Princess Mononoke

Princess Mononoke is one of Hayao Miyazaki's most successful films both in Japan and elsewhere, and was his most internationally-acclaimed film until the release of Spirited Away. Unlike My Neighbour Totoro or Ponyo, this is animation for teenagers and adults, though its anti-deforestation theme is consistent with the ecological messages of Ponyo and Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind.

The film opens with an exhilarating action sequence in which a boar attacks a group of villagers. The boar, which actually resembles a large spider, has its eye pierced by a spear, and the film is filled with equally exotic monsters and similarly violent battles.

Kaidan

Hideo Nakata directed the J-Horror films Ringu, Ringu II (and its American version, The Ring II), and Dark Water. Ghost films were successful throughout Asia in the 1990s, with Whispering Corridors (from South Korea) and Nang Nak (from Thailand) being notable examples. Nakata's Kaidan is a return to the classical era of Japanese horror cinema, evoking 1950s ghost films such as The Ghost Of Yotsuya. Unfortunately, the slow pacing and the combination of two genres - Kaidan-Eiga (ghosts) and Ken-Geki (samurai) - result in a film that's more melodramatic than horrific, and certainly not scary. (However, I wasn't scared by Ringu either.)

For classic Japanese horror, see the films of Nobuo Nakagawa, especially Black Cat Mansion (creepy and atmospheric, except for the unconvincing ghost-cat) and Jigoku (surprisingly graphic and gruesome). Kenji Mizoguchi directed one of the first Japanese ghost films, Passion Of A Woman Teacher (now lost, like so many of Japan's silent films), and one of the very best, Ugetsu (one of Mizoguchi's masterpieces). The stylised portmanteau film Kwaidan is arguably the best introduction to Japanese horror.

Decision Points

George W Bush has been making various media appearances this week, to promote his memoir Decision Points. James Harding's occasionally sarcastic article in The Times was the most hard-hitting (or the least softball) interview, though the low-point came in Oprah Winfrey's show when she reassuringly held Bush's hand. (Bush previously gave extensive interviews to Robert Draper for Dead Certain in 2007.)

Decision Points is credited solely to Bush, though in the acknowledgements he explains ambiguously that he "worked with" Chris Michel. It's unlikely that someone famous for Bushisms like "Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream" [sic!] could write a coherent manuscript, therefore we can assume that, unlike Tony Blair's memoir A Journey, Decision Points was ghost-written. Nevertheless, it does have some characteristic Bush lines: after 9/11 he wanted to "find out who did this, and kick their ass".

Unsurprisingly, Bush does not admit to many regrets, and the few that he does acknowledge are presentational rather than ideological. The premature "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner was "a big mistake", but he still justifies waterboarding, Guantanamo Bay, and the invasion of Iraq. He attempts to refute his image as a warmonger, detailing his efforts to secure the required UN resolutions, though he later appears impatient with diplomacy: "It felt like it was taking forever". Reading this book produced a very similar feeling.

Manden Bag Stregen

Manden Bag Stregen, a biography of Kurt Westergaard written by John Lykkegaard, includes a new version of Westergaard's infamous caricature of Mohammed with a bomb in his turban. Westergaard was interviewed by NRK television in Norway on 23rd October, and the programme includes footage of him drawing another new Mohammed cartoon, in which the bomb's fuse is replaced by a flower.

Westergaard's Mohammed cartoon was first published by Jyllands-Posten in 2005. He drew a new version of it for Bloody Cartoons in 2007.

8th World Film Festival of Bangkok

The 8th World Film Festival of Bangkok opened on 5th November, and will close on 14th November. The Festival venue, Paragon Cineplex, is the same as last year, though additional screenings are also being held at Major Cineplex Ekkamai.

Tanwarin Sukkhapisit's film Insects In The Backyard, which was screened on 6th and 8th November, has subsequently been refused a certificate by Thai censors, and therefore will not receive a general theatrical release. It received its world premiere at the Vancouver International Film Festival in Canada earlier this year.

Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, screening today and tomorrow, is an anthology of three feminist short films, each by a different director (Breakfast by Wang Jing, realistically mundane; Lunch by Anocha Suwichakornpong, amusingly trivial; Dinner by Kaz Cai, superbly stylised). The directors took part in a Q&A after today's screening.

Green's Dictionary Of Slang

Green's Dictionary Of Slang, by Jonathon Green, is the most comprehensive dictionary of slang ever published. It traces English slang from 1500 to the present day, and includes full etymologies and citations for over 100,000 headwords.

The Dictionary is published in three volumes (A-E, F-O, and P-Z), and is an expanded version of Green's single-volume The Cassell Dictionary Of Slang (subsequently revised as Cassell's Dictionary Of Slang; further revised as Chambers Slang Dictionary). Green has also written Getting Off At Gateshead and other thematic studies of slang.

Masters Of CinemaAlfred Hitchcock

Masters Of Cinema: Alfred Hitchcock, by Bill Krohn, is the English version of Collection Grandes Cineastes: Le Livre Alfred Hitchcock, published by the excellent Cahiers Du Cinema magazine. Krohn also wrote the superb Hitchcock At Work and the disappointing Masters Of Cinema: Stanley Kubrick.

Krohn efficiently and concisely summarises Hitchcock's feature-film career (though not Alfred Hitchcock Presents) in a little over 100 pages. The text is accompanied by generally well-chosen images, with publicity stills kept to a minimum. My only caveat is that Krohn seems almost obsessed with comparing Hitchcock to Cecil B de Mille, who is mentioned, increasingly tenuously, throughout the book. There is a useful illustrated filmography, and a limited bibliography.

The Godard Week

Alliance Française in Bangkok will host The Godard Week, a short season of films by Jean-Luc Godard, from 16th to 21st November. The festival, organised by Dudesweet, includes a screening of Breathless (À bout de souffle) on 21st November.

The Greatest Films Of All Time

After their 1,000 Films To See Before You Die list, The Guardian and The Observer have now produced The Greatest Films Of All Time, a list of 175 classic films organised into seven broad genres. The list (selected by film critics including Mark Kermode and David Thomson) was published in daily installments, from 16th to 22nd October. Each genre is represented by a ranked list of twenty-five films.

The Greatest Films Of All Time are as follows:

Romance

1. Brief Encounter
2. Casablanca
3. Before Sunrise / Before Sunset
4. Breathless
5. In The Mood For Love
6. The Apartment
7. Hannah & Her Sisters
8. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
9. Room With A View
10. Jules & Jim
11. All That Heaven Allows
12. Gone With The Wind
13. An Affair To Remember
14. The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg
15. Lost In Translation
15. Roman Holiday
15. WALL-E
18. My Night With Maude
19. Voyage In Italy
20. Dr Zhivago
21. Harold & Maude
22. When Harry Met Sally
23. Say Anything...
24. The Fabulous Baker Boys
25. A Matter Of Life & Death

Crime

1. Chinatown
2. Touch Of Evil
3. Vertigo
4. Badlands
5. Rashomon
6. Double Indemnity
7. Get Carter
8. Pulp Fiction
9. Cache
10. GoodFellas
11. The Conversation
12. Bonnie & Clyde
13. The Killing
14. The French Connection
15. The Big Sleep
16. La Ceremonie
17. Point Blank
18. Hard-Boiled
19. The Long Good Friday
20. A Prophet
20. Heat
20. Scarface
23. Miller's Crossing
24. The Postman Always Rings Twice
25. Le jour se leve

Comedy

1. Annie Hall
2. Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan
3. Some Like It Hot
4. Team America: World Police
5. Dr Strangelove
6. The Ladykillers
7. Duck Soup
7. Rushmore
9. Kind Hearts & Coronets
10. Monty Python's Life Of Brian
11. Airplane!
12. Election
12. His Girl Friday
12. The Big Lebowski
15. This Is Spinal Tap
16. Bringing Up Baby
17. There's Something About Mary
18. Dazed & Confused
18. M*A*S*H
20. Groundhog Day
21. Clueless
22. The Great Dictator
23. Clerks
24. The Jerk
25. Shaun Of The Dead

Action

1. Apocalypse Now
2. North By Northwest
3. Once Upon A Time In The West
4. The Wild Bunch
5. Deliverance
6. City Of God
7. Paths Of Glory
8. The Wages Of Fear
9. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
10. The Thin Red Line
11. Raiders Of The Lost Ark
12. Ran
13. Bullitt
14. Die Hard
15. The Adventures Of Robin Hood
16. The Searchers
17. Goldfinger
18. The Last Of The Mohicans
19. Full Metal Jacket
20. The Deer Hunter
21. Gladiator
22. Rome: Open City
23. Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
24. Where Eagles Dare
25. The Incredibles

Arthouse

1. Andrei Rublev
2. Mulholland Drive
3. L'Atalante
4. Tokyo Story
5. Citizen Kane
6. A Clockwork Orange
7. Days Of Heaven
8. Wild Strawberries
9. The White Ribbon
10. The Gospel According To St Matthew
11. Aguirre: The Wrath Of God
11. Pather Panchali
13. The Conformist
14. Death In Venice
15. The Godfather I-II
16. The Graduate
16. There Will Be Blood
18. Battleship Potemkin
19. The Rules Of The Game
19. Shadows
21. Distant Voices, Still Lives
22. The Passion Of Joan Of Arc
23. La Dolce Vita
24. Breaking The Waves
25. Spirit Of The Beehive

Sci-Fi/Fantasy

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. Metropolis
3. Blade Runner
4. Alien
5. The Wizard Of Oz
6. ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
6. Solaris
8. Spirited Away
9. Star Wars IV: A New Hope
10. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
10. King Kong
12. Terminator I-II
13. The Matrix
14. Alphaville
15. Back To The Future
16. Planet Of The Apes
17. Brazil
18. The Lord Of The Rings I-III
19. Dark Star
20. The Day The Earth Stood Still
21. Edward Scissorhands
22. Akira
23. The Princess Bride
24. Pan's Labyrinth
25. Starship Troopers

Horror

1. Psycho
2. Rosemary's Baby
3. Don't Look Now
4. The Wicker Man
5. The Shining
6. The Exorcist
7. Nosferatu
8. Let The Right One In
9. Vampyr
10. Peeping Tom
11. The Innocents
12. The Ring
13. The Haunting
14. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
15. Dead Of Night
16. The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari
17. Halloween
18. Bride Of Frankenstein
19. Les Diaboliques
20. Audition
20. Dracula
22. The Blair Witch Project
23. Evil Dead I-II
24. Carrie
25. Les Vampires

The #1 films in each genre were ranked as follows:

1. Chinatown
2. Psycho
2. Andrei Rublev
4. Annie Hall
5. 2001: A Space Odyssey
6. Brief Encounter
7. Apocalypse Now

The #1 films in the horror, comedy, sci-fi/fantasy, and action categories are also my four favourite films of all time. However, two genres - animation and the western - are under-represented, having been subsumed into other categories, and musicals have been completely excluded.

Before Sunrise and Before Sunset are counted as a single entry, as are The Godfather I-II, Terminator I-II, Evil Dead I-II, and The Lord Of The Rings I-III. Scarface is the Brian de Palma remake, Carrie is de Palma's 1976 horror film, and Dracula is the Terence Fisher Hammer version. Also, Some Like It Hot is the 1959 comic masterpiece, not the obscure 1939 comedy; and Psycho is the original version.

Survival Of The Dead

Survival Of The Dead is George Romero's sixth zombie film, following Night Of The Living Dead, Dawn Of The Dead, Day Of The Dead, Land Of The Dead, and Diary Of The Dead. While the first two films in the series remain horror classics, the others have been relatively disappointing. Survival Of The Dead is perhaps the worst in the series, with unthreatening zombies and a scenario more reminiscent of a western than a horror film.

[Warning: plot spoilers.] What's the point of the million dollars, except as a set-up for a potential sequel? Why does the twin sister appear out of the blue, for an inconsequential emotional reconciliation? Why is the zombie horse-rider initially smarter than other zombies, and why does she suddenly lose her sentience? And what, if any, socio-political comment is Romero making this time?

Jackass 3D

Jackass 3D is the sequel to Jackass II, and is again directed by Jeff Tremaine. Like the previous film, it contains violent and scatological pranks; it's actually surprising that Paramount would distribute a film that features a volcano of excrement. As the men are now reaching middle-age, this will presumably be the final Jackass film.

Johnny Knoxville, clearly the most professional group-member, now acts mainly as an announcer, excusing himself from most of the stunts. After being punched, or even urinated on, the men always laugh with (and at) each other, and I wonder how much of this camaraderie is genuine. In addition to the 3D, many stunts were filmed with ultra-fast cameras, resulting in plenty of slow-motion action footage, and this makes the film more cinematic than its predecessors.

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.