Quote of the day...

Q: “So, does that mean the more than 2,300 websites that were banned were all done so by court order, and that the ICT has not preemptively or illegally banned any websites?”
A: “Yes. But it takes time to get court orders, so we may delete certain content deemed inappropriate before we go through the process.”
— Bangkok Post

The Computer Crime Act allows the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology to block websites only after successfully applying for a court order. Interviewed by Voranai Vanijaka in today’s Bangkok Post, ICT Minister Ranongrak Suwanchawee initially denied preemptively blocking websites, though she then immediately contradicted herself, and admitted to violating the Computer Crime Act. (In a previous quote of the day, a Ministry of Culture official patronised Thai filmgoers.)

San-Dan-Ka

A new butoh dance performance titled San-Dan-Ka, directed by Teerawat Mulvilai, will begin today at the Democrazy Theatre Studio in Bangkok. The performance was inspired by Anupong Chantorn's painting representing monks as crows. The final performance will be on 8th February.

Verisimilitude

Harry Nicolaides, the Australian author of the novel Verisimilitude, has been sentenced to three years in jail, on a charge of lèse-majesté. The sentence was reduced from six years because he pleaded guilty; Verisimilitude was self-published, and Nicolaides reportedly sold only a handful of copies. An official announcement banning distribution of the book was published in the Royal Gazette.

The lèse-majesté charge relates to a single paragraph (the second paragraph on page 115), though Nicolaides courted controversy by excerpting this paragraph in the press release he issued to promote the book. The passage in question has been published in various Australian newspapers (The Australian, 5th September 2008; The Age, 10th September 2008; The Sydney Morning Herald, 16th December 2008; The Canberra Times, today). It was also quoted yesterday by The Scotsman newspaper in Scotland.

Dirty Words

Dirty Words: A Literary Encyclopedia Of Sex, edited by Ellen Sussman, consists of almost 100 chapters, each of which discusses a different 'dirty' word. The chapters are more anecdotal than literary, but it's great that a serious book on this subject has been published, especially with an uncensored cover.

In his chapter on one of the words (yes, that one), Jonathan Wilson quotes a paragraph verbatim from my website without any attribution. The editor has already confirmed that I'll be referenced properly when the book is reprinted.

The Dark Knight (IMAX 70mm)

The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan’s sequel to Batman Begins, stars Christian Bale as Batman and Heath Ledger as the Joker. This ultra-noir Batman, from the director of Memento, is nothing like the camp 1960s TV series, and is even darker than Tim Burton’s Batman and Batman Returns.

Six sequences, including the incredible truck-flip (achieved without CGI), were filmed in IMAX 70mm format. With an aspect ratio of 1.43:1, these scenes occupy the full IMAX screen, though the majority of the film was shot on 35mm and is framed at 2.4:1.

Perishable Beauty

Perishable Beauty, running from 28th November 2008 until 22nd February 2009) at Bangkok's TCDC, is an exhibition exploring the transience of physical perfection (also the theme of The Way Of All Flesh, by Midas Dekkers). The exhibition's installation is stunning, though the exhibits themselves are less substantial.

A banqueting table laden with rotting food, sealed in an air-tight tank and growing mouldier every day, is the most impressive exhibit. There is also a diamond created from human ashes, produced commercially by Algordanza. Other displays, relying on TV clips, photographs, and everyday objects, are underwhelming.

Although the Perishable Beauty poster is seemingly inspired by Orlan, her work is not included in the exhibition. Also, the exhibition is filled with dead flowers yet Otto Berchem is not represented. (His sculpture Deadheading was shown in Bangkok two years ago, at The Suspended Moment.) Indeed, the exhibition is more suited to a museum than to TCDC, as it's educational rather than artistic.

Save The Film

The Thai Film Archive (in Salaya, near Bangkok) is hosting an event called Save The Film tomorrow afternoon. Two of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's recent films will be shown: Luminous People (which premiered at Traces Of Siamese Smile) and Morakot (which was previously screened at Tomyam Pladib).

“It’s over, boss...”

Democrat leader Abhisit Vejjajiva has won this morning’s parliamentary vote, and has thus become Thailand’s new prime minister. Abhisit’s coalition partners resisted lucrative offers from Puea Thai, perhaps after behind-the-scenes pressure from the army and Democrat deputy leader Suthep Thaugsuban. Following the People Power Party’s dissolution, a key PPP faction led by Newin Chidchob shifted its allegiance to the Democrats, after Newin telephoned Thaksin Shinawatra to say: “It’s over, boss.”

International Film Festival 2008-2009

Chulalongkorn University's International Film Festival has returned, running from today until 6th February 2009 in Bangkok. The main attraction at the previous festival was Four Months, Three Weeks, & Two Days, and this time the highlight is another Romanian film, California Dreamin' (showing on 23rd January 2009). All screenings are free.

Illustration

Illustration: A Visual History, by Steven Heller and Seymour Chwast, features a chronological account of the history of commercial illustrations from Victorian caricatures to digital art, via pulp novels, psychedelic posters, and satirical cartoons. It includes representative examples of magazine covers, advertisements, comics, and typography.

An Interview With Muhammed

Jan Peter Balkenende, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, has released a statement condemning a short film titled An Interview With Muhammed. In the film (directed by Ehsan Jami, who screened it at a press conference in the Dutch parliament on 9th December), an actor wearing a Mohammed mask gives his views on contemporary Islam. Balkenende announced: "The Dutch government... regrets the fact that Mr Jami's film deeply offends the feelings of many Muslims".

“The Court had no other option...”

This afternoon, the Constitutional Court announced its verdict in the vote-buying and fraud cases against three ruling coalition parties. All three parties (Chart Thai, Matchima Thipataya, and the People Power Party) were found guilty, and are thus automatically dissolved. Their executives, including PPP leader and Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat, are now banned from politics for the next five years.

Somchai, Thaksin Shinawatra’s brother-in-law, had been PM for only three months. He was appointed following the disqualification of Samak Sundaravej earlier this year. Samak’s removal emboldened the People’s Alliance for Democracy, who had been occupying Government House. On 5th and 6th October, the PAD also blockaded parliament, though they were dispersed by riot police on 7th October. One protester was killed by an exploding tear gas cannister; Queen Sirikit presided over her funeral on 13th October, in an apparent signal of support for the royalist PAD.

The head of the nine judges defended today’s decision, saying: “The Court had no other option”. The judgement marks the third guilty verdict against parties affiliated with Thaksin, after Samak’s disqualification and the dissolution of Thai Rak Thai. Today’s decision seems designed to placate the PAD, and it has already been described as a judicial coup.

People’s Alliance for Democracy

The good news: today will be the final day of the People’s Alliance for Democracy’s occupation of Government House. The bad news: the protesters will go directly from Government House to join the PAD’s blockades of Suvarnabhumi and Don Mueang airports. Both airports have been declared emergency zones.

Meanwhile, with Suvarnabhumi closed for a whole week due to the demonstrators, there has still been no serious attempt by the police to remove the PAD. The Prime Minister is in hiding, and army chief Anupong Paochinda has called on him to resign (in an interview with Channel 3 on 16th October). Under normal circumstances, Anupong would surely be dismissed for insubordination, though sacking him could provoke another coup.

In what it called a ‘final war’, the PAD occupied Government House for three months, completely unopposed by the police. On 26th August, one of the PAD’s core leaders, Sondhi Limthongkul, gave an interview to the Bangkok Post newspaper in which he dared the army to launch a coup (“soldiers today are cowards”) and positioned himself as the protector of the monarchy (“If we don’t do it, the monarchy might collapse”).

Despite its name, the PAD’s policies are undemocratic. Sondhi has called for a ‘new politics’ that would result in only 30% of MPs being elected, with the other 70% being appointed.

New Sermon

Police have removed photographs by the Russian performance artist Oleg Kulik from an exhibition in Paris. The images, part of a retrospective exhibition titled New Sermon, were confiscated on 28th October after police visited the exhibition at the FIAC art fair.

Astonishment & Power

The ArtGorillas gallery in Bangkok is currently showing Astonishment & Power, an exhibition of paintings and photographs by Bogomir Krajnc. The exhibition includes abstract collages (painted over newspapers and old prints), and photographs of dead animals (including a bird's head, used as the exhibition's poster image). There is even a painting with an animal skull stuck onto it. Astonishment & Power opened on 10th November, and runs until the end of the month.

100 FilmsPour Une Cinematheque Ideale

Cahiers Du Cinema, the highly respected French film magazine, has published a book listing 100 films necessary for a perfect cinema programme. The book, by Claude-Jean Philippe, is titled 100 Films Pour Une Cinematheque Ideale. A Parisian cinema, the Reflet Medicis, will indeed be screening the 100 films, in a season called Les 100 Plus Beaux Films De L'Histoire Du Cinema, running from yesterday until 6th July 2009.

The 100 films were chosen by a panel of seventy-eight film critics. The list is ranked according to the proportion of votes each film received, as follows:

48/78 (61%)

• Citizen Kane
  

47/78 (60%)

• The Night Of The Hunter
  
• The Rules Of The Game

46/78 (59%)

• Sunrise

43/78 (55%)

• L'Atalante

40/78 (51%)

• M

39/78 (50%)

• Singin' In The Rain

35/78 (45%)

• Vertigo

34/78 (44%)

• Les Enfants Du Paradis
  
• The Searchers
  
• Greed

33/78 (42%)

• Rio Bravo
  
• To Be Or Not To Be

29/78 (37%)

• Tokyo Story

28/78 (36%)

• Le Mepris

27/78 (35%)

• Ugetsu Monogatari
  
• City Lights
  
• The General
  
• Nosferatu
  
• The Music Room

26/78 (33%)

• Freaks
  
• Johnny Guitar
  
• La Maman & La Putain

25/78 (32%)

• The Great Dictator
  
• The Leopard
  
• Hiroshima Mon Amour
  
• Pandora's Box
  
• North By Northwest
  
• Pickpocket

24/78 (31%)

• Casque D'Or
  
• The Barefoot Contessa
  
• Mme De...
  
• Le Plaisir
  
• The Deer Hunter

23/78 (29%)

• L'Avventura
  
• Battleship Potemkin
  
• Notorious
  
• Ivan The Terrible I-II
  
• The Godfather
  
• Touch Of Evil
  
• The Wind

22/78 (28%)

• 2001: A Space Odyssey
  
• Fanny & Alexander

21/78 (27%)

• The Crowd
  
• 8½
  
• La Jetee
  
• Pierrot Le Fou
  
• Confessions Of A Cheat

20/78 (26%)

• Amarcord
  
• La Belle & La Bete
  
• Some Like It Hot
  
• Some Came Running
  
• Gertrud
  
• King Kong
  
• Laura
  
• Seven Samurai

19/78 (24%)

• The 400 Blows
  
• La Dolce Vita
  
• The Dead
  
• Trouble In Paradise
  
• It's A Wonderful Life
  
• M. Verdoux
  
• The Passion Of Joan Of Arc

18/78 (23%)

• Breathless
  
• Apocalypse Now
  
• Barry Lyndon
  
• Grand Illusion
  
• Intolerance
  
• Partie De Campagne
  
• Playtime
  
• Rome: Open City
  
• Senso
  
• Modern Times
  
• van Gogh

17/78 (22%)

• An Affair To Remember
  
• Andrei Rublev
  
• The Scarlet Empress
  
• Sansho Dayu
  
• Talk To Her
  
• The Party
  
• Tabu
  
• The Bandwagon
  
• A Star Is Born
  
• M. Hulot's Holiday

16/78 (20%)

• America America
  
• El
  
• Kiss Me Deadly
  
• Once Upon A Time In America
  
• Le jour se leve
  
• Letter From An Unknown Woman
  
• Lola
  
• Manhattan
  
• Mulholland Drive
  
• My Night At Maud's
  
• Night & Fog
  
• The Gold Rush
  
• Scarface
  
• Bicycle Thieves
  
• Napoleon

It's a pleasant surprise to see two films by Kenji Mizoguchi - Ugetsu Monogatari and Sansho Dayu - as his work rarely appears on top-100 lists. Note that Some Like It Hot is the 1959 comic masterpiece, not the obscure 1939 comedy. Cahiers produced a similar list in 1994, 100 Films Pour Une Videotheque, though that list was restricted to films available on VHS.

Memento

Memento, directed by Christopher Nolan, is an example of neo-noir filmmaking, featuring the detective-mystery plot, duplicitous characters, flawed protagonist, femme fatale, and downbeat conclusion typical of film noir. More specifically, Memento is an example of film soleil, a strain of noir (exemplified by Chinatown) that exchanges chiaroscuro for sunshine and swaps the grime of New York for the cleanliness of California.

Leonard Shelby and his wife were attacked in their home by two masked men. During the attack, Shelby killed one of the men, though he sustained a head injury that resulted in anterograde amnesia: he can remember his life before the attack, though he has lost his short-term memory. Consequently, he photographs everyone he meets, writes notes to himself, and even tattoos important information on his body. The film begins with Leonard searching for his wife’s murderer, a man whose initials are JG. He is helped by an amoral cop, Teddy; and he meets a bartender, Natalie, who gives him vital information. Teddy and Natalie both exploit Leonard to a certain degree, as does the only other person he interacts with, a motel clerk.

Leonard exists in a constant state of confusion, unable to remember anything for more than a few minutes, and the film employs a unique narrative structure in order to give the audience the same sense of bewilderment. The story is told in reverse chronological order, with each event followed by the event that chronologically preceded it. Throughout the film, Leonard tracks down clues that lead him to JG, and each new clue is initially a mystery to the audience: we learn of the significance of each event only when its context is revealed by the subsequent scene. (The technique was later used by Gaspar Noé in Irreversible.)

Memento’s narrative positions it alongside the non-linear, fragmented structures of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind and other recent films, a trend inspired by the success of Pulp Fiction. With a complex series of clues, an unreliable narrator, and a twist ending, it also recalls The Usual Suspects. The film demands an audience’s attention, since every scene contains a new piece of the puzzle; it’s one of the smartest and most original films of the decade.

Legendary Movies

Legendary Movies, by Paolo d'Agostini, features 140 films arranged chronologically and selected for their artistic, cultural, and commercial significance. It was originally written for the Italian market, as I Grandi Film: Quando Il Cinema Diventa Leggenda, and consequently there is a distinctly Italian bias to the list.

There are plenty of genuinely legendary films in the book, though there are also quite a few popular yet insubstantial (and frankly awful) titles: A Summer Place, The Pink Panther, Mary Poppins, Love Story, Forrest Gump, and Life Is Beautiful. Also, very recent films (such as the Bourne and Pirates Of The Caribbean trilogies) could hardly be described as legendary.

The Legendary Movies are as follows:

• Cabiria
  
• The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari
  
• Nosferatu
  
• Battleship Potemkin
  
• Metropolis
  
• The Blue Angel
  
• Frankenstein
  
• Grand Hotel
  
• King Kong
  
• It Happened One Night
  
• Modern Times
  
• Grand Illusion
  
• The Wizard Of Oz
  
• Ninotchka
  
• Stagecoach
  
• Gone With The Wind
  
• Citizen Kane
  
• Casablanca
  
• Arsenic & Old Lace
  
• Rome: Open City
  
• Gilda
  
• It's A Wonderful Life
  
• Bicycle Thieves
  
• The Asphalt Jungle
  
• Sunset Boulevard
  
• Singin' In The Rain
  
• High Noon
  
• Don Camillo
  
• The Wild One
  
• Roman Holiday
  
• From Here To Eternity
  
• A Star Is Born
  
• On The Waterfront
  
• Sabrina
  
• Seven Samurai
  
• Rear Window
  
• Rebel Without A Cause
  
• & God Created Woman
  
• The Ten Commandments
  
• The Seventh Seal
  
• The Bridge On The River Kwai
  
• The Great War
  
• Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ
  
• Some Like It Hot
  
• A Summer Place
  
• La Dolce Vita
  
• Breathless
  
• Two Women
  
• Psycho
  
• The Magnificent Seven
  
• Breakfast At Tiffany's
  
• West Side Story
  
• Lolita
  
• Jules & Jim
  
• Lawrence Of Arabia
  
• The Pink Panther
  
• 8½
  
• The Leopard
  
• A Fistful Of Dollars
  
• Goldfinger
  
• Mary Poppins
  
• Dr Zhivago
  
• A Man & A Woman
  
• Guess Who's Coming To Dinner
  
• The Dirty Dozen
  
• Belle De Jour
  
• The Graduate
  
• In The Heat Of The Night
  
• Romeo & Juliet
  
• Planet Of The Apes
  
• Bullitt
  
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
  
• Rosemary's Baby
  
• Easy Rider
  
• Midnight Cowboy
  
• Love Story
  
• M*A*S*H
  
• Dirty Harry
  
• A Clockwork Orange
  
• Cabaret
  
• The Godfather
  
• The Sting
  
• American Graffiti
  
• The Exorcist
  
• Jaws
  
• One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
  
• Nashville
  
• Taxi Driver
  
• Rocky
  
• In The Realm Of The Senses
  
• Saturday Night Fever
  
• Star Wars IV: A New Hope
  
• Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
  
• The Deer Hunter
  
• Grease
  
• Apocalypse Now
  
• Manhattan
  
• Alien
  
• The Blues Brothers
  
• The Shining
  
• American Gigolo
  
• The Party
  
• Raiders Of The Lost Ark
  
• Escape From New York
  
• First Blood
  
• ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
  
• Blade Runner
  
• Once Upon A Time In America
  
• A Nightmare On Elm Street
  
• Back To The Future
  
• Top Gun
  
• 9½ Weeks
  
• Wings Of Desire
  
• The Last Emperor
  
• Rain Man
  
• Nikita
  
• Pretty Woman
  
• Edward Scissorhands
  
• Raise The Red Lantern
  
• The Silence Of The Lambs
  
• Thelma & Louise
  
• Basic Instinct
  
• Batman Returns
  
• Schindler's List
  
• Forrest Gump
  
• Pulp Fiction
  
• Seven
  
• Mission: Impossible
  
• Life Is Beautiful
  
• Titanic
  
• The Matrix
  
• Gladiator
  
• The Lord Of The Rings I-III
  
• Amelie
  
• Talk To Her
  
• Kill Bill I-II
  
• The Last Samurai
  
• Million Dollar Baby
  
• The Bourne Identity/Supremacy/Ultimatum
  
• Pirates Of The Caribbean I-III

Note that Ben-Hur, Frankenstein, and The Ten Commandments are all sound films and not the earlier silent versions. Some Like It Hot is the 1959 comic masterpiece, not the obscure 1939 comedy. Also, Titanic is the 1997 James Cameron version (as opposed to the earlier 1943 and 1953 versions). There have been many filmed adaptations of Romeo & Juliet; this one is the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli version.

LittleBigPlanet

The new PlayStation game LittleBigPlanet has been recalled and modified, to remove a song from its soundtrack. The song, Tapha Niang (from Toumani Diabate's album Boulevard De L'Independance), features quotations from the Koran; fortunately, the album is still available. (A remix of the Busta Rhymes single Arab Money, released this month, also includes lines from the Koran.)

[Previously, a song featuring Koran quotes was removed from Joey Boy's album The Greatest Beats in Thailand. Also, Lebanese performer Marcel Khalife's song Ana Yousef, Ya Abi (1995) was accused of blasphemy due to its Koran quotation. MF Husain, who painted the controversial Mother India, also quoted from the Koran in his song Noor-Un-Ala in 2004.]

Stanley Kubrick:Essays On His Films & Legacy

Stanley Kubrick: Essays On His Films & Legacy is a new compendium of Kubrickian scholarship, edited by Gary D Rhodes. At first glance, it closely resembles Depth Of Field, a previous collection of essays on Kubrick, with individual analyses of his major films, excluding Dr Strangelove, and several chapters devoted to Eyes Wide Shut.

The contributors to Depth Of Field (Diane Johnson, Vincent LoBrutto, Frederic Raphael, Jonathan Rosenbaum, et al.) were less academic, though arguably more authoritative. The contributors to Rhodes's book all have university teaching positions, yet none of them has previously published any work on Kubrick.

In his introduction, Rhodes inexplicably praises the first essay as a "monumental examination of Kubrick's photography for Look magazine". Unfortunately, the essay is a missed opportunity: instead of providing a detailed analysis or survey of Kubrick's Look photography, the author (Philippe Mather) spends page after page on photojournalism textbooks and sociological theories. Also, Mather's Look sources are all secondary, seemingly limited to Drama & Shadows and LoBrutto's biography.

Other disappointing essays include overly descriptive articles on Kubrick's documentaries (by Marina Burke) and Killer's Kiss (by Tony Williams), both of which feature extensive plot summaries and only limited analysis. Then there is Eric Eaton's dry, theoretical study of Paths Of Glory: he examines the film's "conceptualization of at least two fundamental, polarized properties: (1) abstraction-concretion; and (2) the opposition of the powerful cultural forces emanating from the two states toward the concrete world of"... zzzzzzzzz.

Thankfully, there are also some more engaging essays: Hugh S Manon explores Kubrick's contributions to film noir, Reynold Humphries examines the politics of Spartacus, and Homay King analyses the camerawork of Barry Lyndon. There are three interesting approaches to Eyes Wide Shut: gender, by Lindiwe Dovey; carnival, by Miriam Jordan and Julian Jason Haladyn; and phenomenology, by Phillip Sipiora. (Dovey does, however, make a glaring error, writing that Eyes Wide Shut "is the only film in which Kubrick acts as an extra". In fact, Kubrick is not an extra in Eyes Wide Shut, though he does briefly appear in five of his earlier films.)

The book's final chapter, by Robert JE Simpson, deals with Kubrick's personal reputation and public image, discussing the media representations of Kubrick that have appeared since his death (including Raphael's book, Eyes Wide Open; Colour Me Kubrick; and the Stanley Kubrick Archive, in London). This is the book's most original chapter, and contains valuable information on texts that many people may be unaware of.

6th World Film Festival of Bangkok

The 6th World Film Festival of Bangkok was held at Paragon Cineplex from 24th October to 2nd November. It featured retrospectives of directors Derek Jarman (including his Punk film Jubilee on 26th October) and Shyam Benegal (including his Middle Cinema films Manthan on 27th and 30th October, and Bhumika on 26th and 31st October). The Festival was on a slightly smaller scale than last year, with no peripheral events.

L'Express International

L'Express International, the global edition of the French weekly magazine L'Express, has self-censored a portrait of Mohammed used on the cover of the current issue. The French edition is uncensored. Even obscuring Mohammed's face did not stop Morocco from banning the international edition.

Forbidden Words

Forbidden Words: Taboo & The Censoring Of Language, by Keith Allan and Kate Burridge, is an analysis of social and cultural linguistic suppression.

The authors take an inclusive approach, finding space not only for swear words and profanities but also for political correctness, proscriptive usage, and jargon. Each chapter begins with an abstract, though an introduction outlining the various areas of enquiry might be a useful addition, given the wide scope of the book.

The first chapter explores the origins of social taboos and literary censorship, material which will be familiar to many readers. More interesting is the next chapter, which discusses euphemistic language; here, the authors coin a new term, 'orthophemism', to describe literal vocabulary which is neither euphemistic nor dysphemistic.

The bulk of the book is a series of thematic chapters describing linguistic taboos against sex, bodily fluids, food, disease, and death. (My website is cited as a reference in one chapter.)

100 All-Time Favorite Movies

Not my favourite films, 100 All-Time Favorite Movies is instead the title of a new book edited by Jurgen Muller. Published by Taschen in two volumes (1915-1959 and 1960-2000), it includes a chronological survey of 100 classic films. Being a Taschen book, its layout and photography are superb; the selection of films is impressive, too, with only two questionable entries (Fanfan The Tulip and Forrest Gump) and only one inexplicable omission (Singin' In The Rain).

Taschen's 100 All-Time Favorite Movies are as follows:

• The Birth Of A Nation
  
• Nosferatu
  
• The Ten Commandments
  
• The Gold Rush
  
• Battleship Potemkin
  
• The General
  
• Metropolis
  
• The Blue Angel
  
• Under The Roofs Of Paris
  
• M
  
• Duck Soup
  
• King Kong
  
• Modern Times
  
• Grand Illusion
  
• Gone With The Wind
  
• Fantasia
  
• Citizen Kane
  
• To Be Or Not To Be
  
• Casablanca
  
• The Big Sleep
  
• La Belle & La Bete
  
• Notorious
  
• The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre
  
• Bicycle Thieves
  
• The Third Man
  
• All About Eve
  
• Rashomon
  
• The Young & The Damned
  
• Sunset Boulevard
  
• A Streetcar Named Desire
  
• The African Queen
  
• High Noon
  
• Fanfan The Tulip
  
• The Wages Of Fear
  
• Seven Samurai
  
• La Strada
  
• Rebel Without A Cause
  
• The Night Of The Hunter
  
• Giant
  
• The Searchers
  
• Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud
  
• Wild Strawberries
  
• Vertigo
  
• The 400 Blows
  
• Some Like It Hot
  
• Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ
  
• La Dolce Vita
  
• L'Avventura
  
• Psycho
  
• Breakfast At Tiffany's
  
• Lawrence Of Arabia
  
• To Kill A Mockingbird
  
• Dr Strangelove
  
• Goldfinger
  
• Dr Zhivago
  
• Pierrot Le Fou
  
• Andrei Rublev
  
• Bonnie & Clyde
  
• The Graduate
  
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
  
• Once Upon A Time In The West
  
• Easy Rider
  
• Midnight Cowboy
  
• The Wild Bunch
  
• Death In Venice
  
• A Clockwork Orange
  
• Deliverance
  
• Cabaret
  
• The Godfather
  
• The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie
  
• A Woman Under The Influence
  
• Chinatown
  
• Jaws
  
• One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
  
• Taxi Driver
  
• Star Wars IV: A New Hope
  
• Annie Hall
  
• The Deer Hunter
  
• The Tin Drum
  
• Mad Max
  
• Apocalypse Now
  
• Raging Bull
  
• Fitzcarraldo
  
• Fanny & Alexander
  
• Scarface
  
• Blade Runner
  
• The Fourth Man
  
• Blue Velvet
  
• Dead Ringers
  
• The Silence Of The Lambs
  
• Forrest Gump
  
• Chungking Express
  
• Pulp Fiction
  
• LA Confidential
  
• Face/Off
  
• The Celebration
  
• All About My Mother
  
• American Beauty
  
• Magnolia
  
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Note that Ben-Hur is the 1959 sound version rather than the 1925 silent version, and Scarface is the 1983 remake rather than the 1932 original. Also, Some Like It Hot is the 1959 comic masterpiece, not the obscure 1939 comedy. The oddest mistake: Psycho ends with a smirking skull, not a "smirking toilet seat" (page 440)!

The Nation On Sunday

Following the Bangkok Post's Sunday relaunch and expansion last month, The Sunday Nation has been relaunched as The Nation On Sunday. It's still very thin, with just two pages of national news, and the Sunday edition seems to drop the business focus of the daily edition.

The rather pointless name-change is accompanied by a new magazine produced in partnership with Asia News. The first half of the magazine includes new features by Nation journalists; this is encouraging, as most features (and all international news and sport) in both The Nation and the Bangkok Post are supplied by agencies.

However, the back half of the magazine comprises reprints of Asian newspaper/magazine articles which were previously reprinted in Asia News. In what is either an embarrassing mistake or a sign of desperation, two of the articles reprinted from Asia News are actually articles which it reprinted from The Nation and the Daily Xpress. One of them is a preview of the World Film Festival and first appeared in the Daily Xpress on 10th October, more than two weeks ago.

The Movies That Matter

The latest (twenty-fourth) edition of Halliwell's Film Guide has been published, under the cumbersome title Halliwell's The Movies That Matter: From Bogart To Bond & All The Latest Film Releases. The book is edited by David Gritten, who took over from John Walker at the last minute before the previous edition was published. Gritten has made radical changes to this new edition, the most alarming being the removal of 20,000 film reviews.

In his introduction, Gritten outlines the dilemma he faced: Halliwell's Film Guide was expanding each year, as more films were added. The twenty-third edition reviewed over 24,000 films, and, apparently, readers were complaining that the book was too large and heavy. (Why don't they just buy more sturdy shelves?) So, Gritten decided to substantially shift the book's focus: it will no longer attempt to review every release, and will, instead, concentrate on only a few thousand noteworthy films. The emphasis is on theatrical releases, not on DVDs or videos, in another departure from recent editions.

Thus, there are reviews of every mainstream film released in the past year (350 of them), plus 2,000 significant films released in the past twenty years, plus 500 classic films released more than twenty years ago. (The 500 films range in chronology "from Intolerance to Blue Velvet", according to Gritten, though actually The Birth Of A Nation, which predates Intolerance, is also included.) In total, therefore, there are almost 3,000 films listed.

Why include 2,000 films from twenty years yet only 500 films from ninety years? Gritten's rationale is that "for good or bad, most films seen today" are less than twenty years old. That may be true, but it does not explain why they are Movies That Matter. Gritten, in his introduction, claims that the 2,000 films in the twenty-years group all have "brand new" reviews, though this is not really the case. Thus, although this new version has 350 extra reviews of very recent films, we are not actually getting value for money, because the deletions (more than 20,000!) far exceed the additions.

The films are listed alphabetically, though not always logically. For example, The Devil's Backbone is listed under 'T' (for 'The') whereas The Godfather appears under 'G' (for 'Godfather'). To add to the confusion, there is no cross-referencing of alternate titles.

“He is sentenced to two years in jail...”

Former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has been convicted in absentia for violating the National Counter-Corruption Act. He had been charged with facilitating his wife Potjaman’s purchase of a plot of land at below market value. The plot, in Bangok’s Ratchada district, was sold to Potjaman by the Bank of Thailand in 2003. The Supreme Court judge who announced the verdict today said: “Thaksin had violated the article of the constitution on conflict of interest, as he was then prime minister and head of government who was supposed to work for the benefit of the public. He is sentenced to two years in jail.” Notoriously, Thaksin’s lawyer, Pichit Cheunban, made a blatant attempt to bribe the judges during the trial, handing over a lunchbox containing ฿2 million in cash.

Thaksin and Potjaman are currently living in exile in London. They jumped bail earlier this year, ostensibly to attend the opening ceremony at the Beijing Olympics, and have not returned to Thailand since. They were not prevented from leaving the country, despite carrying a suspiciously large collection of luggage with them. Thaksin was ousted in a coup in 2006, while he was attending the United Nations in New York. A military-appointed Assets Examination Committee froze ฿76 billion of Thaksin and Potjaman’s assets last year, pending the outcome of an anti-corruption investigation.

Hyena

Yesterday, Thai PBS broadcast a group of new short films, under the umbrella title Hot Short Films. The programme included Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit’s Hyena (ไฮยีน่า), which was first shown at BACC earlier this year. (Nawapol also directed Bangkok Tanks.) Hyena is a single, static shot showing a young man getting ready to go out. A television screen and a poster of Rama IX form a diptych behind him. A Thai-dubbed version of the BBC wildlife series Killing for a Living is playing on the TV (specifically, the Murder in the Family episode from 1993).

The documentary narration seems to offer an inadvertent political commentary, though if challenged, the director could argue that the juxtaposition is coincidental, as Rama IX posters can be found in many Thai houses. The technique recalls that of Manussak Dokmai’s short film Don’t Forget Me (อย่าลืมฉัน), in which archive footage of the 6th October 1976 massacre is accompanied by narration from a documentary on the Mlabri tribe, though in that case the voice-over describing tribal rituals provides an ironic counterpoint to the massacre footage.

MovieMail's Top 50 Films Of All Time!

The November edition of the MovieMail Monthly Film Catalogue features a list of the Top 50 Films Of All Time.

The Top Fifty Films are as follows:

1. Three Colours: Blue/White/Red
2. Breathless
3. Singin' In The Rain
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey
5. A Man Escaped
6. The Seventh Seal
7. The Third Man
8. The Leopard
9. Miller's Crossing
10. M. Hulot's Holiday
11. The Lives Of Others
12. Lawrence Of Arabia
13. Blade Runner
14. I Was A Fireman
15. Casablanca
16. Andrei Rublev
17. Seven Samurai
18. Citizen Kane
19. Brief Encounter
20. Annie Hall
21. Some Like It Hot
22. It's A Wonderful Life
23. The 400 Blows
24. A Matter Of Life & Death
25. Bicycle Thieves
26. Tokyo Story
27. Jaws
28. Battleship Potemkin
29. The Rules Of The Game
30. Pather Panchali/Aparajito/Apur Sansar
31. Psycho
32. The Battle Of Algiers
33. Nashville
34. Belle De Jour
35. Dr Mabuse The Gambler
36. All About Eve
37. My Neighbour Totoro
38. The Godfather I-III
39. Vertigo
40. Sunset Boulevard
41. La Dolce Vita
42. Fitzcarraldo
43. All Quiet On The Western Front
44. There Will Be Blood
45. Satantango
46. L'Avventura
47. The Night Of The Hunter
48. Festen
49. The New World
50. Chinatown

There are actually fifty-six films on the list, as it includes three trilogies. Interestingly, Blade Runner at #13 is the 'final cut' version with digital tweaks approved by Ridley Scott last year. Also, Some Like It Hot is the 1959 comic masterpiece, not the obscure 1939 comedy.

The Henson Case

Australian police prevented the opening of a photography exhibition by Bill Henson at Roslyn Oxley9, a Sydney art gallery, on 22nd May. The exhibition included images of a naked twelve-year-old girl, and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd described them as “absolutely revolting” in a TV interview with Channel 9’s Today on the morning after the police raid. The controversy led police to inspect Henson photographs at other Australian galleries, and the Albury Regional Art Gallery removed three photos (taken in 1985) from its Proof of Age exhibition on police advice.

David Marr’s The Henson Case is the definitive book on the incident, a day-by-day account of a media scandal. (The tabloid The Daily Telegraph’s headline on 23rd May was “CHILD PORN ‘ART’ RAID”.) Marr criticises the artist’s decision to use “the most contentious image in Henson’s exhibition” on the opening-night invitations, which Henson admits was a mistake. This photo, no. 30 in a series of untitled portraits, is reproduced in the book. (The Director of Public Prosecutions ultimately concluded, in a statement on 5th June, that “mere nudity is not indecent in the legal sense.”)

Nude images of minors have been removed from galleries in the past, most recently a Nan Goldin photograph investigated, and subsequently exonerated, by UK police last year. Photographs of children by Robert Mapplethorpe, Graham Ovenden, Ron Oliver, Will McBride, David Hamilton, Tierney Gearon, and Annelies Strba have previously been investigated by UK police as potentially obscene. In America, the FBI investigated photographers Jacqueline Livingston and Jock Sturges, though ultimately no charges were brought.

Have You Seen...?

Have You Seen...?: A Personal Introduction To 1,000 Films, by David Thomson, is an alphabetical guide to "a thousand fiction films, going back to 1895 and ranging across the world - the landmarks are here, the problem films, a few guilty pleasures, a few forlorn sacred cows, some surprises, a thousand for you to see". The most surprising thing about the book is that I don't hate it.

Thomson's Biographical Dictionary Of Film is routinely described as the greatest film book ever written, but personally I can't stand it; and I often find Thomson's newspaper articles infuriating. Have You Seen...? is much more satisfying, though: the layout is clean and simple, with one page per film; the selection of titles is inclusive and diverse; and the reviews are fair, with Thomson acknowledging the merits of even the films he doesn't like. (Thomson previously contributed to Film: The Critics' Choice, a selection of 150 classic films.)

Ploy (DVD)

In Ploy, by Pen-ek Ratanaruang, a jet-lagged husband and wife arrive at a Thai hotel after their flight from America. At 5am, the husband (Wit) goes to the hotel bar for a smoke, and meets a teenage girl (Ploy). Wit invites Ploy up to the hotel room to rest, which naturally angers his wife (Daeng). Frustrated and jealous, Daeng goes out to a cafe, where she is chatted up by a stranger who invites her back to his apartment.

The romance has gone from Wit and Daeng's marriage - it's reached its expiration date, as Wit explains to Ploy. In contrast, in another room, the hotel's bartender has a passionate relationship with one of the maids. These scenes were deemed unacceptable by Thai censors, and the film was released here in a less explicit version, though the director's cut was screened at last year's Bangkok International Film Festival. The film was released on VCD in its cut version, though the Thai DVD is uncut and includes an audio commentary by Pen-ek.

Wit, Daeng, and Ploy all drift in and out of sleep, and we are never quite sure what is real and what is a dream. The film's slow pace, long silences, and ambient soundtrack all enhance the sleepy atmosphere. An early murder sequence is certainly a fantasy, though other scenes - the bartender's relationship with the maid, a potentially fatal encounter for Daeng, and a reconciliatory conclusion for the married couple - are more ambiguous, and could perhaps also have been dreamt by the three main characters. This may explain some confusing plot points: why did the receptionist tell Daeng that Wit and Ploy had left together when it was not true (like the proprietor of the McKittrick Hotel in Vertigo), and, more importantly, how did Daeng recover from her (ultimately melodramatic) ordeal so quickly?

The film reminded me of Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, in its themes (marital jealousy and sexual fantasy), its structure (confusion between dreams and reality; the slow pacing; the dangerous, illicit adventure and subsequent reconciliation), and even its score. Last year, Pen-Ek noted that Stanley Kubrick is one of his inspirations, and also that he is more interested in funerals than weddings. (In this film, Wit and Daeng are returning to Thailand to attend a funeral.) Pen-ek's recent films, including Ploy, share an emotional detachment evident in Eyes Wide Shut and in Kubrick's work generally.

Screening Sex

Screening Sex, by Linda Williams, is a history of the representation of sex in mainstream and arthouse cinema. It complements her definitive history of pornography, Hard Core.

There are chapters on the Hollywood kiss in the Hays Code era, New Hollywood's sexual liberation and counter-culture, mainstream 'porno chic', and hardcore scenes in contemporary arthouse films. In The Realm Of The Senses has a chapter to itself, and there is also extensive discussion of Last Tango In Paris, Deep Throat, Blue Velvet, and Boys In The Sand, amongst others.

My only qualm is: why devote so much space to Brokeback Mountain? Yes, it's topical, but surely it's a very minor footnote in the history of screen sex, and therefore doesn't merit the twenty pages and nine photographs that Williams accords it.

It's no surprise that Screening Sex is such a superlative study of its subject, given its author's reputation as the pre-eminent scholar of cinematic sex. The analytical text is accompanied by a comprehensive bibliography and some surprisingly graphic images.

Norasinghavatar

Norasinghavatar, currently showing at Traces Of Siamese Smile, is a short fantasy film by Wisit Sasanatieng. [It was produced last year as part of the Short Film Project in Commemoration of the Celebration on the Auspicious Occasion of His Majesty the King's 80th Birthday Anniversary; other directors partaking in the Project include Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Pen-ek Ratanaruang.]

The film is inspired by Hindu mythology, and features Norasinghawatarn, an incarnation of the god Narayana. The film's characters are all played by masked actors, filmed against bluescreen backgrounds generated by CGI. As in Wisit's films Tears Of The Black Tiger and Citizen Dog, there is extensive digital manipulation in post-production, brightening the colours to an almost psychedelic degree.

Traces Of Siamese Smile

Traces Of Siamese Smile: Art + Faith + Politics + Love (what a corny title) features multi-media works by Thai artists and filmmakers including Wisit Sasanatieng, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook. International artists such as Andy Warhol, Marina Abramovic, and Nobuyoshi Araki are also included, and there are over 100 artists in total. Apichatpong's new video Luminous People features an abbot blessing boat passengers while they sleep and a young man singing about the death of his father. Wisit is represented by Norasinghavatar, part of the Short Film Project.

The exhibition was originally scheduled to open on 20th September, at the new Bangkok Art and Culture Centre. Then, the opening was postponed until 23rd September. Finally, at the very last minute, it was inexplicably postponed again, to open on 24th September. It will close on 26th November (not 23rd November as originally scheduled).

2008 Bangkok International Film Festival

This year's Bangkok International Film Festival runs from 23rd September until tomorrow at CentralWorld's SF World cinema. The poster was designed by Tears Of The Black Tiger director Wisit Sasanatieng.

The future of the event had been in doubt following corruption charges filed against Juthamas Siriwan, the former head of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, relating to money she received from the American company Film Festival Management; the budget is much reduced from last year, leading to a 'quality not quantity' agenda this time around. Children Of The Dark, a drama about child prostitution in Thailand, has been withdrawn from the schedule - a reminder that TAT is still the main sponsor.

The low-key opening film was Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona. The explicit Filipino drama Serbis won the Southeast Asian competition. Bruce La Bruce's gay zombie film Otto, or Up With Dead People was also included.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona is Woody's Allen's fourth consecutive European film, after three London productions (Match Point, Scoop, and the badly-received Cassandra's Dream). It stars Scarlett Johansson, who also appeared in Match Point and Scoop. The film feels very light and inconsequential, with its holiday-romance plot and an ending which puts all the characters back to the same positions they were in at the beginning. Penelope Cruz gives the most passionate performance; her final scene of jealous rage recalls Judy Davis's first scene in Deconstructing Harry. Barcelona's city council certainly got their money's worth: they funded the film, which is full of picture-postcard Catalan scenery.

In Otto, a young man (the Otto of the title) who thinks he's a zombie (and might actually be one) is hired by Medea, a pretentious art-film director, to star in a gay zombie film titled Up With Dead People. Medea's earnest revolutionary rhetoric recalls the sloganeering of The Raspberry Reich; she also paraphrases Apocalypse Now: "I love the smell of the graveyard in the afternoon. It smells like extermination". Ingeniously, her girlfriend, Hella, appears to be trapped in a silent movie: she is always shown in black-and-white, and her dialogue is delivered via inter-titles. The most notorious sequence is a more graphic version of a scene in David Cronenberg's Crash. The film was co-produced by Terence Koh, and his artworks can be seen in some of the sets.

Brillante Mendoza's film Serbis is, like La Chatte A Deux Tetes, set almost entirely in an adult movie theatre (named Family, apparently a real location). Like Persona, it opens with a 35mm print being threaded into a projector and ends with the celluloid burning up. In between, Serbis follows the lives of a family living and working in the Family cinema, as they deal with pregnancy, infidelity, a large boil, and a stray goat. Their cinema is patronised by 'service boys', whose services are shown in rather graphic detail (again, like La Chatte A Deux Tetes), though the real star is the dilapidated Family cinema itself.