splendini, played by Allen) in tow, Pransky tracks Lyman down and ingratiates herself with him, searching for clues to prove his guilt. There is, of course, incriminating circumstantial evidence, though as Pransky and Lyman fall for each other she becomes convinced that he is actually innocent.

Scoop is much lighter than Match Point, and this helps the film enormously. Whereas Match Point tried and failed to make serious moral observations, Scoop is content with one-liners and a Manhattan Murder Mystery-style plot. Also, the Londoners of Scoop are more authentic than those of Match Point - there are no unintentional laughs here, unlike the earlier film (though there are still a couple of clunky lines).

Magic has been a regular motif in Allen's films. In Oedipus Wrecks (part of New York Stories), a magician makes Allen's mother-in-law disappear, only for her to reappear as a vision in the sky. In The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion, a fraudulent magician hypnotises Allen and Helen Hunt. In his interview with Stig Bjorkman (Woody Allen On Woody Allen), Allen discusses his childhood interest in magic tricks and cites But We Need The Eggs, a book by Diane Jacobs about the magic in his films.

The Grim Reaper, who appeared in Allen's earlier Love & Death and his acerbic Deconstructing Harry, turns up again here, though this time in a silent role. As the Reaper carries the dead along the River Styx, Strombel swims away to warn Pransky and Splendini. McShane gives a great performance in this bit-part. It's a shame that several excellent actors, such as McShane and Anthony Head (as a police inspector at the end of the film), have such small roles.

The film is generally a lot of fun. There are some great one-liners: Allen says "I was born of the Hebrew persuasion, but I converted to narcissism". Allen's character at times seems like a mouthpiece for Allen himself (as in many of his other films): Splendini explains how much he likes staying in London, and how nice Londoners are, but how he couldn't live there permanently.

The only problem comes at the end, when a series of implausible events takes place: Allen's character dies in almost the same (ridiculous) manner as Bela Lugosi's character in Plan Nine From Outer Space, and it transpires (unconvincingly) that Lyman is a killer but isn't the tarot card killer.

The Aviator

The Aviator is one of Martin Scorsese's most unashamedly mainstream films. (Luckily, his long-awaited Oscar was for a grittier production, The Departed.) It's not traditional Scorsese territory, though neither were Kundun or The Age Of Innocence. Leonardo DiCaprio (who also starred in Scorsese's The Departed and Gangs Of New York) plays Howard Hughes in this biopic of the aviator/filmmaker.

Scorsese recreates the glitz of 1930s Hollywood, just as he did for 1970s Las Vegas in Casino. DiCaprio captures Hughes's determination and frustration, though you never quite forget that it's DiCaprio. Cate Blanchett is better, as the tomboyish, headstrong Katharine Hepburn.

The Last Temptation Of Christ

Director Martin Scorsese's film The Last Temptation Of Christ begins with a written disclaimer that it is based on the fictional events in Nikos Kazantzakis's novel, and not on the Gospels.

The last temptation of the title refers to the devil's temptation of Jesus on the cross, offering him the chance to live a normal life with a wife and children, renouncing the burden of redeption. Jesus is deceived by Satan, and we see him having sex with Mary Magdalene. This image caused fierce protests around the world when the film was originally released, though the film makes clear that it's only a dream.

Jesus has been represented as sexually active in a 19th Century illustration of a naked Theresa embracing Christ on the cross by Felicien Rops, the engraving Nuptials Of God (the church symbolised by a naked bride, kissing Christ on the cross; 1923) by Eric Gill, the novel The Escaped Cock (describing Christ's sexual relationship with Mary Magdalene, 1929) by DH Lawrence, and the film Jesus Vender Tilbage by Jens Jorgen Thorsen (1992). Bill Zebub's films Into Thy Hands (advertised as Jesus Christ: Serial Rapist, 2004) and The Worst Horror Movie Ever Made (2005) both feature Jesus as a rapist.

Meet The Parents

Meet The Parents was directed by Jay Roach, whose career consists almost entirely of Austin Powers films. But fortunately the main attraction here isn't the director, it's Robert De Niro, playing retired CIA agent Jack Byrnes.

Robert De Niro is one of the greatest American actors since Marlon Brando. His performances in The Godfather II, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and GoodFellas are incredible. He parodied his gangster image in the comedy Analyse This (as did Brando, in The Freshman), leading to a series of comedic roles in Meet The Parents and others.

Much of the comedy in Meet The Parents derives from De Niro's intimidation of Ben Stiller, who plays his prospective son-in-law. (Stiller's co-starring role, coupled with a cameo by Luke Wilson, makes this a Frat Pack film, and it's not unlike Wedding Crashers.) Stiller is great as the world's unluckiest man, and De Niro (clearly enjoying himself in the role) is hilarious.

A Dirty Shame

I'm a John Waters fan. I love his hilarious autobiography Shock Value, his no-holds-barred early films such as Pink Flamingos, and even his mainstream yet outrageous later films. But I just don't get the joke in A Dirty Shame.

After a perceived shift into tamer, conventional cinema ever since Hairspray (which has now become a Broadway musical, with Waters, like Warhol and Dali, turning himself into a brand), A Dirty Shame represents a reversion to the transgressive themes of his earliest work. The action takes place in suburban Baltimore (the director's home town), where residents alternate between repression and nymphomania whenever they are concussed. The nymphos are led by Ray-Ray, a Christ-like figure with healing powers (remember L'Age d'Or, with Jesus as a libertine?).

Waters seems to think that, by simply including terms such as 'sploshing' in the dialogue, he is somehow creating a scandal. (Anyway, the grossest terms have already been defined in The Aristocrats.) When he was promoting the film, he gave countless interviews in which he discussed all the naughty new practices he discovered on the internet. But I don't buy his faux naivete, and I can't imagine why he considers name-checking these terms even remotely taboo-breaking or daring.

รัฐประหาร 19 กันยา

รัฐประหาร 19 กันยา: รัฐประหารเพื่อระบอบประชาธิปไตยอันมีพระมหากษัตริย์ทรงเป็นประมุข, edited by Thanapol Eawsakul, is a new anthology of essays critical of last year's coup. It is published by Same Sky, publisher of a magazine that was banned last year.

The Queen

Helen Mirren plays Elizabeth II, and Michael Sheen plays Tony Blair, in The Queen, an account of the aftermath of Princess Diana's death. (Sheen has played Blair before, in the Channel 4 UK TV drama The Deal, from the same director and writer as The Queen.)

Director Stephen Frears takes us inside Balmoral and Downing Street to show us the private reactions of the Windsor and Blair families. Plausibility is maintained throughout, and the script was reputedly based on interviews with people closely connected to the real events. The Queen is stoical (maintaining the traditional British stiff upper lip), whereas Blair recognises that an emotional connection with the public is necessary. Against the advice of his wife and press secretary, Blair persuades the Queen to bow to tabloid pressure and pay tribute to Diana.

Living in Thailand gives a new perspective on royalty. Thai people are proud of their King and royal family, and public criticism of them is perhaps Thai society's greatest taboo. It would be impossible to make a film like this in Thailand about the Thai monarch, and I am even slightly surprised that it was made in England so soon after Diana's death, with Elizabeth II and Blair both still in power.

The Devil Wears Prada

The Devil Wears Prada is based on the novel of the same name by Lauren Weisberger, a thinly fictionalised account of her former boss, Vogue editor Anna Wintour.

Wintour is known for her impossible demands, glacial demeanor, and dark glasses, all of which are adopted by Meryl Streep in the lead role, Miranda Priestly, editor of the Vogue-esque magazine Runway. The film's central pleasure is Meryl Streep's performance - she's clearly having fun playing such an icy character

It's the basic fish-out-of-water plot: innocent girl moves to the big city and tries to fit in, then it starts to change her, and finally she realises she doesn't want to fit in after all. A similar tale of working for a bitchy Vogue editor was the basis of the Sex & The City episode A Vogue Idea, and it's no surprise that the director of The Devil Wears Prada, David Frankel, also directed several Sex & The City episodes.

Cassell's Dictionary Of Slang

Jonathon Green is probably the world's foremost authority on slang. His first comprehensive lexicon, The Cassell Dictionary Of Slang, was published in 1998. This new book is a revised and expanded second edition, with a slightly tweaked title.

The new title is subtly though surprisingly different. The first edition was published by Cassell, so the title made perfect sense, though this new edition is published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson, an imprint of Orion (Cassell's parent company). The name Cassell doesn't appear anywhere except in the title. Also, "Cassell's" implies that the book was written by Cassell, not published by them. (Compare The Oxford English Dictionary - it would never appear as Oxford's English Dictionary.)

The text has been thoroughly revised, with many words being dated more specifically, including substantial antedating. The entries and definitions have also been dramatically expanded, from 70,000 headwords in the first edition to 85,000 in the second. A typical example is the phrase 'done up like a kipper'. In the first edition, it was broadly dated to "20C" [20th century], and had only two definitions: "beaten up" and "caught red-handed". However, in the second edition, it has been dated more specifically as "1980s+", and an extra definition has been added: "utterly defeated".

There are, though, some inexplicable omissions. While there are thousands of new headwords, some old ones have gone. Turning to my favourite word, for example, an incredible forty-three new variants have been added to the second edition, though four have been mysteriously removed. Also, the (albeit limited) bibliography from the 1st edition has been deleted completely, replaced by a concise history of slang lexicography. (Green wrote a longer history of the subject in his excellent Chasing The Sun.)

JE Lighter's Historical Dictionary Of American Slang, a multi-volume work-in-progress, expects to define 35,000 headwords upon completion - less than half the number in Green's single volume. Green's work is also more geographically inclusive, covering English-language slang from all English-speaking nations, rather than limiting its scope only to America. The only other heavyweight modern slang lexicographer, the late Eric Partridge, died in 1979, though a new, two-volume edition of his Dictionary Of Slang & Unconventional English has recently been published (retitled the New Partridge Dictionary). This ninth edition runs to 65,000 headwords, though it concentrates solely on post-1945 vocabulary. Green, on the other hand, documents 500 years of slang.

Lighter's dictionary, and the two-volume edition of Partridge, are both based on historical principles - that is, they illustrate their definitions with citations, literary quotations to indicate usage in context. Green's single-volume dictionary does not include citations, for reasons of space, though the good news is that he is currently preparing his own multi-volume slang dictionary, on historical principles, with at least 100,000 headwords, to be published (hopefully) later this year.

Volver

Pedro Almodovar's latest film, Volver, features Penelope Cruz as a strong, determined woman coping in defiance of her circumstances. The Spanish verb 'volver' translates as 'to return', and what returns here is a cycle of male abuse and female retaliation passed from one generation to the next.

I wonder if it was really necessary for the events to be so completely circular. We already accept Cruz's character as empowered and resilient without the slightly cliched final revelation. Chinatown presented a similar plot point in a much more dramatic manner.

If not as profound as the devastating Talk To Her, Volver is still a moving portrait of female bonding, with a genuine sense of community spirit replacing the sexual comedy of much of Almodovar's earlier work.

Love & Death

Love & Death is one of Woody Allen's "early, funny" films (the ones his fans prefer in the introspective fantasy Stardust Memories). Allen's films are often stereotyped as contemporary New York stories, though Love & Death couldn't be more different: it's set in Russia during the Napoleonic invasion.

Allen plays Boris, a pacifist forcibly dispatched to the front line. His trademark existential angst is present, in endless debates on theology and moral philosophy. Much of the comedy comes from Allen's anachronisms - he mishears "takes lovers" as 'takes uppers', for example. The film works as a parody of Russian literature and cinema, notably a quick montage of lethargic lion statues in an echo of Battleship Potemkin.

The Love of the title is represented by Diane Keaton, and her and Allen's scenes together are a joy to watch. I've always thought she was much warmer and more emotional than Allen's later partner/co-star Mia Farrow.

Death is personified by the Grim Reaper himself, in an extended reference to The Seventh Seal culminating in a 'dance of death' at the end of the film. In Bergman's film, the Reaper has a rather refined voice, though Allen's Reaper has a much deeper intonation, a characteristic later borrowed by Monty Python for the booming Reaper in The Meaning Of Life. In a further Bergman reference, Allen frames intersecting female faces in a recollection of Persona.

Imagine The Sky

Kathmandu photography gallery is currently showing an exhibition by Kraisak Choonhavan titled Imagine The Sky (from 3rd February to 28th March).

Kraisak was a senator in the Thaksin government, and these images represent his frustration at the red tape which prevented him from generating any real changes. They were a private, stress-relieving Photoshop experiment until Kathmandu suggesting exhibiting them publicly.

Bangkok, like any city, is full of advertising billboards. Kraisak has used Photoshop to digitally remove some of this clutter and present idyllic images of an advertising-free Bangkok cityscape. He juxtaposes 'before' (real) and 'after' (Photoshopped) photographs, and the contrast is startling.

If you look up close at the 'after' images, imperfections in the digital manipulation are revealed, though the immediate effect is highly impressive. (Like Pop Art, these works should be seen from a reasonable distance, generating a sudden impact.)

The Confessions Tour

Madonna's Confessions Tour was released in a dual-format edition (CD and DVD) last month. Like I'm Going To Tell You A Secret, it features a CD with selected live tracks, though this time the DVD includes the complete concert (last year's Confessions Tour, filmed in London) with only minimal backstage rehearsal footage.

After the heavily re-edited Reinvention Tour extracts in the I'm Going To Tell You A Secret documentary, it's great to see the full Confessions Tour show on this new DVD. Madonna's voice sounds amazing (better than some of her previous tours), and, as in Reinvention, she is surrounded by dazzling video walls.

The show begins with the mediocre Future Lovers, though her performance is so good it makes you forget that the lyrics are nonsensical. Like A Virgin still sounds amazing after all these years (and was the only true classic missing from the Reinvention Tour).

The DVD set list is: Future Lovers, I Feel Love, Get Together, Like A Virgin, Jump, Confessions, Live To Tell, Forbidden Love, Isaac, Sorry, Like It Or Not, I Love New York, Ray Of Light, Let It Will Be, Drowned World/Substitute For Love, Paradise (Not For Me), Music Inferno, Erotica, La Isla Bonita, Lucky Star, and Hung Up. The concert was previously broadcast by NBC on 22nd November last year.

The CD track list is: Future Lovers, I Feel Love, Like A Virgin, Jump, Confessions, Isaac, Sorry, I Love New York, Let It Will Be, Music Inferno, Erotica, Lucky Star, and Hung Up.

Curse of the Golden Flower

Fifth Generation director Zhang Yimou’s latest film, Curse of the Golden Flower (满城尽带黄金甲), is the most expensive production in the history of the Chinese film industry. The budget, reportedly $45 million ($10 million more than the previous Chinese record-breaker, though less than half the cost of Titanic), was spent on recreating the opulence of 10th century China. Every surface of the imperial palace shimmers with iridescent decorations. The splendor of the film’s production design is matched by the gravitas of its superb cast, led by Chow Yun-Fat and Gong Li, two superstars of Asian cinema.

Emperor Ping is slowly poisoning his consort Phoenix, the Empress, whom he married not for love but for power (as she is the previous Emperor’s daughter). The Empress seeks solace in the arms of her stepson Wan, the Crown Prince, and plots to avenge her husband’s cruelty. She confides in Wan’s brother, Prince Jai, who promises to lead an army of 10,000 soldiers in a coup against the Emperor.

Exactly why the Emperor is poisoning his consort’s medication is never made clear, though we can infer that it’s a punishment for her (almost) incestuous infidelity. Though the Empress is aware of the poisoning, she is unable to stop it, as her medication is administered with clockwork regularity and scrutinised meticulously. We may marvel at the formal precision of decadent, ritualised palace life, though the stifling constraints of protocol are also self-evident.

The plotting and counter-plotting within the palace walls are Shakespearean in their machinations and repercussions, while the ensuing battle (between troops loyal to the Empress, led by Prince Yai, versus those of the Emperor) is operatic in scale. In these aspects, the film has echoes of Ran (乱), Akira Kurosawa’s samurai interpretation of King Lear.

The Emperor is portrayed as a power-crazed, cruel, and heartless man, though his consort’s is rather more complex. Restrained and symbolically imprisoned by her imperial position, she is a sympathetic character. However, her affair with her stepson and her relish at a devastating revelation she orchestrates suggest that she is not completely innocent herself. Their youngest son, Prince Yu, demonstrates a selfish ambition beneath his placid exterior, and eldest son Prince Wan’s actions are ruled by his loins rather than his head. In contrast, the principled middle son, Prince Yai, is the film’s hero.

The outcomes of the Emperor’s and Empress’s actions culminate in bloodshed on both an epic and intimate scale. Yet, despite a series of personal tragedies, the dynasty does not unravel, and imperial power is unassailable; the blood from the battle is (literally and metaphorically) swept under the carpet.

Despite a sword-fighting scene and the aforementioned battle sequence, this is not a martial-arts film in the same vein as Zhang’s earlier mega-budget (dapian) productions Hero (英雄) or House of Flying Daggers (十面埋伏). It marks a reunion between the director and his muse, Gong Li: she starred in several of his early films, and they had a long-lasting affair, though they separated personally and professionally in 1995.

Sweet & Savage

Sweet & Savage by Mark Goodall is the first book-length study of mondo cinema. Mondo films, starting with Mondo Cane in 1962, are sensationalist documentaries, often featuring exotic tribal rituals and/or Reality TV clips of bizarre/violent imagery.

This book discusses mondo thematically, with chapters devoted to shock scenes, sex, animals, and rituals. Each chapter begins with a short introductory essay, followed by detailed critiques of selected mondo films.

The book's main asset is its in-depth film reviews. Mondo milestones such as Mondo Cane and Africa Addio receive extensive and original discussion. However, while the key films are covered in-depth, there are many films given only cursory mentions or even omitted altogether.

Before Sweet & Savage, the only previous book to present a detailed account of mondo cinema was Killing For Culture. This earlier title [which is one of my all-time favourite film books] included a chapter giving a chronological history of mondo cinema and another chapter concentrating on death in mondo films.

Killing For Culture has almost 100 pages devoted to mondo, approximately one third of the book's total length. Sweet & Savage has only 160 pages in total. Sweet & Savage provides original insights into the most successful mondo films, though it does not have the sheer density of research displayed by Killing For Culture.

Mother India

Indian artist MF Husain has gone into self-imposed exile in Dubai, after a ruling that his painting Mother India was sacrilegious. The painting, a nude portrait of India's mother-goddess Bharat Mata, provoked criticism when it was published by India Today on 6th February. (Husain previously caused controversy by quoting from the Koran in his song Noor-Un-Ala, from the soundtrack to his film Meenaxi.)

Art & Obscenity

This book is so new that its copyright page says "Published in 2007". It's a short though dense overview of transgression, abjection, violence, and death in the arts. The author, Kerstin Mey, discusses obscenity in art photography and performance art, and her study is valuable as it's the first of its kind. She covers all the main bases - Julia Kristeva, Georges Bataille, Hermann Nitsch, Carolee Schneemann, Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano, Ron Athey - and it's exciting to see them all discussed together.

Idomeneo

Idomeneo, the previously banned opera directed by Hans Neuenfels, was performed yesterday at Deutsche Oper Berlin. It will be performed again on 29th December. A triumph for freedom of expression!

Performances of the opera (written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1781) opera originally scheduled for November were cancelled following advice from the German police, as the Neuenfels production includes a scene featuring the decapitated heads of Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, and Poseidon. The production was performed in 2003, though it was initially felt that a revival this year may incite Muslim protests and thus put the safety of the performers and audience at risk. There were no reports of disturbances yesterday, however.

Women In A Society Of Double-Sexuality

Tang, Bangkok's gallery of contemporary Chinese art, is currently showing an exhibition titled Women In A Society Of Double-Sexuality. The exhibition features paintings, photographs, sculptures, and videos by thirteen female Chinese artists, most notably Chen Lingyang's photographic series Twelve Flower Months (2000).

Twelve Flower Months is a collection of a dozen images, each depicting a different flower. Each photograph was taken as the artist was menstruating, and her menstrual blood is visible in each image, as it trickles down her leg or stains her crotch. The age-old fear of menstrual blood, perhaps the most potent cultural taboo, is directly challenged.

Chen was interviewed for the fascinating Channel 4 programme Beijing Swings in 2003 and she discussed the deeply personal nature of Twelve Flower Months. The exhibition runs from yesterday until 20th January 2007.

1001 MoviesYou Must See Before You Die

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, edited by Steven Jay Schneider, has been revised again. A handful of films have been removed from the last edition, published in 2005, replaced by new entries in this 2006 edition.

Again the deleted films and their replacements are all very recent. Casualties this time include important films such as City Of God, Hero, Russian Ark, and Kill Bill I. Also, many of the new entries added to the 2005 edition have been deleted from this 2006 edition! Personally, I prefer the 2005 version.

Colour Me Kubrick

The film Colour Me Kubrick is a comedy about Alan Conway (played by John Malkovich), a conman who spent several years in the 1990s pretending to be Stanley Kubrick. It was surprisingly easy for Conway to use Kubrick's name whenever he wanted a free meal or a sexual favour. He met men in bars, introduced himself as Kubrick, promised them acting roles, and seduced them.

Alan Conway died in 1999 (as did Kubrick), and this film is based on a newspaper interview he gave after his con was discovered. The credits call it "A true...ish story", and with such limited source material it's not surprising that they invented much of the plot themselves.

The poster tagline is clumsy: "They wanted something for nothing. He gave them nothing for something". The only original music is an overly literal song by Bryan Adams: "I'm not the man you think I am...". The cast-list reads like a roll-call of mediocre 1980s British TV: Honor Blackman, Peter Bowles, Leslie Phillips, Robert Powell, and the appalling 'comedian' Jim Davidson.

The running-time is less than ninety minutes. The repetitive plot features Conway meeting people, schmoozing them, then moving on to someone else. The film relies entirely on John Malkovich's performance, though it gives him nothing to work with as there's no depth to the character.

The script was written by Anthony Frewin, one of Kubrick's personal assistants (who also wrote the book Are We Alone?). The director, Brian W Cook, was Kubrick's assistant director. Maybe they think that, by portraying Conway as a sleazy opportunist, they are avenging Conway on Kubrick's behalf, but the result is simply exploitative.

Alan Conway's story is a fascinating one. It's amazing that he could pass himself off as Kubrick for so long, and although he was motivated by financial and sexual gain, there are presumably also some psychological reasons for his actions. Whatever they may be, there are no insights into them in this film, only cheap laughs. It's pretty tasteless to make a comedy about Conway - the man was mentally unbalanced, after all.

Colour Me Kubrick currently has no theatrical or video distribution in either the US or UK. It's hard to see it, but it's not hard to see why. Conway was interviewed by Channel 4 for a short documentary called The Man Who Would Be Kubrick (1999) - it lasts for less than fifteen minutes, but it tells us more about Conway than Colour Me Kubrick does.

Le Cinema En 100 Films

Le Cinema En 100 Films, by Thomas Leroux, is a guide to 100 classic films. The book was published last year, and has now been republished and retitled Les 100 Films De L'Histoire Du Cinema. Leroux previously compiled a list of 120 classic films, L'Indispensable Du Cinema En 120 Films, in 2002. (The 100 films are listed alphabetically, according to their French-language titles.)

Ayodhya

Following the banning of Idomeneo in Berlin, another opera has been censored, this time here in Bangkok. Ayodhya, Somtow Sucharitkul's operatic interpretation of the epic poem Ramayana, was performed in Bangkok on three nights last week. Each of the performances was censored following intense pressure from the Ministry of Culture.

The opera's final scene, as originally staged, included one character, the demon Thotsakan, being fatally wounded. However, the Thai Ministry declared that, according to the tradition of 'khon' dance-drama, it is bad luck to depict Thotsakan's death, therefore they would not permit it in Ayodhya (even though Ayodhya is an opera, not a khon performance). Somtow, who has an extremely high reputation in Thailand and internationally, did initially fight the decision, though he later reluctantly caved in.

Phantasmagoria

Marina Warner's non-fiction books are an ideal combination of fascinating subject-matter (contemporary mythology) and diverse sources (drawing references from across the spectrum of culture). The themes she discusses are often ecclectic. For instance, her history of ogres and monsters, No Go The Bogeyman, includes an appendix titled Going Bananas, discussing the cultural history of the banana.

Her examples are equally wide-ranging, as she cites classical references alongside fine art and contemporary popular culture. For me, it is this inclusivity that makes her such an interesting writer. She demonstrates a scholarly understanding of ancient historical sources, yet is also at ease when discussing 21st century media.

Warner's latest book, Phantasmagoria, is a study of visual representation of supernatural, ephemeral phenomena. She examines historical representations of the soul and spirit, from wax death masks to psychic photographers and zombie cinema. Again, the most impressive feature is the sheer range of both subject-matter (including ghosts, mirrors, ectoplasm, and the apocalypse) and references (from Ovid to MMORPGs).

Phantasmagoria's chapter on the Rorschach inkblot test is especially fascinating because it suggests several progenitors of abstract art. Herrmann Rorschach's inkblots were purely abstract shapes, though they were designed not as art but as psychological tools, as patients were asked to discern form and meaning from the symmetrical patterns. Rorschach's research [try saying that as a tongue-twister] began in 1921 (after abstract art had established itself), though more interesting are the earlier, similar experiments of Justinus Kerner.

Kerner also produced abstract, symmetrical inkblots (much earlier than Rorschach, from circa 1853 onwards), though he then added eyes, limbs, and other recognisable features, transforming them from abstract blobs to figurative images. These designs were known collectively as 'klecksographien'.

The real revelation, though (at least to me), is the work of Victor Hugo, who painted abstract images in ink circa 1850-1870. Hugo's 'tache' stain-paintings were created from random splashes of ink, prefiguring Abstract Expressionism by 100 years.

The birth of abstraction in art is generally dated to the first decade of the 20th century. In 1908, Wilhelm Worringer published Abstraction & Empathy, and there was an explosion of geometric abstraction in painting circa 1913, including works by Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrain, Frantisek Kupka, Fernand Leger, Robert Delaunay, and Kazimir Malevich. Of these artists, Kandinsky is most often singled out as the father of abstraction.

Kupka's Amorpha: Fugue In Two Colours (1912) is regularly cited as the earliest abstract painting, though in fact it is a depiction of movement, thus not strictly abstract (though perhaps Futurist?). Arnaldo Ginna's 1908 painting Nevrastenia has been described as "probably the first abstract painting in the history of Western art" (in Cartoons, by Giannalberto Bendazzi).

However, the random tache paintings of Victor Hugo predate all these examples of abstract art. Hugo even titled one such painting Abstract Composition, and, while it is undated, it was probably produced in the early 1870s. The origin of abstraction is one of the most fascinating aspects of modern art, and perhaps Victor Hugo's Abstract Composition is the earliest candidate?

Canon Fodder

The September-October issue of the journal Film Comment contains a lengthy article by Paul Schrader, titled Canon Fodder. In the article, Schrader attempts something never previously tackled at such length: he explores the history of, and criteria for, a canonical list of necessary films.

There have been many previous attempts at compiling 'definitive' lists of classic films, sometimes selected by public votes, sometimes chosen by individuals or panels of critics, and sometimes distilled from polls of critics and directors. I identified the most frequent types last year. The acknowledged leader in the field is Sight & Sound's list of ten 'greatest films of all time', chosen by hundreds of international critics and published every decade (most recently in 2002); Citizen Kane has remained at the top of their list ever since 1962.

In his article, Schrader traces the fascinating history of the notion of artistic and literary canons. Inspired by Harold Bloom's The Western Canon, he then proposes and explains a series of criteria by which to judge the films of the past 100 years: beauty ("the bedrock of all judgments of taste"), strangeness ("unpredictable burst of originality"), unity of form and subject-matter ("this traditional yardstick of artistic value"), tradition ("The greatness of a film or filmmaker must be judged not only on its own terms but by its place in the evolution of film"), repeatability ("appreciated by successive generations, it grows in importance and context with time"), viewer engagement ("The great film not only comes at the viewer, it draws the viewer toward it"), and morality ("Good or bad resonance [is] beside the point. The point is that no work that fails to strike moral chords can be canonical").

Schrader is consciously elitist in his choices ("to counter the proliferation of popularity-driven lists"), and he also eschews auteurism ("I'd like to concentrate on films, not filmmakers"). Furthermore, he maintains that canons need not contain 'equal opportunities' quotas ("Genre and subject matter don't matter; nor do the age, race, and sex of the filmmakers"). His list is divided into three tiers:

Gold

1. The Rules Of The Game
2. Tokyo Story
3. City Lights
4. Pickpocket
5. Metropolis
6. Citizen Kane
7. Orphee
8. Masculin-Feminin
9. Persona
10. Vertigo
11. Sunrise
12. The Searchers
13. The Lady Eve
14. The Conformist
15. 8½
16. The Godfather
17. In The Mood For Love
18. The Third Man
19. Performance
20. La Notte

Silver

21. Mother & Son
22. The Leopard
23. The Dead
24. 2001: A Space Odyssey
25. Last Year At Marienbad
26. The Passion Of Joan Of Arc
27. Jules & Jim
28. The Wild Bunch
29. All That Jazz
30. The Life Of Oharu
31. High & Low
32. Sweet Smell Of Success
33. That Obscure Object Of Desire
34. An American In Paris
35. Salvatore Giuliano
36. Taxi Driver
37. Ali: Fear Eats The Soul
38. Blue Velvet
39. Crimes & Misdemeanors
40. The Big Lebowski

Bronze

41. The Red Shoes
42. Singin' In The Rain
43. Chinatown
44. The Crowd
45. Sunset Boulevard
46. Talk To Her
47. Shanghai Express
48. Letter From An Unknown Woman
49. Once Upon A Time In The West
50. Voyage In Italy
51. Nostalghia
52. Seven Men From Now
53. Claire's Knee
54. Earth
55. Gun Crazy
56. Out Of The Past
57. Children Of Paradise
58. The Naked Spur
59. A Place In The Sun
60. The General

(In Film Comment's printed list, #35 and #50 were incorrect. Schrader wrote an erratum in the current issue, and the list above is the correct version.)

The Unseeable

The Unseeable, the new film by Wisit Sasanatieng, is a ghost story set in 1930s Bangkok. A pregnant woman, Nualjan, has come to the city in search of her missing husband, and she stays as a guest in a run-down old mansion owned by the elusive Madame Ranjuan. The house and its grounds are haunted by a child, a hanged woman, and a gardener (amongst others), and the atmosphere is decidedly creepy. This is a traditional haunted house, complete with billowing curtains and creaking doors.

Nualjan is intimidated by the housemaid, Somjit, who is seemingly lifted straight out of Rebecca, with her high-necked black dress, stern demeanor, and sudden appearances. Indeed, the mansion in The Unseeable has a backstory and presence as foreboding as that of Rebecca's Manderley, and Ranjuan and Rebecca exert a similarly all-embracing power over their respective homes.

The film's twist ending is similar to that of Art Of The Devil II, and The Unseeable was actually written by one of that film's directors, Kongkiat Khomsiri. The film's Thai-language title literally translates as 'having an affair with a ghost', which gives a fairly large hint. There is such a rapid series of expositional twists in the final reel that, rather than explaining everything, it all becomes more confusing.

The Unseeable is markedly different from Wisit's previous films, the brightly-coloured, camp melodrama Tears Of The Black Tiger and the modern fairy-tale Citizen Dog. The over-saturated colours are gone, replaced by a palette of muted browns evoking 1930s interiors. Much of the film takes place at night, in another contrast to the bright daylight of his previous work. (Though Wisit is popular on the international festival circuit, his films are a bit too quirky for domestic audiences. This may change with The Unseeable.)

Wisit wrote the script for Nang Nak, a hugely popular film about a man who doesn't realise that his wife is a ghost, and Thai cinema has been flooded with ghost films ever since. The Unseeable is therefore a 'safe', commercial choice, but Wisit is by no means selling out. It may be yet another Thai ghost story, though its period atmosphere seems to be frozen in time (particularly as its spectral conclusion implies the cyclical nature of the story).

Koranen & Profeten Muhammeds Liv

The project which led to the Jyllands-Posten Mohammed caricatures has now been published in Denmark. Kare Bluitgen's complaint that no-one would illustrate his book Koranen & Profeten Muhammeds Liv prompted Jyllands-Posten to commission twelve highly controversial Mohammed caricatures, though Bluitgen has now found an anonymous illustrator who agreed to draw Mohammed for his book.

Stanley Kubrick

The Stanley Kubrick exhibition, previously held in Germany, has moved to Ghent in Belgium. It is on show at the city's Caermersklooster from 5th October this year until 7th January 2007.

I saw the exhibition with my friend and fellow Kubrick obsessive, Filippo Ulivieri, which was the best possible way to see it. It features props from each of Kubrick's films, including iconic items such as the typewriter from The Shining and the 'starchild' from 2001. There are also pages from Kubrick's notebooks and scripts, and hundreds of previously unseen Kubrick photos.

Deia

Two days ago, the satirical Spanish magazine Deia published a collage of Spain's King Juan Carlos, showing him drooling victoriously after shooting a bear which had been subdued with a barrel of vodka. The image is a reference to an alleged hunting incident in which the King apparently killed a drunken bear. Legal proceedings have been instigated against the magazine, and it may face charges of lèse-majesté.

Blasphemy

Blasphemy, by S Brent Plate, is the first-ever full-length study of blasphemous art. It begins with a lengthy, though generalised, account of the Mohammed cartoons controversy, and is profusely illustrated (including small reproductions of a few of the Mohammed caricatures, though none of the subsequent cartoons inspired by them).

Most of the illustrations, though, are not really blasphemous. Several, such as works by Jake and Dinos Chapman, Marcus Harvey, and others, have no relation to blasphemy at all. A chapter on flag desecration seems extraneous (and the subject, along with modern American examples of artistic blasphemy, was discussed in Steven C Dubin's excellent book Arresting Images).

Potentially blasphemous art representing Jesus as sexually active (such as The Last Temptation Of Christ) is glossed over or excluded. The author explains that he has concentrated solely on visual art, though I'm still surprised that he didn't find room to even briefly mention the novel The Satanic Verses or the poem The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name, which are perhaps the most famous examples of blasphemous art in the UK.

Horror

Horror: The Definitive Guide To The Cinema Of Fear is a new book about horror cinema. Not just any book, mind you, but the Definitive Guide (or so it proclaims). Any book with the word definitive in its title is asking for trouble, because the author's idea of definitive may not be the same as the reader's.

In this case, the authors are James Marriott and Kim Newman. Or rather, Marriott is editor and principal contributor, Newman wrote introductory essays to each chapter, and six others wrote reviews and shorter essays. It's rather misleading that Marriott and Newman are the only names on the cover, especially because they are not credited as editors - the cover implies that they are co-authors, which is not strictly true.

Newman is one of the very best writers on horror cinema, and his essays in this new book (overviews of the genre in each decade) are excellent. (He also wrote Nightmare Movies, a comprehensive study of the modern horror film.) It's a shame, therefore, that he didn't write any of the chronological film reviews that make up the bulk of the book.

The format is very clearly modelled on Horror: The Aurum Film Encyclopedia, edited by Phil Hardy. Hardy's more comprehensive book also concentrated on film reviews in chronological order, punctuated by overview essays introducing each decade. (Newman contributed many reviews to the second edition of Hardy's encyclopedia.)

The Top 100 Movies Of All Time

Readers of Total Film magazine have voted for The Top 100 Movies Of All Time, as follows:

1. Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back
2. Fight Club
3. Pulp Fiction
4. The Lord Of The Rings III: The Return Of The King
5. The Shawshank Redemption
6. GoodFellas
7. The Godfather
8. The Lord Of The Rings I: The Fellowship Of The Ring
9. Jaws
10. Donnie Darko
11. Star Wars IV: A New Hope
12. The Usual Suspects
13. The Matrix
14. Raiders Of The Lost Ark
15. Seven
16. The Godfather II
17. Gladiator
18. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
19. Aliens
20. Sin City
21. The Lord Of The Rings II: The Two Towers
22. LA Confidential
23. Taxi Driver
24. Die Hard
25. Batman Begins
26. Back To The Future
27. Schindler’s List
28. Spider-Man II
29. The Big Lebowski
30. Heat
31. Reservoir Dogs
32. Blade Runner
33. Terminator II: Judgment Day
34. Alien
35. X-Men II
36. Annie Hall
37. Leon
38. Casablanca
39. Apocalypse Now
40. Memento
41. Jurassic Park
42. It’s A Wonderful Life
43. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
44. Monty Python & The Holy Grail
45. The Third Man
46. The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
47. Toy Story II
48. A Clockwork Orange
49. Moulin Rouge!
50. The Apartment
51. The Wild Bunch
52. ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
53. Trainspotting
54. Raging Bull
55. City Of God
56. Stand By Me
57. The Thing
58. Scarface
59. Airplane!
60. The Silence Of The Lambs
61. Blue Velvet
62. Seven Samurai
63. Citizen Kane
64. 2001: A Space Odyssey
65. Shaun Of The Dead
66. Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl
67. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
68. Lawrence Of Arabia
69. Halloween
70. The Searchers
71. Rocky
72. Once Upon A Time In The West
73. Platoon
74. Kill Bill I
75. Magnolia
76. The Deer Hunter
77. The Shining
78. American Beauty
79. Fargo
80. Chinatown
81. Saving Private Ryan
82. Vertigo
83. King Kong
84. Goldfinger
85. The Wizard Of Oz
86. Dawn Of The Dead
87. Requiem For A Dream
88. The Terminator
89. Psycho
90. Brokeback Mountain
91. Dr. Strangelove
92. The Bourne Supremacy
93. The Incredibles
94. Some Like It Hot
95. Spirited Away
96. Rear Window
97. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
98. This Is Spinal Tap
99. Forrest Gump
100. The Exorcist

This list follows the magazine's previous list of 2005, the difference being that the earlier selection was chosen by the magazine's writers whereas the new list was voted for by the magazine's readers.

There are more sequels and remakes in this new list, and fewer world cinema titles. It's depressing that King Kong is the Peter Jackson remake, not the original. Similarly, Scarface is the remake instead of the original. On the other hand, Psycho is the original version. Some Like It Hot is the 1959 comic masterpiece, not the obscure 1939 comedy.

Cars

Cars is the latest computer-animated film from Pixar, the studio who pioneered feature-length computer-animation with Toy Story. John Lasseter, who directed Toy Story, also directed Cars.

There is some extremely realistic animation, especially the Route 66 background landscapes and the gleaming car chassis. The plot is entertaining enough, though it's nothing more than the traditional Disney morality tale of a self-centered character (in this case, a racing car named Lightning McQueen) who must learn the value of friendship and community.

Shaun Of The Dead

Shaun Of The Dead has defined a new film sub-genre: rom-zom-com (romantic zombie comedy). It's directed by Edgar Wright, who previously worked on UK TV sitcoms such as Spaced. The lead actor (and co-writer) is Simon Pegg, who was also a Spaced cast-member.

Pegg plays Shaun, whose dull life is interrupted by a plague of slow-moving zombies (a la Dawn Of The Dead). However, because he's so used to seeing drunks and beggars on the streets, he doesn't realise that they are actually zombies. Several scenes show people going about their daily lives in a state of somnambulistic catatonia - are the undead zombies really any different from these mindless commuters?

100 Landmark Films

The 2007 edition of the annual Radio Times Guide To Films includes a list of 100 Landmark Films, as follows (in chronological order):

• A Trip To The Moon
• Life Of An American Fireman
• The Birth Of A Nation
• Intolerance
• The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari
• Nanook Of The North
• Nosferatu
• Battleship Potemkin
• The Gold Rush
• Metropolis
• The General
• It
• The Jazz Singer
• Napoleon
• Un Chien Andalou
• Man With A Movie Camera
• Frankenstein
• M
• Scarface
• Ecstasy
• 42nd Street
• King Kong
• The Private Life Of Henry VIII
• L'Atalante
• Becky Sharp
• Triumph Of The Will
• The Story Of A Cheat
• Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs
• Bringing Up Baby
• Gone With The Wind
• The Rules Of The Game
• Stagecoach
• Fantasia
• Citizen Kane
• The Maltese Falcon
• Cat People
• Rome: Open City
• It's A Wonderful Life
• Song Of The South
• Bicycle Thieves
• Rashomon
• M. Hulot's Holiday
• The Robe
• Les Diaboliques
• On The Waterfront
• Rebel Without A Cause
• The Court Jester
• Vertigo
• Breathless
• The 400 Blows
• Psycho
• Victim
• Dr No
• A Fistful Of Dollars
• A Hard Day's Night
• Blow-Up
• Persona
• Bonnie & Clyde
• The Chelsea Girls
• In The Heat Of The Night
• The Graduate
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
• Easy Rider
• A Clockwork Orange
• Get Carter
• Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
• Deep Throat
• Pink Flamingos
• The Poseidon Adventure
• The Exorcist
• Mean Streets
• The Godfather II
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
• Jaws
• Nashville
• Picnic At Hanging Rock
• Rocky
• Annie Hall
• Star Wars IV: A New Hope
• Halloween
• National Lampoon's Animal House
• Superman
• Alien
• Blade Runner
• ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
• Tron
• This Is Spinal Tap
• Blue Velvet
• Withnail & I
• Do The Right Thing
• Jurassic Park
• Pulp Fiction
• Toy Story
• Ring
• The Celebration
• The Blair Witch Project
• The Matrix
• Shrek
• Brokeback Mountain

Note that The Maltese Falcon is the John Huston version, which is actually a remake of an earlier (and inferior) Roy Del Ruth film; Frankenstein is the superior James Whale version, not the Thomas Edison silent version.

Good Boy

Michael Dickinson has been acquitted of all charges relating to his collage Best In Show. However, he now faces similar charges in relation to a new work, Good Boy, again portraying Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as a dog. Last year, another Turkish cartoonist was fined for portraying Erdoğan as a cat.

Advertising Is Dead

Advertising Is Dead: Long Live Advertising! is Tom Himpe's new survey of unconventional advertising campaigns. As Naomi Klein explained in No Logo, commercialism and branding are increasingly dominating every available surface area, and Himpe presents some of the most unusual and inventive examples of this visual space invasion. (Klein and Himpe are, of course, writing from opposite ideological positions: Klein condems branding, whereas Himpe actively promotes it.)

Himpe is an advertising copywriter, and his book is primarily a manual for other creatives on how to produce distinctive campaigns. For general readers outside the industry, the book's illustrations of specific adverts serve as the first detailed overview of this new field of graphic design.

Exactly how to label this new field is a matter of debate. 'Ambient advertising' suggests an encroachment into new territories and environments, as advertising appropriates non-traditional spaces (i.e., beyond billboards). 'Guerrilla advertising' implies a certain subterfuge or underhand unconventionality. Himpe cites both labels, and others, though doesn't settle for any of them as an umbrella term. (Tony Kaye's preferred term, 'hype art', is unfortunately not included.)

Advertising Is Dead's only serious rival is Guerrilla Advertising, from increasingly interesting art publisher Laurence King. However, its selection of examples is far less interesting than Himpe's (the only exception being Red Bull in Worms 3D, the first example of computer game product-placement, which is covered in Guerrilla Advertising though not by Himpe).

The book organises its examples into a series of fascinating categories, including Intrusion (unconventional spaces, such as the Hans Brinker hotel logo pinned to dog excrement on the street), Transformation (metamorphosis, for example the Volkswagen ice sculpture parked in London for a day), Installation (a huge pile of empty plastic bottles in Cape Town, resembling a scene from the Thai film Citizen Dog), Illusion (trompe l'oeil effects, such as a Nike poster whose perspective matches its surroundings), and Sensation (campaigns which interact with our senses, as in the cinema air-conditioner suffused with Panettone in Brazil).

Advertising Is Dead is not a definitive survey of ambient/guerrilla campaigns, though it is the first detailed study. The examples occupy the majority of the book, with little real analysis or history. (A comprehensive account is yet to be written; indeed, there has not yet been a comprehensive history of advertising in general published so far.) As a sourcebook of illustrations, it's unsurpassed, although my favourite example is sadly not included: the Puma contact-lenses worn by Linford Christie in 1996, surely the most ingenious instance of branded space.

Holy War

In January, Fresh Baked Video Games, a programme on American channel Spike TV, created a trailer for a fake computer game called Holy War, in which various religious figures fight to the death. One sequence showed Mohammed defeating Mormon founder Joseph Smith, and another featured Moses beheading Mohammed.
The Holy War sequence was broadcast after the Jyllands-Posten Mohammed caricatures were published, though before their international condemnation.

World Trade Center

World Trade Center is Oliver Stone's take on the New York terrorist attacks of '9/11' (11th September 2001). Stone is really the only director with the pedigree for such a project, as he has previously tackled major American political events such as the Vietnam war (Platoon and Born On The 4th Of July), the Kennedy assassination (JFK), and Watergate (Nixon).

The difference this time is that Stone's film has no agenda. He is at his best with provocative historical revisionism, most notably in JFK, though with World Trade Center he takes no stand and instead depoliticises his subject-matter.

Kubrick once commented that although the Holocaust involved the deaths of millions of Jews, Schindler's List was instead about hundreds of Jews who survived. The same argument can be used in the case of World Trade Center: 2,602 people were killed in New York, though the film is primarily about two people who lived. The film does not successfully convey the scale of the devastation in New York and across America. The impacts of the planes and the collapsing of the towers are not depicted in the film, perhaps because of the ubiquity of such images in the news media.

The film would be dramatically improved with the omission of two short (and cliched) sequences. A montage of peoples from various countries and cultures, all watching open-mouthed as the towers collapse on CNN, propagates the rather offensive notion that the attack on the World Trade Center was an event which shook the entire world. Other countries are facing indirect repercussions, such as increased security, though the tragedy of 11th September was largely an American tragedy. Also, when one of the trapped men slips into unconsciousness, we actually see his vision of Jesus, bathed in white. Idyllic flashbacks are one thing, though Jesus and the tunnel of light represent a step too far.