Apocalypse Now (workprint)

The original theatrical version of Apocalypse Now (one of my all-time favourite films) was two-and-a-half hours long when it was released in 1979, and a further hour was added when the film was released in a Redux version in 2001. However, there is also a five-hour version (!) which has never been officially released. This workprint is only available as a bootleg, duplicated from six time-coded Betamax tapes, with consequently reduced image quality [as you can see from the photo].

Even though the workprint is double the length of the theatrical version, it is still incomplete: it contains numerous 'scene missing' cards, and some of the familiar highlights from the film (the "snail crawling along the edge of a straight razor" recording; the peaceful schoolyard before the helicopters attack; the buffalo sacrifice; the voice-over narration) are absent.

Much of the additional footage was eventually used in the Redux version, such as stealing Kilgore's surfboard, the French plantation sequence, finding the Playboy bunnies, and Kurtz quoting Time magazine. However, there are some sequences which are unique to the workprint: a prostitute is seen in Willard's bed in Saigon, the boat's crew-members are introduced in a double-exposure shot, Lance kills a buffalo and sees a floating booby-trap, and two boys dangle insects into Willard's cage. Natives taunting the caged Willard with spears, and Kurtz (renamed Leighley) reading The Hollow Men, are the workprint's longest exclusive scenes.

Dennis Hopper has substantially more dialogue, most of it profane and superfluous. His scene outside Willard's cage is an alternate take. He is shot by Colby, and his last words are: "Kill Kurtz! Kill him!". Kurtz himself is first seen wearing war paint, not emerging from the shadows as in the original version. His dialogue scenes with Willard are alternate takes. Also, there is less build-up to Willard's encounter with Kurtz: with no voice-over, and the long digression of the French plantation sequence, Kurtz is somewhat marginalised until he actually appears.

The workprint is also noticeably lighter in tone. Partly, this is because it de-emphasises the foreboding presence of Kurtz but also because there are three romantic scenes and the soundtrack consists of quite upbeat Doors songs such as Summer's Gone, People Are Strange, and When The Music's Over.

Empire magazine printed unofficial screengrabs from the workprint in March 1997 and November 2006, and Peter Cowie wrote an authorised synopsis of it in The Apocalypse Now Book. Clips from the French plantation sequence, and out-takes of Kurtz's monologues, were included in the documentary Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse.

An alternate take of the Hollow Men reading is included as an extra on the Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier DVD, along with twelve time-coded workprint scenes and an additional non-workprint sequence in which Willard finds a sampan boat full of monkeys. An alternate ending featuring the destruction of Kurtz's compound, which is not in the workprint, was included as an extra on the original Apocalypse Now DVD.

The Offensive Art

The Offensive Art: Political Satire & Its Censorship Around The World From Beerbohm To Borat, by Leonard Freedman, is a survey of satirical comedy in America, Britain, India, and the Middle East. Its focus is on the subversive media representations of National Socialist and Communist dictators, and the criticisms of American presidents protected by the first amendment.

Avatar (2D)

Avatar was filmed in 3D, creating an immersive theatrical experience, though the film retains its spectacle in 2D. As with any epic film, the screen size is more important than how many dimensions are involved. In fact, the 2D version actually seems brighter and more vibrant, perhaps because the 3D glasses in the cinema acted as a filter.

Roberto Rossellini

Roberto Rossellini, Carlo Lizzani's documentary about the influential Italian director, features archive interviews with Rossellini, François Truffaut, and Federico Fellini. Martin Scorsese discusses Rossellini's influence on his own work, as he did in My Voyage To Italy. Lizzani (who contributed to the documentary Il Etait Une Fois...) gives quite a dry commentary, though he does reveal a surprising detail: that he met with Marlene Dietrich as background research for Rossellini's film Germany Year Zero.

Il Etait Une Fois... Rome: Ville Ouverte

Il Etait Une Fois... Rome: Ville Ouverte, directed by Marie Genin, is a France 5 TV documentary about the making of Roberto Rossellini's masterpiece Rome: Open City. It includes extensive archive interview footage of Rossellini, Federico Fellini, and François Truffaut.

One of the highlights is an account of the scene in which the priest is arrested. Apparently, during the filming of this sequence, a member of the public threatened the actors with a gun as he believed that the scene was happening for real. Rossellini's eventful personal life is also discussed, including his relationships with actresses Anna Magnani and Ingrid Bergman.javascript:void(0)

Horror Cinema

Horror Cinema, written by Jonathan Penner and Steven Jay Schneider, is a survey of the horror genre edited, like Art Cinema, by Paul Duncan for Taschen. The book's format is very similar to Art Cinema's, with equally glossy photographs. However, both books also have the same limitations: an emphasis on breadth at the expense of depth, a pointlessly brief filmography, and the lack of an index.

The introduction, What Is 'Horror'?, provides a potted history rather than a satisfactory definition or demarcation, though it serves as a brief orientation before the subsequent thematic chapters on zombies, ghosts, demons, vampires, and werewolves. The authors take a "liberal view of what constitutes a horror film", also incorporating elements of the science-fiction and thriller genres.

One of the more original chapters discusses "revenge-of-nature" films, citing The Birds and Jaws as classic examples. As the authors explain, this sub-genre is "overlooked and insufficiently appreciated", and its inclusion in Horror Cinema contrasts with the emphasis on urban paranoia in Horror. The final chapter, however, The Monstrous-Feminine, is merely a summary of Barbara Creed's excellent book of the same name.

It's not clear if Jonathan Penner and Steven Jay Schneider wrote the entire book collaboratively or each wrote separate chapters. Penner is credited before Schneider, suggesting that the latter made a lesser contribution, which is disappointing as Schneider is by far the better writer. While Penner is more notable as a television actor, Schneider has edited some of the greatest books on horror (Fear Without Frontiers) and cinema in general (1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die).

South Park: 200-201

South Park has again provoked controversy, by featuring censored depictions of Mohammed, in a two-part storyline which also featured a litigious Tom Cruise. In the 200th episode, broadcast on 14th April, Cruise threatened to sue South Park unless Mohammed was shown uncensored.

In response to the lawsuit, Mohammed was seen wearing a bear costume, and a stick-figure "sketch of what Mohammed could look like today" was also shown. [Charlie Hebdo published a more tasteless 'Mohammed today' cartoon in 2006.] Mohammed's other appearances in the episode, as one of the Super Best Friends league of divinities, were censored, though the other deities (including a cocaine-snorting Buddha) were uncensored.

In the 201st episode, broadcast today, Mohammed reappeared, though his image was censored and his name was bleeped out by Comedy Central. Mohammed was also censored from two South Park episodes in 2006 (Cartoon Wars I-II), though he appeared briefly in the show's sixth-season opening titles and prominently in the 2001 episode Super Best Friends.

"Mohammed med hustru"

Skanepartiet, a Swedish anti-immigration party, has placed twenty posters around Malmo which feature naked portraits of Mohammed and his child-bride Aisha. The poster's caption reads "Mohammed med hustru" ("Mohammed with his wife"), and highlights the substantial differences in their ages.

The poster is gratuitously offensive, and Skanepartiet is an extremist and Islamophobic party with an abhorrent manifesto. A less provocative drawing of Mohammed appeared on a Danish political poster in 2007. Images of Mohammed and Aisha have appeared in the Thai magazine Sex No Go and the Dutch book Misselijke Grappen.

Kick-Ass

Kick-Ass, directed by Matthew Vaughn, is an action comedy in which a teenager decides to become a real-life superhero. There is a refreshing lack of stars, with most leading roles played by relatively unknown and average-looking young actors. The violent action sequences and comic-book references are rather Tarantino-esque, with Kill Bill presumably a key influence. The arch-villain's HQ is adorned with artworks by Marc Quinn, Damien Hirst, and Andy Warhol.

The character attracting most publicity is Hit-Girl, played by pre-teen actress Chloe Grace Moretz; she is a deadly assassin (like the pupils in Battle Royale), and her use of strong language has provoked controversy in the media. In the Daily Mail, Christopher Tookey even called the film a "crime against cinema", but it's really no different than thirty years ago when child-actress Linda Blair played the violent, profane Regan in The Exorcist.

One word in particular, spoken by Hit-Girl in the teaser trailer for Kick-Ass, was used by an equally surprising character in Legion, also released this month. In that film's most (or only) enjoyable scene, Gladys, who appears to be a sweet old lady, turns into a foul-mouthed demon.

Cinema Of Death (DVD)

Cinema Of Death is a DVD compilation of five transgressive underground films, limited to 2,500 copies (of which mine is #785). It also includes five postcards. The five films are:

Adoration
(a young man invites a woman to his apartment, then shoots and eats her; directed by Olivier Smolders)

Dislandia
(a disabled little girl wearing a mask explores a deserted house; directed by Brian M Viveros and Eriijk Ressler)

Pig
(a man in a pig mask abuses his bondage/murder victim; directed by Nico B)

Hollywood Babylon
(an exhibition at the Museum of Death; directed by Nico B)

Le Poeme
(an autopsy on a male cadaver, accompanied by a poetry recital; directed by Bogdan Borkowski)

The films are similar in tone to the L'Erotisme anthology. All except Le Poeme are monochrome, though Disturbia is tinted. None contain spoken dialogue, though Adoration and Le Poeme both feature narrators reciting poetry. In Adoration, the narration is diegetic: a woman reads a poem into a microphone, and, after she dies, her recording is played back; in Le Poeme, the narrator represents the voice of the cadaver: when the dead man is placed in a body bag, the narration stops.

Adoration, with professional lighting and special effects, has the highest production values. The camera, filming in a static long-shot with a wide-angle lens, remains objective, though the protagonist approaches the camera and his gaze directly confronts the viewer.

Le Poeme features a real human autopsy. Some horror films (Superbeast, George Schenck; Beyond The Darkness, Joe D'Amato; Autopsia, Juan Logar; Men Behind The Sun, TF Mous) and music videos (Live & Confused, Hijohkaidan; Despair, SPK) have also incorporated genuine autopsy sequences, though Le Poeme is closest in tone to Stan Brakhage's underground art film The Act Of Seeing With One's Own Eyes and the Alain Resnais drama Providence.

Hollywood Babylon and Dislandia are both largely hand-held, and sometimes barely in focus. Dislandia is somewhat unsettling, as a little girl with apparent mental and physical disabilities wears a slightly sinister mask. According to the director, the mask was coated with various bodily fluids and buried for three days.

Hollywood Babylon, an amateurish record of an exhibition based on Kenneth Anger's book, includes morgue photographs of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe (also featured on one of the postcards included with the DVD). Pig, by the same director, is much more effective, and is perhaps the most disturbing film in the collection. It reminded me of images by Robert Mapplethorpe (X Portfolio) and Charles Gatewood (Forbidden Photographs).

Shutter Island

Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Edward Daniels, a US Marshal investigating the mysterious disappearance of Rachel Solando, a patient from a mental institution on an isolated island. The Solando case (which acts as a MacGuffin for Daniels and a red herring for the audience) is complicated by the Marshal's obsessions with both his dead wife, Dolores Chanal, and the man who killed her, Andrew Laeddis.

Scorsese sets up the island as a foreboding and sinister environment, leading us to expect a Spellbound-style revelation about evil psychiatrists, though the plot twist is actually closer to that of Memento or even The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari. Everything is turned on its head, and there is a great deal of misdirection, with frequent dream sequences and hallucinations. It remains debatable whether the final explanation is either therapy or conspiracy; the former seems far too elaborate, while there are coincidences that appear to disprove the latter.

The avant-garde soundtrack, comprised exclusively of modern classical music, includes compositions by Krzysztof Penderecki and Gyorgy Ligeti, who were both also used by Stanley Kubrick for The Shining. This may be more than accidental, as Kubrick's film also features a delusional and violent protagonist. Both films involve dead children, though Shutter Island's exploitation of Holocaust victims is surprisingly tasteless.

Like Scorsese's previous film The Departed, also starring DiCaprio, the events take place in Boston. (The actor and director have also collaborated on Gangs Of New York and The Aviator, both of which were less successful.) The supporting cast includes the legendary Max von Sydow as a somewhat menacing German doctor; Ben Kingsley, who was surely chosen for his work in Death & The Maiden rather than Gandhi; and Elias Koteas, in a cameo role, who is the spitting image of former Scorsese collaborator Robert De Niro.

Free Willy

A shopkeeper in Leeming Bar, northern England, has had a phallic garden ornament confiscated by North Yorkshire police officers, after they received complaints from the public. Ten of the stone sculptures had been sold at Jason Hadlow's shop, Simply Dutch, before the police intervened, and Hadlow has ordered a further 150 from the suppliers in Indonesia. He has also formed a campaigning group, Free Willy, to protest against the confiscation.

Titanic

This month's issue of the German satirical magazine Titanic features a painting of a priest standing in front of a large relief of the crucified Jesus. In the image, by Rudi Hurzlmeier, the position of the priest's head could be interpreted as a sexual innuendo. Consequently, the magazine's editor is now facing two criminal charges.

Sibathontisele

Zimbabwean artist Owen Maseko has been released on bail, after spending four nights in jail following his arrest on 25th March. Maseko's exhibition at Zimbabwe's National Gallery in Bulawayo has been closed, and the police have covered the gallery's windows with newspapers to prevent the twelve paintings and three installations from being seen.

Maseko's exhibition, titled Sibathontisele, is a direct attack on President Robert Mugabe, and a commentary on the Gukurahundi massacres carried out on Mugabe's orders in the 1980s. Sibathontisele is the second anti-Mugabe exhibition to be closed in Zimbabwe in the past few weeks, following the closure of the Reflections exhibition in Harare.

Reflections

Zimbabwean police seized sixty-five photographs from Gallery Delta in Harare on 23rd March. The images, collected by ZimRights, the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association, depict violence meted out to opponents of President Robert Mugabe, and the exhibition was scheduled to run for ten days.

The photographs were returned to the gallery the following day, following a ruling by the High Court, and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai presided over the opening of the exhibition. However, the police returned to the gallery that evening, again demanding that the photographs be removed. Although the gallery refused to hand over the pictures again, ZimRights decided to close the exhibition early due to police intimidation. Reflections will now be held at Amakhosi, an art centre in Bulawayo.

Crossfire

A gallery in Dhaka, Bangladesh, was closed by police on 22nd March, to prevent the exhibition of a series of photographs by Shahidul Alam. The exhibition, titled Crossfire, exposes the extrajudicial killings perpetrated by the Rapid Action Battalion, a branch of the Bangladeshi police force.

Following an appeal by the artist, the police finally withdrew from the gallery on 31st March (Crossfire's original closing date) and allowed the exhibition to open. Crossfire will now close on 14th April.

[Three years ago, a Bangladeshi cartoonist was jailed after a newspaper printed his "Mohammed cat" cartoon.]

Blasphemous

An exhibition intended as a direct challenge to Ireland's blasphemy law opened yesterday in Dublin. Titled Blasphemous, it features provocative works including the poster image God Dates Fags (a subversive reappropriation of the anti-gay slogan 'God hates fags') by Will St Leger.

Blasphemous is at the Irish Museum of Contemporary Art until 25th April. A similar exhibition, Forbidden Art 2006, was held in Russia, and S Brent Plate's book Blasphemy examines blasphemous art.

All in the Family

The New York Times has paid $114,000 in damages to three of Singapore's leading politicians: Lee Hsien Loong (the current Prime Minister), Goh Chok Tong (his predecessor), and Lee Kuan Yew (the founder of the country). The damages relate to an article published in the International Herald Tribune on 15th February, headlined "All in the family". The op-ed, written by Philip Bowring, violated an earlier legal settlement dating back to 1994, when Bowring gave an undertaking that he would not refer to Singapore's government as dynastic or nepotistic. Lee Hsien Loong previously won damages from The Economist in 2004 after it alleged "a whiff of nepotism" in his wife's appointment as head of Singapore's state investment agency Temasek.

Democracy Monument

UDD protesters in Bangkok have painted pro-democracy images and slogans in blood, and wrapped the paintings around the city's Democracy Monument. At a UDD rally last week, thousands of UDD supporters donated 10cc of blood each, which was then symbolically poured onto the ground outside Government House and other political sites in Bangkok. (Government House was illegally occupied by the PAD in 2008.)

The current UDD campaign was launched after last month's seizure of Thaksin Shinawatra's assets by the Supreme Court. The protesters are also opposed to the 2007 constitution (drafted by the military), the 2006 coup (allegedly organised by the Privy Council), and the governing coalition (formed by the military following the dissolution of TRT and the PPP). Unlike the riots last year, the current UDD demonstrations are peaceful, despite scaremongering by Deputy PM Suthep Thaugsuban.

[Thai artists Pornprasert Yamazaki (Suicide Mind), Kosit Juntaratip, and Manit Sriwanichpoom (Flashback '76) have also used blood in their work. Kristian von Hornsleth collected Thai blood donations for his Deep Storage Art Project.]

Cinema@MERZ

Thunska Pansittivorakul's documentary This Area Is Under Quarantine, which was banned from last year's World Film Festival, will open the Cinema@MERZ film season at MERZ Art Space, Bangkok, on 27th March. The season will run until 24th April.

Another Side

A group exhibition, Another Side: Contemporary Artists' Dreams, opened on 13th March. The show includes The Altar, a new video by Thunska Pansittivorakul (director of Reincarnate, This Area Is Under Quarantine, and many short films). (As of today, Thunska's video had not yet been installed.)

The show also features Chaisiri Jiwarangsan's video The Illuded Moon, a record of an eye operation which is not for the squeamish. The video was made in collaboration with Apichatpong Weerasethakul (director of Syndromes & A Century) and Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook (whose video works have previously been shown in From Message To Media and The Suspended Moment).

Most impressive are the ceramic works by Wasinburee Supanichvoraparch and Flora Cruells Benzal. Wasinburee has created a guardian angel with the body of a Transformer, and Benzal's Chimerical Six is a disturbing series of Gothic babies' heads. Another Side, at La Lanta in Bangkok, will close on 30th April.

Lars Vilks

Seven people have been arrested in Ireland in connection with an Al Qaeda plot to murder the Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks. Vilks depicted Mohammed as a dog in a series of drawings which were removed from the Hunden I Konsten exhibition in 2007. The plot to murder Vilks comes after a man was arrested in January for the attempted murder of Kurt Westergaard, who created the most notorious of the Jyllands-Posten Mohammed caricatures.

Chaotic Victory

Chaotic Victory, an exhibition of new works by Vasan Sitthiket and Iwan Wijono, will open at Whitespace Gallery, Bangkok, from 12th March to 11th April. Vasan has a simultaneous exhibition at Number One Gallery, Ten Evil Scenes Of Thai Politic [sic].

Vasan has produced a series of self-portraits, depicting himself as Buddha and a terrorist. Wijono's paintings comment on the hypocrisy of iconic figures such as Barack Obama and Andy Warhol. Like Santiago Sierra, he works with economically marginalised labourers, though his projects are genuinely collaborative and mutually advantageous in contrast to Sierra's exploitation.

Ten Evil Scenes Of Thai Politic

A new exhibition by Vasan Sitthiket, titled Ten Evil Scenes Of Thai Politic [sic], opens on 11th March at Number One Gallery, Bangkok. It will close on 3rd April.

Vasan is refreshingly direct in his treatment of politics, sex, and religion. His new paintings, for example, explicitly depict politicians such as Thaksin Shinawatra and Suthep Thaugsuban as thoroughly corrupt figures succumbing to the temptations of sex and money. Some of his video works, including the scatological There Must Be Something Happen, were shown at From Message To Media.

“To confiscate all of the wealth of Mr Thaksin would be unfair...”

The Supreme Court ruled today that more than half of former PM Thaksin Shinawatra’s assets, frozen in 2007, will now be confiscated. The Assets Examination Committee had frozen ฿76 billion pending the outcome of an anti-corruption investigation, and Thaksin was convicted in absentia in 2008.

Of the total assets in question, ฿46 billion will be seized, and the remaining ฿30 billion will be returned. The Supreme Court judge delivering the verdict said: “To confiscate all of the wealth of Mr Thaksin would be unfair”.

The court ruled that Thaksin had attempted to conceal his personal wealth while he served as prime minister, by transferring his 48% stake in Shin Corp. to his children. It was his sale of Shin Corp. to Temasek in 2006 that sparked the People’s Alliance for Democracy’s anti-Thaksin protests, which led to a coup against him and four subsequent years of political instability.

Circus Christi

An exhibition at Granada University in Spain has been closed following protests from Catholic groups. The show, Circus Christi by Fernando Bayona, features a series of photographs depicting Jesus as a gay man; he is also shown making love with Mary Magdalene. The exhibition opened on 11th February and closed after less than a week; it was originally scheduled to run until 5th March.

A fantasy scene featuring Jesus and Mary making love, from Martin Scorsese's film The Last Temptation Of Christ, caused controversy in 1989, and DH Lawrence's novella The Escaped Cock (1929) also depicts Jesus and Mary's sexual relationship. Jesus has previously been depicted as gay in two films (Matthias von Fistenberg's Passio, 2007; Ed D Louie's He, 1974), a poem (James Kirkup's The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name, 1976), a lithograph (Enrique Chagoya's The Misadventures Of The Romantic Cannibals, 2003), a play (Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi, 1998), and a magazine illustration (Johnny Correa's Resurrection, in The Insurgent, 2006).

Enjoying Cursive Writing

A series of exercise books for children, Enjoying Cursive Writing I-IV, has provoked violent demonstrations in Batala, India. The books contain a drawing of Jesus holding a can of beer and a cigarette, and their publisher, Ram Mohan Jha, has been arrested.

The image in question, used to illustrate the word 'idol', was sourced from the internet; three years ago, it appeared on the front page of a Malaysian newspaper, Makkal Osai, and it also provoked violent protests when it was published by the Hyderabad newspaper Sakshi on 13th July 2008.

Game Change

Game Change: Obama & The Clintons, McCain & Palin, & The Race Of A Lifetime (also published with the more manageable title Race Of A Lifetime: How Obama Won The White House), by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, is a journalistic account of the 2008 American presidential election campaign. Like Andrew Rawnsley's The End Of The Party (which covers contemporary UK politics), Game Change benefits from hundreds of senior yet unattributed sources.

The book's overall tone is rather gossipy, though it contains numerous revelations. While Barack Obama is certainly an infinitely better President than John McCain would have been, McCain was an amusing presidential candidate during the campaign (with hilarious appearances at the Al Smith Dinner and on Saturday Night Live). Game Change shows that McCain is privately much less entertaining, quoting angry outbursts directed at his wife. Hillary Clinton's aggressive plans to challenge Obama are also discussed, and Sarah Palin is revealed to be even more ignorant than we first thought.

The End Of The Party

The End Of The Party: The Rise & Fall Of New Labour is Andrew Rawnsley's sequel to his excellent Servants Of The People. The earlier book is an authoritative account of Tony Blair's first term as British Prime Minister; with the same access to senior yet unattributed sources, The End Of The Party covers Blair's second term and Gordon Brown's succession. Whereas the previous book centred on Brown's rows with Blair (deliberately omitted from Alastair Campbell's The Blair Years), the new volume discusses Brown's bad-tempered relations with his staff.

Despite the international impact of his bank bail-out scheme, Brown's leadership has been heavily criticised after a series of U-turns and chronic presentational failures. There have been at least three internal attempts to remove him as Labour leader, the latest of which (organised by Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt, with cabinet ministers offering Brown delayed and qualified support) came too late for Rawnsley's book.

Nuit & Brouillard

The Holocaust documentary Nuit & Brouillard was directed by Alain Resnais, better known for his oblique French New Wave classics Hiroshima Mon Amour and Last Year At Marienbad. With a poetic narration, it intercuts contemporary footage of the concentration camp at Auschwitz with archive footage of dying and dead Holocaust victims.

Scenes of bodies bulldozed into mass graves shocked audiences even ten years after the atrocities took place, though arguably even more disturbing are the mountains of hair and personal effects removed from the millions of victims. Holocaust footage had previously been included in the drama The Stranger, and of course Schindler's List remains the most famous Holocaust film, though neither can convey the horror of the Holocaust as Nuit & Brouillard does.

My Own Private Idaho

Gus van Sant's visually and emotionally powerful road movie My Own Private Idaho was one of a group of films from the early 1990s known as New Queer Cinema, all of which were independent films with gay themes (arguably the first being Poison by Todd Haynes). The potentially controversial subject-matter (young male hustlers) was offset by the unexpected casting: teen idols River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves, both of whom were risking their mainstream appeal by starring in the film.

The narcoleptic central character, played by Phoenix (who, of course, would die of a drugs overdose two years later), first appears on an empty highway. It feels like the build-up to the crop-dusting sequence from North By Northwest. We return to this road at the end of the film, when Phoenix is bundled into a car by an unseen driver. This was originally intended as a happy ending, with the driver's identity revealed, though van Sant ultimately filmed the sequence in long-shot to maintain ambiguity. To me, the ending has echoes of the tragic conclusion to Easy Rider.

A Clockwork Orange is another key reference, with similar scenes of young gang-members using intentionally unidiomatic dialogue. The brightly-coloured credits and inter-titles are an homage to Kubrick's film, though the (incongruous) Shakespearean dialogue was apparently inspired by Chimes At Midnight (which is namechecked, as is Rio Bravo) and the film is a loose adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry IV.

Gus van Sant has also directed the black comedy To Die For and an oddly anachronistic Psycho remake. Several of his films, including My Own Private Idaho, take place in Portland, Oregon though he is now most famous for Good Will Hunting which, like The Departed, stars Matt Damon and is set in Boston. Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix had previously appeared together in I Love You To Death. Reeves later appeared in superior blockbusters such as Speed, Devil's Advocate, and The Matrix, though his more recent films (The Lake House and a remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still) have been much less successful.

Film Talk

Thai film director Thunska Pansittivorakul gave a Film Talk yesterday at The Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok. He discussed his experiences at international film festivals, and screened two films: Vous Vous Souviens De Moi? and Middle-Earth. (Thunska premiered the latter at the 11th Thai Short Film & Video Festival.)

Alfred Hitchcock PresentsRevenge

Revenge is the first episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, the television series hosted by Hitchcock for a decade and first broadcast on 2nd October 1955. The series was apparently devised by Lew Wasserman, who advised Hitchcock to capitalise on his celebrity status by appearing on TV. Royalties from the CBS show gave Hitchcock a substantial income, as did his shares in Wasserman's MCA talent agency. At a time when the rest of the film industry was competing with TV using gimmicks such as 3D (which even Hitchock could not avoid) and Cinerama, the idea of a film director producing a TV show was unexpected. (Thomas Schatz discusses this in The Genius Of The System.)

Hitchcock directed seventeen half-hour episodes of the show (and one hour-long episode of the programme's successor, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour), though he appeared at the beginning of every episode to set the scene with a droll monologue. The dramas themselves featured several actors from Hitchcock's films, including Claude Rains and Vera Miles. Hitchcock's daughter, Patricia, also appeared in several episodes. (She also appeared in three Hitchcock films: Stage Fright, Strangers On A Train, and Psycho.) Famously, Hitchcock used members of the show's crew to film Psycho (the subject of recent books by David Thomson and Philip J Skerry), in order to cut costs and produce an AIP-style thriller.

Revenge, directed by Hitchcock, stars Vera Miles, who later appeared in Hitchcock's The Wrong Man and Psycho (and was unsuccessfully groomed for the lead role in Vertigo, later replaced by Kim Novak). Her character suffers a nervous breakdown and is subsequently attacked by an unidentified man, and her husband attempts to track down her attacker. In the establishing scenes before the attack, Miles is sexy and confident, and she then makes an effective transition to post-traumatic confusion (similar to her character in The Wrong Man). The episode's conclusion is rather predictable, though it's an effectively suspenseful and succinct drama.

There are two inexplicable moments: a female character looks at Miles's legs for slightly too long, and Miles is seen holding the head of a carnation. The carnation clearly suggests the Miles has been 'deflowered', though its status as a clue to the attacker's identity is not explained, and potential suspicions about the other female character are also unresolved.

The Purple Rose Of Cairo

In Woody Allen's The Purple Rose Of Cairo, Mia Farrow plays Cecilia, a downtrodden Depression-era housewife, who finds escapism in glamorous Hollywood movies. When she sees The Purple Rose Of Cairo (the film-within-the-film, Allen's parody of a 1930s high-society melodrama), one of its characters, Tom, breaks the fourth wall by stepping out of the screen and into the cinema.

Cecilia and Tom fall in love, though his fellow characters are left standing around on screen, unable to continue the film because Tom is missing. Though Cecilia recognises the impossibility of a real relationship with Tom, she ultimately returns to the short-term escapism of the movies, with Fred Astaire in Top Hat as her only consolation.

Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr was the first film to feature interaction between cinema audiences and fictional characters as a plot device. The idea was later ripped off by the critical and commercial flop Last Action Hero (and the Thai horror film Coming Soon). Allen played on the confusion between fantasy and reality in his Stardust Memories, with the actors commenting on their own performances; in Play It Again, Sam, Allen's character is visited by Humphrey Bogart as he appeared in Casablanca; and Allen's brilliantly acerbic Deconstructing Harry features characters from a novel who invade the life of the author, as does the recent film Stranger Than Fiction. Finally, Bruce La Bruce's Otto features a character who thinks she's a silent movie character, consequently appearing in black-and-white and speaking via inter-titles.

Orson Welles: The One-Man Band

Orson Welles: The One-Man Band, directed by Vassili Silovic with Ojar Kodar, features clips and out-takes from various unfinished Orson Welles films. The footage was left to Kodar by Welles in his will, and the film's title comes from a sketch in which Welles played both a busker and his unappreciative audience. (Welles saw himself metaphorically not as a one-man band but as a "friendly neighbourhood grocery store" in an age of supermarkets.)

The documentary includes extracts from The Other Side Of The Wind, which resembles Easy Rider with its zooms and jump cuts. Impressive footage from The Merchant Of Venice (Welles as Shylock, with gothic locations and masked extras), The Deep (later filmed by Phillip Noyce), and the television pilot The Orson Welles Show (featuring the Muppets!) is also included. In one hilarious clip, a butler who thinks he's a chicken keeps his job because his employer needs the eggs; this traditional joke later appeared at the end of Woody Allen's Annie Hall. Footage of Welles reading from the novel Moby Dick now appears somewhat dated, and there is unfortunately no mention of Don Quixote.

An alternate version of the documentary, narrated by Welles acolyte Peter Bogdanovich, also exists. Filmographies of unfinished Welles projects are included in Discovering Orson Welles and Orson Welles At Work.

Гендерной Программы

Uzbek photographer Umida Akhmedova was arrested in Tashkent last month, after police claimed that her photographs insulted Uzbekistan. She has directed several controversial documentaries, though the formal charges relate to a book of her photos, titled Гендерной Программы Посольства Швейцарии, published in 2007.

Only In New York

Only In New York: Photographs From Look Magazine, edited by Donald Albrecht and Thomas Mellins, is the catalogue of an exhibition of images from the Museum of the City of New York archives. It features photos of New York from the 1940s-1950s taken by staff photographers from Look magazine, including Stanley Kubrick.

Some of Kubrick's contact sheets featuring images of the Copacabana nightclub are included, as are several of his portraits of Walter Cartier (the subject of his film Day Of The Fight), Rocky Graziano, Rosemary Williams, and others. Selections of Kubrick's Look photos have previously been published in several books: Ladro Di Sguardi (direct reproductions from published Look layouts), Still Moving Pictures (an exhibition catalogue), and Drama & Shadows.