Adresseavisen

At the start of this month, the editor of Adresseavisen, Denmark's oldest newspaper, pulped an issue of its Uke-Adressa supplement before it was distributed. The issue included a drawing by Jan O Henriksen depicting Kurt Westergaard and his infamous Mohammed caricature.

This is not the first time that Henriksen has caused controversy by drawing Mohammed. In 2008, Adresseavisen published his cartoon of Mohammed as a naked suicide-bomber. That image was one of many Mohammed cartoons published in response to the protests surrounding another Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, which printed twelve Mohammed cartoons in 2005.

El Alma Nunca Piensa Sin Imagen

A diptych of photographs depicting two Argentine presidential candidates by artist Roberto Jacoby was removed from the Sao Paolo Biennial last month. Election officials claimed that the installation, titled El Alma Nunca Piensa Sin Imagen, constituted propaganda, and it was therefore banned from the exhibition.

A Siam Theatre Presentation

Siam Theatre, destroyed by arsonists earlier this year, held a farewell open-air film screening yesterday evening: the first half of Gone With The Wind played to an audience watching from Siam BTS station. The film was last screened in Bangkok (in full) three years ago, during Lido's Festival Of Classic Movies.

i

Today, The Independent launched the i, a new national UK newspaper. Much of the content is adapted from copy written by journalists from The Independent, and it will be interesting to see if the i cannibalises The Independent's readership, because - judging from its first issue - the i seems like a more attractive package than its sister paper.

The editor's letter on page three announces that the i is "not only a new paper, but a new kind of paper, designed for people with busy, modern lives. Colourful and accessible, concise and intelligent, it's your essential daily briefing." The first issue successfully lives up to that description: it is colourful (printed in full colour throughout), accessible (tabloid format), concise (with an emphasis on short news articles), and intelligent (with decent coverage of business and world news).

A World History Of Art

A World History Of Art, by John Fleming and Hugh Honour, is a more comprehensive survey of the entire global history of art than any other single-volume publication. The book has been published by Laurence King since its second edition, and it remains the publisher's flagship title. (In America, it's published by Prentice-Hall as The Visual Arts: A History.)

Laurence King has subsequently commissioned histories of various artistic fields, such as A World History Of Architecture (more accessible, though less detailed, than Banister Fletcher's A History Of Architecture), A History Of Interior Design, History Of Modern Design, Graphic Design: A New History (more engaging, though less scholarly, than Philip B Meggs's A History Of Graphic Design), and Photography: A Cultural History (more up-to-date, and better organised, than Naomi Rosenblum's A World History Of Photography).

The revised seventh edition of A World History Of Art finally has a cover that does justice to the book's contents. The covers of previous editions seemed old-fashioned or insubstantial, though the latest cover - a detail from Picasso's Guernica - and the clean, bold typography on the spine, are suitably striking. There are only minor changes to the text and illustrations (as Michael Archer made more significant revisions in the sixth and seventh editions); one tiny regret is that a photograph of Damien Hirst's shark installation (The Physical Impossibility Of Death In The Mind Of Someone Living) has been removed.

EH Gombrich's concise text The Story Of Art remains the classic introduction to art history, though A World History Of Art is more comprehensive and (like all Laurence King publications) benefits from large, full-colour illustrations. Of the major American art textbooks, Helen Gardner's Art Through The Ages is one of the earliest surveys of both Western and non-Western art. Fleming and Honour also co-wrote The Penguin Dictionary Of Decorative Arts and (with Nikolaus Pevsner) the Dictionary Of Architecture & Landscape Architecture, and Honour contributed to World Furniture: An Illustrated History (edited by Helena Hayward).

The Red Eagle

The Red Eagle is Wisit Sasanatieng's remake of The Golden Eagle, a superhero film made in Thailand in 1970. Mitr Chaibancha, the star of the original film, died during the production, falling from a helicopter while filming the final sequence. Mitr has been replaced by Ananda Everingham in Wisit's updated version.

Featuring rapid-montage fight sequences, and filmed largely with hand-held cameras, The Red Eagle is a surprisingly commercial action film from a director more comfortable with indie cinema. Like his previous film The Unseeable, it's a mainstream genre movie, though its over-the-top violence echoes that of his cult debut Tears Of The Black Tiger. While that first film - and its follow-up, Citizen Dog - were vibrantly coloured and somewhat kitsch, The Red Eagle is visually and thematically darker.

As played by Ananda, Red Eagle is as much a criminal as a superhero. Like Iron Man, he is dependent on pain-relieving medication; like Batman in The Dark Knight, he rides a gleaming black motorbike; like both of them, he has no superpowers. He is pursued by a black-caped figure and sought by a mysterious cabal of masked men, adding stylised elements to an otherwise conventional film. Political corruption is a major theme, and scenes in which the Thai Prime Minister's car is surrounded by protesters are a reminder of last year's demonstrations in Bangkok.

Wisit has announced that The Red Eagle may be his final studio film, as he is apparently tired of compromising his artistic integrity. The Thai National Film Archive screened all of his previous films last month.

European Union Film Festival 2010

The European Union Film Festival 2010 opens today at the Bangkok Art & Culture Centre, and will close on 31st October. (The venue of last year's Festival was damaged following the recent protests.) All screenings are free.

Craig McCall's documentary Cameraman: The Life & Work Of Jack Cardiff is this year's highlight, and is screening on 30th October. Cardiff directed films including Sons & Lovers and Scent Of Mystery, though he is most famous as the cinematographer of three films directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (A Matter Of Life & Death, The Red Shoes, and Black Narcissus). The documentary includes contributions from director Martin Scorsese and actor Charlton Heston, among many others.

The History Of Italian Cinema

The History Of Italian Cinema: A Guide To Italian Film From Its Origins To The 21st Century is an English translation of Gian Piero Brunetta's Guida Alla Storia Del Cinema Italiano 1905-2003; the Italian edition was published in 2003, and the English version includes a new afterword written in 2007. Brunetta has written extensively on the history of Italian cinema; his magnum opus is the four-volume Storia Del Cinema Italiano, though this is not (yet) available in an English translation.

For almost two decades, Brunetta's various Italian cinema histories remained the definitive accounts of their subject, with Peter Bondanella's Italian Cinema providing an impressive though inferior English-language alternative. However, Bondanella's A History Of Italian Cinema, with its new coverage of Italian film genres and its extensive bibliography, now equals or arguably even surpasses Brunetta's work.

Trespass

Trespass: A History Of Uncommissioned Urban Art, edited by Ethel Seno, surveys the work of 150 street artists, and presents the first global history of graffiti and other site-specific guerrilla art. The book's wide scope also includes culture jamming and urban performance art. (The Faith Of Graffiti was the first study of graffiti as an art form, and Advertising Is Dead discusses how corporations employ the same tactics as guerrilla artists.)

A Social History Of The Media

A Social History Of The Media: From Gutenberg To The Internet, by Asa Briggs and Peter Burke, is a concise history of media and communications technologies, including newspapers, radio, television, and the internet. Now in its third edition, it's far more comprehensive than its nearest rival, Media & Society In The 20th Century.

Tarantula

Tarantula, directed by Jack Arnold, features an enormous radioactive spider (the titular tarantula) that terrorises a small town. It was clearly inspired by Them!, which features enormous ants, though its special effects (back-projections of a real tarantula, and miniature sets) are a significant improvement. Like Godzilla, it has an anti-nuclear subtext.

Arnold directed a series of classic sci-fi films in the 1950s in addition to Tarantula, including Creature From The Black Lagoon and It Came From Outer Space. His pulp masterpiece The Incredible Shrinking Man also features a battle with an arachnid. Tarantula was spoofed nearly forty years after it was made, by Eight Legged Freaks.

BFI Film Classics2001: A Space Odyssey

Peter Kramer's slim monograph on Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey is part of the BFI Film Classics series. Like others in the collection (even the best ones, such as The Exorcist by Mark Kermode, The Birds by Camille Paglia, Citizen Kane by Laura Mulvey, Cat People by Kim Newman, Double Indemnity by Richard Schickel, and Annie Hall by Peter Cowie), it contains a superfluous plot synopsis. However, Kramer's book also includes useful new research, as he quotes production materials from the Stanley Kubrick Archive.

Quota Quickies

In Quota Quickies: The Birth Of The British 'B' Film, Steve Chibnall discusses the films released in the aftermath of the 1927 Cinematograph Films Act. The Act required UK cinemas to screen a quota of British films, to avoid Hollywood productions dominating the market. The result, however, was an influx of low-budget and low-quality films that have been been maligned by critics ever since.

Chibnall re-evaluates the extant films of the period, including a case-study of the early films directed by Michael Powell. He also provides statistical analysis, albeit from a data set that's limited to cinemas in Leicester.

501 Must-See Movies

The second edition of 501 Must-See Movies, written by Ronald Bergan (author of Film), Chris Darke, Rob Hill, Ann Lloyd, Cara Frost-Sharratt, and Paul Frost-Sharratt, features 501 films arranged chronologically within ten categories. Fifty films have been removed, replaced exclusively by titles released after the first edition was published. The book contains only 500 entries, though Kill Bill I and II appear as a single combined entry, making a total of 501 films.

The new additions include Oldboy, Shaun Of The Dead, A Cock & Bull Story, Kill Bill, Drag Me To Hell, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, The Dark Knight, Cache, Casino Royale, and The Departed. Unfortunately, among the deletions are classics such as Children Of Paradise, Alexander Nevsky, The Man In The White Suit, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Minority Report, and The Asphalt Jungle.

1001 MoviesYou Must See Before You Die

The 2010 edition of Steven Jay Schneider's 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die has now been released. As in the 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, and 2005 versions, only 1% of the films have been changed. Eleven films have been removed, all of which were released within the previous decade. The eleven new films, all from the past two years, include The White Ribbon, Inglourious Basterds, and Avatar.

Radical Abstractionism VIII

The Russian Ministry of Culture has prevented the Louvre in Paris from showing Radical Abstractionism VIII (2004), a painting by Avdei Ter-Oganyan. The work was to be included in the Louvre's forthcoming Counterpoint: Russia Contemporary Art exhibition, though the Russian authorities allege that the painting incites violence against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

The painting is a geometric abstraction, though its caption reads: "This work urges you to commit an attack on statesman VV Putin in order to end his state and political activities". Ter-Oganyan also took part in the provocative Forbidden Art 2006 exhibition in Moscow. (Another Russian artist, Alexander Shednov, has also faced censorship over his satire of Putin.)

Tavshedens Tyranni

Flemming Rose, who commissioned Jyllands-Posten's infamous Mohammed caricatures, has written Tavshedens Tyranni, a book about the controversy generated by the twelve drawings. (The book also reprints all of the caricatures.) Since they were first published, three other books have been written about them: Gary Hull's Muhammad, Mohamed Sifaoui's L'Affaire Des Caricatures, and Jytte Klausen's The Cartoons That Shook The World.

Obama's Wars

Obama's Wars (published in Britain with the subtitle The Inside Story), by Bob Woodward, is an account of Barack Obama's policies regarding the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Woodward, one of the world's most famous investigative reporters following his exposure of the Watergate scandal, has interviewed many of Obama's senior staff, though most of them are quoted anonymously. (Woodward employed the same 'deep background' reporting style for his books about Obama's predecessor, as did John Heilemann and Mark Halperin for Game Change.) Woodward was granted an hour-long Oval Office interview with Obama, as well as interviews with the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Sloth

Mark Goldblatt's novel Sloth is unrelated to Islam, though the author has retrospectively announced that the cockroach on its cover is a depiction of Mohammed. He was reacting to the Everybody Draw Mohammed Day! controversy.

Time Out Film Guide 2011

The nineteenth edition of the Time Out Film Guide has been published, with 350 new entries and reviews of thirty-eight films (including Uncle Boonmee) which were screened at Cannes this year. Of course, the Internet Movie DataBase contains many more entries, though Time Out is written and compiled by professional critics (and edited by John Pym). Mindful of the rise of online film criticism, this edition includes a persuasive essay defending printed reference books.

There are several appendices (a useful list of 100 film websites; a comprehensive index of directors; and a list of alternative titles, which strangely only includes European languages), and 19,000 capsule reviews. This year's new entries include: The Ghost Writer ("cold and lean"), Kick-Ass ("hyperfictional ultraviolence"), Shutter Island ("pure operatic delirium"), Bruno ("both repulsive and compelling"), Avatar ("beautifully designed" but "dire script"), The September Issue ("reveals a business in which looks can kill"), Drag Me To Hell ("gross-out fright movie"), and Ponyo ("vibrant, surreal and enchanting").

Time Out is the best of the annual film guides, and I buy it every year. (I reviewed the eighteenth edition earlier this year.) But I'll also hold on to my copy of the out-of-print Halliwell's Film Guide 2008.

The Faith Of Graffiti

The Faith Of Graffiti, with photographs of New York graffiti by Jon Naar and an essay by Norman Mailer, was originally published in 1974. The first book to celebrate and theorise the art of graffiti (also known as Watching My Name Go By), it is now available in an expanded edition with additional images.

Fanzines

Fanzines, written by Teal Triggs and published by Thames & Hudson, is a survey of self-published zines from their origins in the 1970s to contemporary e-zines. As zines are frequently radical and alternative, the book also acts as a visual historiography of alt.culture, from Punk to post-feminism.

In their form and content, zines are similar to underground press titles such as Oz, though zines target niche audiences and are often written by individuals. The cottage-industry aspect of the format is evident in both zine production and distribution: zines are typically photocopied and stapled, promoted via classified advertising (or, until 1998, listed in Factsheet Five), and sold by mail order. Whereas early zines (such as Sniffin' Glue, featured in 100 Years Of Magazine Covers) were handwritten or typed on manual typewriters, more recent titles are produced via desktop publishing or published online.

I have a personal interest in zines, having written several of them in the 1990s: a monthly Madonna fanzine (called, incredibly unimaginatively, Madonna Monthly) and a cult-film zine (Disturbed). Of course, blogging and print-on-demand now provide further opportunities for self-published personal expression, and Fanzines might therefore be a timely archive of an endangered medium.

The Essential 100

The Toronto International Film Festival has compiled The Essential 100, a list of the 100 greatest films. The list was selected partly by the Festival's organisers, and partly by an audience vote. Like Cahiers Du Cinema's list from 2008, the films are being screened in a cinema season: screenings began yesterday at the Bell Lightbox, and will continue until the end of the year.

The Essential 100 films are as follows:

1. The Passion Of Joan Of Arc
2. Citizen Kane
3. L'Avventura
4. The Godfather
5. Pickpocket
6. Seven Samurai
7. Pather Panchali
8. Casablanca
9. Man With A Movie Camera
10. Bicycle Thieves
11. Ali: Fear Eats The Soul
12. 8½
13. Battleship Potemkin
14. Rashomon
15. Tokyo Story
16. The 400 Blows
17. Ugetsu Monogatari
18. Breathless
19. L'Atalante
20. Cinema Paradiso
21. Grand Illusion
22. Lawrence Of Arabia
23. Persona
24. Gone With The Wind
25. Sunrise
26. 2001: A Space Odyssey
27. Voyage In Italy
28. Amelie
29. City Lights
30. Star Wars IV: A New Hope
31. Sherlock Jr
32. The Rules Of The Game
33. The Leopard
34. La Dolce Vita
35. Train Arriving At A Station
36. The Wizard Of Oz
37. La Jetee
38. Vertigo
39. Night & Fog
40. Pulp Fiction
41. The Searchers
42. Slumdog Millionaire
43. The Conformist
44. City Of God
45. Taxi Driver
46. Apocalypse Now
47. Salo
48. The Seventh Seal
49. A Trip To The Moon
50. Metropolis
51. The Battle Of Algiers
52. In The Mood For Love
53. Viridiana
54. Life Is Beautiful
55. The Sorrow & The Pity
56. Pan's Labyrinth
57. Mme De...
58. Blade Runner
59. Through The Olive Trees
60. Children Of Paradise
61. Bringing Up Baby
62. Singin' In the Rain
63. Johnny Guitar
64. A Clockwork Orange
65. Memories Of Underdevelopment
66. M
67. Scorpio Rising
68. Psycho
69. Dust In The Wind
70. Schindler's List
71. Nashville
72. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
73. Wavelength
74. Jules & Jim
75. Chronique d'Un Ete
76. The Lives Of Others
77. Greed
78. Some Like It Hot
79. Jaws
80. Annie Hall
81. The Birth Of A Nation
82. Chungking Express
83. La Noire De...
84. Raging Bull
85. The Maltese Falcon
86. Chinatown
87. Andrei Rublev
88. Wings Of Desire
89. Videodrome
90. Written On The Wind
91. The Third Man
92. Blue Velvet
93. The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
94. Breaking The Waves
95. A Nos Amours
96. Cleo From Five To Seven
97. All About My Mother
98. Earth
99. Oldboy
100. Playtime

Note that Some Like It Hot is the 1959 comic masterpiece, not the obscure 1939 comedy. There is also an exhibition, called Essential Cinema, featuring images and artefacts from each of the 100 films, which opened on 12th September and will close on 23rd October.

Art That Dares

Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, & More, by Kittredge Cherry, discusses artists who have been censored for their depictions of Jesus as homosexual or (less controversially) as female. Arguably the most provocative artist profiled by Cherry is Alex Donis, whose My Cathedral installation in San Francisco depicted Jesus and the Hindu god Rama kissing passionately; the painting was destroyed by protesters in 1997.

Cherry's book focuses on painting and sculpture, though gay Christs have also appeared in other artistic media: a series of photographs by Fernando Bayone (Circus Christi), two films (Matthias von Fistenberg's Passio and Ed D Louie's He), a poem by James Kirkup (The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name), a lithograph by Enrique Chagoya (The Misadventures Of The Romantic Cannibals), a play by Terrence McNally (Corpus Christi), and a magazine illustration (Johnny Correa's Resurrection, in The Insurgent); also, in Jerry Springer: The Opera, Jesus admits: "Actually, I am a bit gay".

There have been exhibitions of intentionally blasphemous art in Dublin (Blasphemous) and Moscow (Caution: Religion! and Forbidden Art). S Brent Plate's book Blasphemy discusses the history of blasphemy in art, and Steven C Dubin's excellent book Arresting Images includes a chapter on the censorship of blasphemous art.

The Fry Chronicles

The Fry Chronicles: An Autobiography, by Stephen Fry, covers Fry's life in the 1980s, including his time at Cambridge University with Hugh Laurie and his nascent comedy career. The book feels more mainstream than his previous autobiography, Moab Is My Washpot: it's less rude, and its title is as bland as Moab's was obscure.

As Fry explains in his introduction, the book explores "some of the C-words that have dominated my life", and every chapter title begins with 'c'. So, The Fry Chronicles is captivating, clever, and comical, though also a bit conventional.

Thailand's Crisis

Giles Ji Ungpakorn's new book Thailand's Crisis & The Fight For Democracy discusses Thai politics following the 2006 coup. Ji critiques the the 2007 military constitution and criticises the current climate of political censorship. His Red Siam manifesto, in which he calls for the adoption of the French tripartite motto 'liberty, equality, fraternity', is also included. It has been banned from distribution in Thailand.

Ji states plainly what others don't dare to say. He can do this because he is living in exile in the UK, after his previous book, A Coup For The Rich, was accused of lèse-majesté. (The most controversial passages from A Coup For The Rich are included in Thailand's Crisis as an appendix.) However, there is no attempt at objectivity; for example, he claims that the editing of the controversial Abhisit audio clip "did not in any way distort what Abhisit actually said", whereas even the Prime Minister's critics admit that the tape was misleading.

There is surprisingly little commentary on the PAD's 2008 seizures of Government House and Suvarnabhumi airport or the 2009 Songkran riots. (The events of May 2010 occurred too late for inclusion.) Also, the drawbacks of self-publishing are apparent: Ji's spelling ("ice burg"), punctuation ("!!"), and italicisation are unconventional and distracting. Unfortunately, much of the material is not new: parts of chapters two and three, most of chapters one and five, and almost all of chapter four have been copied from A Coup For The Rich.

Made in Heaven

In 1991, artist Jeff Koons married the porn star Ilona Staller (also known as Cicciolina), and they posed for a series of sexually explicit photographs. These formed the basis for his notorious Made in Heaven series, which caused an instant scandal when it was first exhibited in New York. Taschen published a Koons monograph in 1992, reproducing almost the entire Made in Heaven series, in both uncensored and self-censored versions. (The latter edition was apparently intended for the Japanese market, where frontal nudity is prohibited, though copies were also sold in the UK.)

Koons refers to the Made in Heaven works as paintings, which implies that they’re hand-painted. In fact, they are photographic enlargements printed onto canvas. Regardless, nine of the images will be shown next month at the Luxembourg + Co. gallery in New York. Works from the series were also included in the recent Seduced and Pop Life exhibitions in London.

Made in Heaven was almost unprecedented in its pornographic imagery. Perhaps the only equivalent was a remarkable series of four self-portraits by Man Ray, photographed in 1929. Like Koons, Man Ray photographed himself with his muse (Alice Prin, also known as Kiki de Montparnasse), creating hardcore images that leave nothing to the imagination. They were included in 1929, a slim volume of poetry by Benjamin Péret and Louis Aragon, published surreptitiously in Belgium and seized by French customs officials. The photographs—Printemps (‘spring’), Eté (‘summer’), Automne (‘autumn’), and Hiver (‘winter’)—are very rarely reproduced, though they were included in the Barbican’s Seduced exhibition.

Encyclopedia Of Early Cinema

Encyclopedia Of Early Cinema contains valuable information on the studios, directors, actors, and producers of the silent era circa 1890-1910. Its coverage of the period, from the familiar (Louis and Auguste Lumiere, Georges Melies, Thomas Edison) to the obscure (Emile Reynaud, Louis Le Prince, Thomas Armat, Max and Emil Skladanowsky), is more comprehensive than that of any other film encyclopedia. The book's editor, Richard Abel, is an authority on French silent cinema, and there are over 100 additional contributors (unfortunately not including William K Everson or Kevin Brownlow, arguably the greatest historians of silent film).

The paperback edition has been very slightly expanded, with one new entry and minor revisions. More importantly, the paperback version makes the book accessible to a general audience, being significantly cheaper than the hardback edition (which was sold primarily to academic libraries).

Spirits

TCDC's new exhibition Spirits: Creativities From Beyond explores spirits, ghosts, and other supernatural phenomena. As usual at TCDC, the installation is impeccable: flickering lights, eerie sounds, and dark corridors create a suitably spooky atmosphere. Spirits opened on 20th August; it was originally scheduled to close on 21st November, though it has now been extended until 9th January 2011.

The emphasis is on Thai ghosts, and their representation in films, comics, and commercials. Several props from Nonzee Nimibutr's Nang Nak are included. TCDC also commissioned a short documentary, That Spooky Atmosphere, featuring interviews with Nonzee and The Unseeable director Wisit Sasanatieng. (Nonzee introduced a screening of Nang Nak at the NETPAC Asian Film Festival last month, and The Unseeable will be screened at the Thai Film Archive later this month.)

A Journey

We've had the fictional version (in The Ghost Writer), and the perspectives of Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson, but now Tony Blair has written his memoir, A Journey, published in America with an additional subtitle: My Political Life. (Andrew Rawnsley's Servants Of The People and The End Of The Party cover the same ground more objectively.)

Blair admits that his suspicious-looking arrangement with Bernie Ecclestone was "a really stupid lapse of judgement"; that the expensive and underwhelming Millennium Dome was "in retrospect a mistake"; and that he should not have sacked Peter Mandelson once, let alone twice. Surprisingly, his biggest regret was passing the Freedom of Information Act: "I quake at the imbecility of it". (He still doesn't regret the invasion of Iraq, and there is no apology for the two misleading intelligence dossiers; he did feel "desperately sorry" after the brutal killing of Jean Charles de Menezes - but only "for the officers involved".)

Blair's account is informal (with too many exclamation marks) and surprisingly candid, with moments of comedy: Gordon Brown locked in the loo ("Withdraw from the contest or I'm leaving you in there") and John Prescott on the warpath ("Where's fookin' Menzies?"). It's also unavoidably one-sided. He is astonished, for example, that Labour leader John Smith considered appointing the Scottish Gordon Brown as deputy leader; naturally, he felt that he, rather than Brown, should be Smith's deputy, forgetting or ignoring that he is also a Scot. (Regarding the subsequent Labour leadership contest, there is no mention of the fabled Granita deal.)

A curious footnote: Blair begins the book by describing his meeting with the Queen on the day he became Prime Minister. According to his account, the Queen told him: "You are my tenth prime minister. My first was Winston [Churchill]". In The Queen, a fictionalised account of Blair and the Queen's relationship, she also uses precisely those words. The film's writer says that he invented the dialogue, and Blair says that he has never seen the film. So it's either an enormous coincidence, or the film had some extremely senior sources, or Blair is confusing fiction with fact.

Daryl Cagle

American cartoonist Daryl Cagle has been criticised by Mexican authorities after his cartoon satirising the Mexican flag was syndicated yesterday in over 800 newspapers. Cagle's cartoon was published on the front page of Reforma in Mexico, incorporated into a cartoon by Paco Calderon. Flag-desecration is illegal in Mexico; singer Paulina Rubio has been charged with the offence.

Tears Of The Black Tiger

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of Wisit Sasanatieng's Tears Of The Black Tiger, the Thai Film Archive will be screening a Wisit retrospective this month. Tears Of The Black Tiger will be screened first (on 5th September), followed by Citizen Dog (on 12th September) and The Unseeable (on 19th and 30th September).

The Archive previously screened Tears Of The Black Tiger as part of its ภาพยนตร์ศรีศาลายา season last year. Wisit's short films (not screening at the Archive) include the music video เราเป็นคนไทย, the art film Norasinghavatar, and a segment of the anthology film Sawasdee Bangkok. He also designed the posters for the Bangkok International Film Festival in 2008 and 2009.

The Third Man

To promote his political memoir The Third Man: Life At The Heart Of New Labour last month, Peter Mandelson was filmed sitting in front of a roaring fire narrating a fairy-tale version of New Labour: "Once upon a time there was a kingdom, and for many years it was ruled by two powerful kings. But the kings wouldn't have been in power without a third man. People called him 'the prince of darkness'. I don't know why!" His ironic smirk after that last line is hilariously conspiratorial and theatrical, like Mandelson himself - in contrast to Gordon Brown's cringe-making fake smile on YouTube last year (photographed in Where Power Lies).

Unlike Alastair Campbell, whose diaries were published in 2007, Mandelson spent long periods outside the heart of government. He may have been more influential than Campbell in shaping New Labour, though his two resignations (in 1998 and 2001) and his period as EU Commissioner (2004-2008) meant that he was periodically marginalised from Downing Street. Therefore, The Third Man focuses more on the (admittedly fascinating) twists and turns of Mandelson's political career than on the major policy decisions of the Labour government.

Mandelson's relationships with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown (the first and second men, with Mandelson as the Harry Lime figure) are a central preoccupation: his backing of Blair for the Labour leadership, his subsequent long-running feud with Brown, and finally his public comeback when Brown replaced Blair as Prime Minister. Most useful is his insider's account of this year's election and its aftermath, events which occurred too late for Andrew Rawnsley's otherwise comprehensive The End Of The Party.

Seeing The Unseen

As part of its 1970s season, This Could Happen To You, the Ikon gallery in Birmingham has organised a revival of the 1976 exhibition Seeing The Unseen. The exhibition features stroboscopic photographs by Harold Edgerton, including his famous image of the coronet formation produced by a drop of milk. Seeing The Unseen: Photographs & Films By Harold E Edgerton opened at The Pallasades on 21st July, and will close on 5th September.

Avatar (Special Edition)

James Cameron's Avatar, the highest-grossing film ever made, has been released in an extended 3D Special Edition featuring a few minutes of additional footage. The extra scenes include the discovery of an abandoned school, an aerial hunting sequence, an explanation for the floating mountains, a longer version of the sex scene, and the dying words of one of the main characters.

Picasso: The Mediterranean Years

Picasso: The Mediterranean Years 1945-1962, which accompanies the current Gagosian Picasso exhibition, includes 300 beautifully-reproduced plates and an essay by John Richardson. Richardson was a friend of Picasso's, and he provides a personal account of the artist's Mediterranean period. The Mediterranean Years catalogue is a major Picasso publication, and covers a period Richardson has not yet reached in his multi-volume Picasso biography.

Psychopomps

Polly Morgan's exhibition Psychopomps opened at Haunch of Venison (London) on 21st July, and will close on 25th September. Morgan creates sculptural taxidermy, principally using birds and other small animals. Her works all feel elegiac and mournful, emphasising the fragility and lifelessness of the animals, unlike traditional taxidermy specimens.

For Psychopomps, she has produced four new works: Atrial Flutter (a cardinal in an artificial human ribcage, suspended by balloons), Systemmatic Inflammation (finches and canaries above a steel cage), Blue Fever (an abstract installation featuring the wings of sixty crows), and Black Fever (similar to Blue Fever, though utilising the wings of sixty pigeons).

Picasso: The Mediterranean Years

Picasso: The Mediterranean Years 1945-1962, curated by John Richardson at the Gagosian Gallery (London), is a major exhibition of the paintings, sculptures, and ceramics Pablo Picasso produced in France after World War II. Picasso moved from Paris to Vallauris in 1945, and lived there with Francoise Gilot and their children until 1953. After their separation, he married Jacqueline Roque and lived with her in Cannes; they remained together until the artist's death in 1973.

Peace in Europe, the Mediterranean climate, the births of two children, and the influences of his young muses Francoise and Jacqueline all contributed to the vibrant, passionate nature of the works Picasso produced in this period. The exhibition includes some previously unseen family pieces, such as miniature origami figures, alongside large, familiar sculptures and portraits.

Although Picasso's most influential works (such as his Cubist masterpiece Les Demoiselles d'Avignon) were made decades earlier, he was incredibly prolific and innovative throughout his life; it's hard to imagine that he was in his 80s when he produced many of the pieces in this exhibition. The Mediterranean Years opened on 4th June and will close tomorrow.

Rude Britannia

Tate Britain's Rude Britannia exhibition catalogue, Rude Britannia: British Comic Art, edited by Tim Batchelor, Cedar Lewisohn, and Martin Myrone, reproduces a selection of the exhibits though not the material commissioned for the exhibition. The illustrations, which all have extended captions, emphasise historical satire over contemporary art. The Offensive Art covers similar material from an international perspective.

The Family & The Land

The retrospective The Family & The Land: Sally Mann includes photographs from Mann's Deep South, Faces, Immediate Family, and What Remains series. The exhibition opened at The Photographers' Gallery (London) on 18th June, and will close on 19th September.

The Deep South images, which use the antique collodian photographic process to memorialise the landscape, appear historical and even ethereal. The Faces series, close-up portraits of Mann's children resembling serene Victorian death masks, are also collodian photographs; like the Deep South landscapes, their misty atmosphere and sepia tone remove any sense of modernity.

Death is evoked by Deep South and Faces, though What Remains confronts it directly, as Mann records the decomposition of corpses in a Tennessee woodland. Immediate Families, Mann's most notorious work, includes nude portraits of her children which (like images by Nan Goldin, Bill Henson, and Richard Prince) were highly controversial when they were originally exhibited.