29 September 2012

1001 Movies
You Must See Before You Die

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
The 2012 edition of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, edited by Steven Jay Schneider, has been released. As in previous editions (2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011), changes to the list have been limited to the most recent films.

Fourteen films have been removed, including the South Korean western The Good, The Bad, & The Weird and Roman Polanski's award-winning The Pianist. The Passion Of The Christ, first deleted in 2009, then reinstated in 2011, has been deleted again. The fourteen replacement films include Shame, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Tree Of Life, Hugo, and The Artist.

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24 September 2012

International Herald Tribune

Le Temps
The International Herald Tribune newspaper today published a cartoon by Patrick Chappatte which includes a drawing of Mohammed. (It was first published by Le Temps newspaper in Switzerland.)

The cartoon shows Voltaire in the editorial office of French newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Voltaire is depicted holding a copy of Charlie Hebdo, which features a caricature of a naked Mohammed. Chappatte previously drew Mohammed in one of his 2006 cartoons.

21 September 2012

The Race For Colour

The Race For Colour
The Race For Colour
The Race For Colour, directed by Vince Rogers, was broadcast on BBC1 on Monday. It's a short documentary on the discovery of the first experimental colour film.

Staff at the UK's National Media Museum in Bradford (which, incidentally, has a splendid Cinerama auditorium) found a reel of 38mm film made by Edward Raymond Turner in the 1900s. Turner shot with black-and-white film through red, green, and blue filters, and projected the film through the same filters to produce a colour image. (Previously, colour had been achieved artificially by hand-painting or tinting each frame.) After Turner's death, however, his test films were considered lost, and a rival system, the Kinemacolour process, was developed instead.

Kinemacolor was a retrograde technology, though, as it used only two filters (red and green, a simplification of Turner's three-filter process), resulting in less realistic colour reproduction. Kinemacolor was one of a series of cinematic innovations produced by the 'Brighton school', a group of film pioneers that included William Friese-Greene (inventor of the Biophantascope), Charles Urban, James Williamson, and George Albert Smith. They are particularly famous for their early use of close-up photography, in Smith's film Grandma's Reading Glass and in Williamson's The Big Swallow.

Technicolor eventually achieved realistic colour reproduction, initially with a two-strip process used for The Gulf Between and The Black Pirate. Three-strip Technicolor was first used for Becky Sharp, though is most famous for the classics The Adventures Of Robin Hood, Gone With The Wind, and The Wizard Of Oz.

The Race For Colour includes fragments of Turner's colour film, which dates from 1902, demonstrating that his three-colour system was at least twenty years ahead of its time. The programme also features Martin Scorsese discussing Turner's footage.

The discovery of Turner's film rewrites film history. After the hand-coloured version of A Trip To The Moon, the longer version of Metropolis, and the Danish version of The Passion Of Joan Of Arc, Turner's footage represents yet another incredible discovery of a historic silent film.

20 September 2012

Stanley Kubrick & Me

Stanley Kubrick & Me
Stanley Kubrick & Me, written by Emilio D'Alessandro with my good friend Filippo Ulivieri, is D'Alessandro's memoir of his time as part of Kubrick's inner circle. D'Alessandro initially worked as Kubrick's driver, though he later became one of the director's closest associates.

Stanley Kubrick & Me (subtitled Trent'anni Accanto A Lui: Rivelazioni & Cronache Inedite Dell'assistente Personale Di Un Genio) tells the story of D'Alessandro's thirty years with Kubrick. It's the autobiography of the director's most trusted assistant.

19 September 2012

Charlie Hebdo

Charlie Hebdo
Charlie Hebdo, the satirical French newspaper, has again published provocative cartoons of Mohammed. The newspaper's current issue features a back-page caricature of Mohammed naked with a video camera, and a cartoon of Mohammed at an awards ceremony; both caricatures were drawn by Renald Luzier, known as Luz.

The cartoons are a commentary on the recent film clip Innocence Of Muslims. That film has led to anti-American protests outside numerous American embassies, and over thirty people have been killed as a result. Anticipating similar reactions to Charlie Hebdo's cartoons, several French embassies have announced that they will close on Friday as a precaution.

Charlie Hebdo's editorial office in Paris is currently being guarded by riot police. The office was attacked by arsonists last year after the newspaper published a Charia Hebdo special edition 'guest-edited' by Mohammed. Charlie Hebdo also caused controversy in 2006 by printing Mohammed cartoons in solidarity with Jyllands-Posten. Charlie Hebdo's first Mohammed cartoon appeared in 2002.

Many other publications also printed their own Mohammed cartoons in solidarity with Jyllands-Posten: Weekendavisen, France Soir, The Guardian, Le Monde, Philadelphia Daily News, Liberation, Het Nieuwsblad, The Daily Tar Heel, Akron Beacon Journal, The Strand, Nana, International Herald Tribune, Gorodskiye Vesti, Adresseavisen, Uke-Adressa, and Harper's.

Equally provocative drawings of Mohammed as a dog were exhibited in 2007. The short film Fitna also includes a Mohammed cartoon, and there was an Everybody Draw Mohammed Day! event in 2010.

18 September 2012

Closer

Closer
La Provence
A French court has ordered the publisher of Closer magazine to cease distribution of photographs of Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, topless. The paparazzi photos were taken while she and her husband, Prince William, were sunbathing at a private villa. The couple took legal action against the publisher, and are also seeking a criminal prosecution of the photographer.

The photos first appeared in Closer last Friday, and were reprinted by the Irish Daily Star newspaper the next day. Italian magazine Chi (which previously printed a photograph of a dying Princess Diana) published more of the images on Monday. The magazine Se & Hor, published in Sweden and Denmark, has announced that it will print the photographs this Friday. The regional French paper La Provence printed a relatively modest picture of the Duchess in a bikini on 7th September.

Nude photographs of the royal family have been published before. Famously, UK tabloid The Sun printed a topless photo of Sarah Fergusson on its front page on 21st August 1992. Full-frontal photos of Prince Charles were published in Playgirl magazine (January 1997). Famously, Brad Pitt successfully sued Playgirl for invasion of privacy after it published nude photographs of him in August 1997 (which was the magazine's best-selling issue).

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14 September 2012

The Master Switch (paperback)

The Master Switch
The Master Switch: The Rise & Fall Of Information Empires, by Tim Wu, has been slightly expanded for its paperback edition. Wu's meticulously researched book has an impressive and ambitious historical scope, covering the development of communications media throughout the 20th century.

Wu identifies a pattern that he calls "the Cycle": the introduction of a new technology creates an open period of unregulated access, though this honeymoon phase ends when vertically-integrated oligopolies take over control of the medium. Wu demonstrates that radio/television networks (NBC, CBS, and ABC) and the Hollywood studio system (MGM, Paramount, Fox, RKO, and Warner) conform to this model, though his central example is AT&T, which fought off competition from Western Union to effectively monopolise American telecommunications.

The history of the Cycle serves as a cautionary tale, as the paradigm shift to digital communication could instigate a new Cycle of conglomeration. Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser crushed its rival, Netscape, leading to the 1998 anti-trust case. Early web portals such as AOL (which later merged with Time Warner) have been replaced by an effective duopoly of social networks: Facebook and Twitter. Smartphone operating systems are similarly bifurcated, between Google's Android and Apple's iOS. Apple (which operates a 'walled garden' similar to the old AOL model) and Google (now facing its own anti-trust case) both claim to value innovation above profit, though both companies are now producing software and hardware, reducing compatibility between different systems.

As Wu writes: "Both Apple and Google, while pursuing different versions of the good, have continued to cultivate and leverage their status as dominant firms and, technically, monopolists in some key markets... Along with a few other 800-pound gorillas, like Facebook and Amazon, they disproportionately determine what the internet is in the 2010s". Wu's proposed solution is the adoption of a "Separations Principle", comparable to the independence of the three branches of government or the division of church and state. He argues that the three tiers of communications media - content producers, network infrastructure providers, and device manufacturers - should remain separate, thus avoiding the potential risks associated with vertical integration.

13 September 2012

The Rise Of The Collateral

Super Kali
Captain America Playing With Bhairav
Super Nataraj
Police have closed an exhibition of paintings by Nepalese artist Manish Harijan. The exhibition, The Rise Of The Collateral at Siddhartha Art Gallery in Kathmandu, was shut down yesterday after police received complaints that Harijan's work was blasphemous.

Harijan's exhibition included paintings of Hindu deities caricatured as superheroes, such as Captain America Playing With Bhairav and The Ghost Rider In Buddha. Super Kali portrayed Kali as Superwoman. Super Nataraj depicted Shiva as Superman. The exhibition, which featured eleven paintings, opened on 22nd August and was scheduled to close on 20th September.

11 September 2012

Les Films-Cles Du Cinema

Les Films-Cles Du Cinema
Les Films-Cles Du Cinema, by Claude Beylie and Jacques Pinturault, is a guide to 250 milestone films, organised chronologically. The ninth edition was published last year.

The book, written solely by Beylie, was first published in 1987. He compiled a further four editions, in 1990, 1993, 1997, and 1998. Pinturault has been Beylie's co-writer since the sixth edition, published in 2002. Together, they wrote subsequent editions in 2006 and 2008.

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Innocence Of Muslims

A new film satirising Mohammed has sparked protests in Libya and Egypt. Protesters burned the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and stormed the US embassy in Cairo. They were demonstrating against a film which portrays Mohammed as a violent, bisexual adulterer.

Details of the film's production are currently unclear. It is being promoted by Sam Bacile, though this is presumably a pseudonym for Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a convicted fraudster. Apparently, the film was screened under the title Innocence Of Bn Laden [sic] at the Vine cinema in Los Angeles, California, on 23rd June. Bacile subsequently released an extended trailer for the film, under the title Life Of Muhammad. It is now being referred to as Innocence Of Muslims. (Judging by the trailer, 'Carry On Islam' might be a more appropriate title.) The film was directed by Alan Roberts.

The offices of French newspaper Charlie Hebdo were attacked last year following its Charia Hebdo edition satirising Mohammed. Infamously, Jyllands-Posten published twelve Mohammed caricatures in 2005, leading to violent protests around the world.

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10 September 2012

Cartoons Against Corruption

Cartoons Against Corruption
Cartoons Against Corruption
Cartoons Against Corruption
Aseem Trivedi has been arrested in Mumbai, and charged with insulting India's national symbols. Trivedi founded Cartoons Against Corruption last year, to campaign against political corruption, and his cartoons were displayed at MMRDA in Mumbai last December.

Trivedi's most controversial cartoons include National Emblem, which represents the four Sarnath lions as bloodthirsty wolves; National Toilet, in which the country's parliament is depicted as a toilet; and Gang Rape Of Mother India, which uses a sexual metaphor to symbolise the damaging influence of corruption. Trivedi faces up to two years in prison if found guilty. His detention comes after the arrest last year of another Indian cartoonist, Harish Yadav.

09 September 2012

Creativities Unfold 2012

Creativities Unfold 2012
Dieter Rams
TCDC's flagship event, Creativities Unfold, runs this year from 25th August until tomorrow. The theme for 2012 is Design Is Opportunities: Innovation, Strategy, Business. This morning, the International Symposium featured a presentation by industrial-design icon Dieter Rams.

Rams, speaking in German, delivered a speech about the challenges facing contemporary designers in a consumer society, including materialism, disposability, and visual pollution. He followed this with a more relaxed Q&A session, in which he discussed some of his classic Braun designs - the TP1 portable turntable, the T1000 world-band radio, the TG60 reel-to-reel recorder, the ET66 calculator, the T2 lighter, and the MPZ2 juicer - in relation to his famous 'zehn thesen zum design' ('ten principles of design', first published in 1995).

06 September 2012

VSD

VSD
Public
Closer
Voici
The French magazine VSD has been fined 2,000 euros for invasion of privacy after it published photographs of French President Francois Hollande and his partner, Valerie Trierweiler, on holiday at Fort Bregancon. VSD printed the photographs in its 9th August issue. Trierweiler is also suing three other magazines for publishing similar photos on their front covers: Public (published on 10th August), Closer (11th August), and Voici (11th August).

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10th Printemps Des Arts

Celui Qui N'a Pas...
Sobhana Allah
Two artists were arrested in Tunisia following widespread protests against their exhibits at the recent Printemps Des Arts exhibition. Mohamed Ben Slama's work, Sobhana Allah, depicts ants emerging from a child's satchel and spelling the word 'Allah'. Nadia Jelassi's sculpture Celui Qui N'a Pas... features two Muslim women surrounded by stones. Both works were shown at the Palais Abdellia in Tunis, from 1st-10th June.

17 August 2012

The MDNA Tour

The MDNA Tour
The MDNA Tour
Marine Le Pen, leader of the French far-right Front National party, has filed a lawsuit against Madonna after the singer depicted her as a Nazi at a concert in Paris. During The MDNA Tour, a video of Nobody Knows Me plays as an interlude, and the video includes a split-second sequence in which a swastika is shown on Le Pen's forehead.

After the tour opened in June, Le Pen announced that she would sue if Madonna included the swastika in her French concerts. When the tour reached Paris on 14th July, the swastika was present (prompting a loud cheer from the crowd), and Le Pen sued Madonna for defamation. When Madonna played the video at her next French stadium show, in Nice on 21st August, she changed the swastika to a question mark, though the swastika has been included in all of her concerts outside France.

The question mark at the Nice concert is a rare example of Madonna censoring any aspect of her live shows. Scottish police had warned her against using prop guns during her MDNA Tour performance of Gang Bang, though her Edinburgh show on 21st June included the guns. Similarly, the behind-the-scenes documentary Truth or Dare shows Madonna defying police in Canada during her 1990 Blond Ambition Tour in 1990.

14 August 2012

Ashes

Ashes
Lomokino
Ashes, a new short film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, features Apichatpong's dog, King Kong, and various farm animals. It will open the 16th Thai Short Film & Video Festival on 16th August.

It has no dialogue, though there is a voice-over describing "a dream within a dream" (Inception?). There is also footage of a protest against Thailand's lèse-majesté law, kaleidoscopic light patterns, jungle scenes, and a horizontal split-screen sequence. It ends with a pyrotechnical display at a funeral ceremony. The film was made for the Mubi website, and is Apichatpong's second online partnership (after his Animate Projects collaboration in 2009).

Ashes was filmed with a LomoKino, a hand-cranked camera that records short film clips on consumer 35mm film rolls. It's like a return to the Lumiere brothers' Cinematographe, which similarly captured only a minute of footage per roll. The lo-tech LomoKino also resembles the PXL (PixelVision) camera from the 1980s, which recorded video footage onto regular audio cassettes. There is even a special Mubi edition of the LomoKino available to buy, branded with Apichatpong's signature.

Apichatpong is now most famous for his feature films, such as Tropical Malady, Syndromes & A Century, and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, though he has also directed many short films and videos in addition to Ashes. These include Prosperity For 2008, Vampire, Luminous People, Mobile Men, Phantoms Of Nabua, For Alexis, A Letter To Uncle Boonmee, and the Primitive project. He has hosted two retrospectives of his short films in Bangkok: Apichatpong On Video Works and Indy Spirit Project.

16th Thai Short Film & Video Festival

16th Thai Short Film & Video Festival
Ashes
The 16th Thai Short Film & Video Festival starts at BACC this Thursday, and runs until 26th August. The Festival will open with the Thai premiere of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's new short film, Ashes.

The Thai Short Film & Video Festival is Thailand's oldest film festival. The 11th Festival was at Bangkok's now-closed EGV Grand Discovery cinema, though the 12th, 13th, and all subsequent festivals have been hosted by BACC.

12 August 2012

The Unfinished Revolution

The Unfinished Revolution
Philip Gould's book The Unfinished Revolution: How The Modernisers Saved The Labour Party has been substantially expanded, and now has a new subtitle: How New Labour Changed British Politics For Ever. The new version reprints the original edition and supplements it with an entirely new second part (similar in organisation, though not in subject, to the expanded edition of Nightmare Movies).

The new section covers Labour's three terms in government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown (though Andrew Rawnsley dealt with the same period more objectively in Servants Of The People and The End Of The Party). Blair has written an extensive foreword to Gould's book, arguing that Brown "took an Old Labour way out of the financial crisis"; advocating a return to the New Labour agenda, Blair even uses that old phrase from the Bill Clinton era, 'the Third Way', which is hardly likely to inspire a revival of Labour's fortunes.

09 August 2012

Dieter Rams: As Little Design As Possible

Dieter Rams: As Little Design As Possible
Dieter Rams: As Little Design As Possible, written by Sophie Lovell and published by Phaidon, profiles one of the world's most famous industrial designers. Dieter Rams, who was head of design at Braun for over thirty years, designed hundreds of consumer products, including the ET66 calculator, the iconic white SK4 record player, and the aluminium T1000 world-band transistor radio.

The book includes a foreword by Jonathan Ive, Apple's chief designer, who is the nearest equivalent to Rams in contemporary industrial design. Working with Steve Jobs, Ive produced a series of consumer-technology devices (including the iMac, iPhone, iPod, and iPad) that conformed to the "ten principles of good design" that Rams formulated.

Rams felt that successful design should be innovative, useful, aesthetic, understandable, honest, unobtrusive, long-lasting, thorough, environmentally friendly, and should involve "as little design as possible". That last maxim, adapted from Mies van der Rohe's 'less is more', became the title of Lovell's book.

In her preface, Lovell writes that Rams told her: "Why on earth do we need another book about me?" Thus, while there are occasional quotes footnoted as "Rams, in conversation with the author", Rams clearly didn't give Lovell a formal interview. There are, however, plenty of glossy photos fetishising beautiful radios, clocks, and other objects from the past fifty years.

The Dark Knight Rises (IMAX 70mm)

The Dark Knight Rises
The Dark Knight Rises is the final film in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, following Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. It contains more IMAX footage than any other Hollywood film, with almost half of the film shot with IMAX cameras, resulting in a spectacular 70mm image that fills the enormous IMAX screen. (The 70mm IMAX scenes are framed at 1.43:1; cropped IMAX digital and regular anamorphic widescreen versions have also been released.)

Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, and Gary Oldman reprise their roles from the two previous Batman films, and there are two new villains: Bane (Tom Hardy) and Catwoman (Anne Hathaway). [Incidentally, Gary Oldman has become Gary Old Man: the Oldman of The Dark Knight Rises and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy seems far removed from the Oldman of Nil By Mouth or True Romance.] Marion Cotillard and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who appeared with Hardy and Caine in Inception, also star in The Dark Knight Rises.

The Dark Knight Rises is most interesting as a celebration of analogue film technology at a time of digital transition. Nolan is (alongside Quentin Tarantino) one of the last Hollywood directors to use 35mm film cameras; even Martin Scorsese (Hugo) and Steven Spielberg (Tintin) have now made digital films. Nolan has actively campaigned for the preservation of analogue cameras and projectors, recognising that digital production and exhibition are cheaper yet technically inferior. Nolan is also notable for his use of traditional sets and special effects, minimising the use of CGI.

03 August 2012

The Greatest Films Of All Time

Sight & Sound
Sight & Sound
Yesterday, Sight & Sound magazine announced the result of its decennial film poll: a list of the ten greatest films ever made, selected by film critics from around the world. For film-poll connoisseurs (including myself), Sight & Sound's list is the ur-list, the first and most authoritative guide to classic films.

The poll was originally conducted in 1952 (with Vittorio de Sica's Bicycle Thieves at #1); in the second poll, in 1962, Orson Welles's Citizen Kane was #1, and it remained in pole position throughout each subsequent poll. This year, however, Citizen Kane was displaced by Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (which came a close second to Kane in the previous list, in 2002).

This year's new entries include The Searchers and The Passion Of Joan Of Arc (both of which skipped a list, appearing in 1992 though not in 2002). Man With A Movie Camera, the other new entry, is the first documentary to appear in a Sight & Sound list. Man With A Movie Camera has replaced another Russian silent classic, Battleship Potemkin, which had appeared on every Sight & Sound list since 1952; the relegation of Battleship Potemkin (to #11) leaves The Rules Of The Game as the only film to have appeared on every list.

Apart from Battleship Potemkin, two other films from the 2002 list are also missing from this year's top ten: Singin' In The Rain drops to #20, and The Godfather (now counted individually, rather than as a joint entry with The Godfather II) falls to #21. Surprisingly, Apocalypse Now (at #14) received more votes than The Godfather, making it Francis Coppola's most acclaimed film.

Sight & Sound's ten greatest films are as follows:

1. Vertigo
2. Citizen Kane
3. Tokyo Story
4. The Rules Of The Game
5. Sunrise
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey
7. The Searchers
8. Man With A Movie Camera
9. The Passion Of Joan Of Arc
10. 8½

The magazine also surveyed film directors, to produce a separate top ten (with Tokyo Story at #1, and Citizen Kane and 2001: A Space Odyssey jointly placed at #2). Both lists, and the individual choices of many of the critics and directors, appear in Sight & Sound's current issue.

The ten greatest films will be shown at the BFI Southbank cinema in London, from 1st September to 9th October. The top three will be shown at the UK's National Media Museum in Bradford on 16th September.

Museum of Contemporary Art

Museum of Contemporary Art
Museum of Contemporary Art
Birth-Ageing-Sickness-Death
The Museum of Contemporary Art opened in Bangkok earlier this year. The six-storey Museum is an imposing granite building, and feels appropriately like a Modernist cathedral for art.

MoCA was funded entirely by Boonchai Bencharongkul, founder of the DTAC telecommunications company. Boonchai is also Thailand's leading art patron, approximately equivalent to Charles Saatchi in the UK. Like Saatchi, Boonchai gobbles up new art: with vast financial resources and determination, he doesn't just dominate the local art market, he is the local art market.

Boonchai not only paid for the Museum's construction, he also filled it exclusively with his own art collection, and personally curated each gallery. Highlights include Birth-Ageing-Sickness-Death (a vivid oil triptych of disturbing figures by Kittisak Chanontnart, influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis) and Animal-Man Family (Anupong Chantorn's bronze dogs from his Hope In The Dark exhibition, presumably commissioned by Boonchai).

These are the exceptions, however. The Museum's permanent collection reflects Boonchai's personal taste, and unfortunately his taste is largely traditional. Thus, there is no political art at all, and representation of contemporary life is almost entirely absent. Instead, there are numerous galleries filled with religious and mythological paintings. Also, the collection consists entirely of paintings and bronze sculptures: there is no video art, photography, installation, digital, or new-media art of any kind.

Indeed, much of the collection is not even particularly recent. The ground floor contains works by Silpa Bhirasri from almost 100 years ago, and there's a collection of Victorian-era paintings on the fifth floor. The Museum's name is somewhat misleading, because the art there is largely modern rather than contemporary.

So, MoCA is an impressive building, with an extensive yet traditional art collection. It's like a conservative version of the Saatchi Gallery: a grand showcase for a formidable patron's personal taste.

01 August 2012

Great Movies

Great Movies
Great Movies: 100 Years Of Cinema, by Andrew Heritage, is a guide to 100 classic films divided into ten genres. The films are listed chronologically within each section. Two pages are devoted to each film; there are plenty of glossy colour photos, though the text does little more than summarise each film's plot.

There is no western category, so High Noon and The Searchers appear in the Action/Adventure section and Once Upon A Time In The West is in the Historical section. Some of the other classifications are also rather odd: Pulp Fiction is listed under Comedy rather than Thriller/Crime, and Dr Strangelove is in the War section rather than the Comedy section. The author admits that the final category, Drama, is "an opportunity, within limited space, to attempt to include any movies that simply didn't fit into the preceding nine genre categories" (hardly an ideal solution).

The book also includes brief articles on significant film movements, such as the French New Wave, documentaries, realism, and underground cinema. However, these should really have been included in the main 100 list instead of being relegated to supplementary sections.

There are a few mistakes regarding technical details: the prologue to The Wizard Of Oz is described as "sepia black and white" (they are two different formats), there is a reference to "Blu-ray Avatar" (Blu-ray is not a theatrical format), a photo of a 35mm camera has a "digital camera" caption, and Inception is used as an example of "digital special effects" (visual effects are digital, special effects are analogue; Inception is notable for its analogue special effects). A famous line from Taxi Driver, "You talkin' to me?", is twice misquoted as "Are you looking at me?".

There is a brief bibliography, though it's rather outdated as it consists almost entirely of annual film guides that are no longer being published (Halliwell's, Time Out, etc.). It even cites the "invaluable Filmgoer's Companion", a book which was superseded long ago by Ephraim Katz's Film Encyclopedia.

The Great Movies are as follows:

Comedy
  • The Gold Rush
  • The General
  • A Night At The Opera
  • Bringing Up Baby
  • Kind Hearts & Coronets
  • M. Hulot's Holiday
  • Some Like It Hot
  • Manhattan
  • Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown
  • Pulp Fiction
Action/Adventure
  • The Thief Of Bagdad
  • The Adventures Of Robin Hood
  • High Noon
  • The Wages Of Fear
  • The Searchers
  • Goldfinger
  • Raiders Of The Lost Ark
  • The Terminator
  • Die Hard
  • Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl
Romance/Melodrama
  • The Blue Angel
  • Anna Karenina
  • Gone With The Wind
  • Casablanca
  • Sundet Boulevard
  • The African Queen
  • Written On The Wind
  • Breakfast At Tiffany's
  • Pretty Woman
  • Thelma & Louise
Musicals
  • The Jazz Singer
  • Gold Diggers Of 1933
  • Top Hat
  • Singin' In The Rain
  • Oklahoma!
  • Jailhouse Rock
  • West Side Story
  • The Sound Of Music
  • Grease
  • Moulin Rouge!
Thrillers/Crime
  • The Big Sleep
  • Rififi
  • The Night Of The Hunter
  • North By Northwest
  • Bonnie & Clyde
  • Point Blank
  • The Godfather
  • Jaws
  • Taxi Driver
  • The Silence Of The Lambs
Historical
  • Intolerance
  • Napoleon
  • Alexander Nevsky
  • Lola Montes
  • The Ten Commandments
  • Spartacus
  • Lawrence Of Arabia
  • Once Upon A Time In The West
  • The Wild Bunch
  • Schindler's List
War
  • All Quiet On The Western Front
  • Henry V
  • The Red Badge Of Courage
  • The Dam Busters
  • The Great Escape
  • Dr Strangelove
  • Lacombe, Lucien
  • Apocalypse Now
  • Ran
  • Saving Private Ryan
Family
  • Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs
  • Way Out West
  • The Wizard Of Oz
  • It's A Wonderful Life
  • Star Wars IV: A New Hope
  • ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
  • Home Alone
  • The Lion King
  • Toy Story
  • The Lord Of The Rings I: The Fellowship Of The Ring
Fantasy/Sci-Fi/Horror
  • Nosferatu
  • Metropolis
  • King Kong
  • The Bride Of Frankenstein
  • La Belle & La Bete
  • Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
  • Psycho
  • Night Of The Living Dead
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey
  • The Matrix
Drama
  • Greed
  • Pandora's Box
  • The Rules Of The Game
  • Citizen Kane
  • Les Enfants Du Paradis
  • On The Waterfront
  • Easy Rider
  • Last Tango In Paris
  • Raging Bull
  • American Beauty
(Note that Some Like It Hot is the Billy Wilder version rather than the 1939 comedy of the same name. Also, The Ten Commandments is Cecil B de Mille's sound version, not his earlier silent version.)

27 July 2012

To Rome With Love

Designing Media
To Rome With Love, this year's Woody Allen film, is the latest in his European odyssey, after his recent excursions to London (Match Point, Scoop, Cassandra's Dream), Barcelona (Vicky Christina Barcelona), and Paris (Midnight In Paris). After the unexpected success of Midnight In Paris, there were unusually high expectations for To Rome With Love, and the result is certainly above average for a late-period Allen comedy.

The film contains four separate stories, though they have little in common except that they are all set in Rome. The effect is a concise alternative to Paris, Je T'Aime, Sawasdee Bangkok, or New York Stories. The four narratives are intercut, though their timeframes aren't parallel.

In one of the strands, Roberto Benigni plays a clerk who suddenly becomes a 'reality TV' star, chased by paparazzi (first seen in La Dolce Vita, also set in Rome), in a satire on contemporary celebrity culture. There is also a one-joke segment featuring a mortician who performs operas from a shower cubicle (inspired by Rolando Villazon). Another story concerns a man who becomes involved with a prostitute (a recurring theme: there were also prostitutes in Allen's Mighty Aphrodite, Deconstructing Harry, and You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger).

The most intriguing and ambitious strand stars Alec Baldwin as an architect who meets an architecture student played by Jesse Eisenberg. Baldwin becomes an ever-present mentor to Eisenberg, though he is apparently not visible to other characters. At first, it seems that Allen is repeating the ontological device of Play It Again, Sam, in which an apparition of Sam Spade (from Casablanca) gives relationship advice. However, in this case the trick is reversed: Eisenberg exists only in Baldwin's imagination, as Baldwin is remembering the experiences of his own youth. (This interpretation is suggested by the repeated phrase "ozymandias melancholia", which comes from Allen's Stardust Memories; it recalls Owen Wilson as a back-street time-traveller in Midnight In Paris, and Allen and Diane Keaton as spectators of their memories in Annie Hall.)

The film has an impressive cast, including Penelope Cruz (who also starred in Vicky Christina Barcelona) and Judy Davis (wonderful in Deconstructing Harry). Allen himself makes a welcome return to acting, in his first role since Scoop. In the film's funniest sequence, Allen over-reacts on an aeroplane ("I can't unclench when there's turbulence, I'm an atheist"). He also returns to his favourite themes: death (which he says is a natural consequence of retirement) and analysis ("Don't psychoanalyse me", he insists. "Many have tried, all have failed").

To Rome With Love is enhanced by Allen's schtick and the excellent ensemble cast. Most of the action is rather frivolous, though Baldwin's scenes are more substantial. It's too much to ask for a return to form (more than thirty years after Annie Hall and Manhattan), but this is the next best thing.

17 July 2012

Designing Media

Designing Media
Designing Media, by Bill Moggridge, is a collection of interviews with leading figures in print and online design. Interviewees include the publisher of the New York Times (Arthur Salzberger), the editor-in-chief of Wired (Chris Anderson, also the author of The Long Tail), and International Herald Tribune columnist Alice Rawsthorn.

Moggridge has also interviewed the founders of Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg), YouTube (Chad Hurley), Blogger and Twitter (Evan Williams), and Wikipedia (Jimmy Wales). Extracts from the interviews are featured on an appropriately well-designed DVD which accompanies the book.

オールタイム・ベスト 映画遺産200

オールタイム・ベスト 映画遺産200
オールタイム・ベスト 映画遺産200 外国映画篇, published in 2009, is a guide to the 200 greatest films ever made. The book includes two lists, arranged chronologically and ranked in order of preference (with The Third Man at #1). Japanese films were excluded from the selection. The Japanese edition of Newsweek compiled a similar list this year, and renowned Japanese film critic Nagaharu Yodogawa compiled lists of his top 100 (淀川長治 究極の映画ベスト100) and top 1000 (淀川長治映画ベスト1000) films.

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04 July 2012

Art, Politics, & Censorship

Bangkok's FCCT will host a seminar tomorrow, Art, Politics, & Censorship. Ing K (director of Shakespeare Must Die) and Tanwarin Sukkhapisit (director of Insects In The Backyard) will take part, and the event will be moderated by Bangkok Post film critic Kong Rithdee.

02 July 2012

39 Steps To The Genius Of Hitchcock

39 Steps To The Genius Of Hitchcock
39 Steps To The Genius Of Hitchcock, edited by James Bell, is a collection of thirty-nine thematic essays on Alfred Hitchcock to accompany the BFI's Genius Of Hitchcock film season. Arguably the most authoritative Hitchcock anthology, it includes contributions from Camille Paglia (a chronological analysis of the female roles in Hitchcock's Hollywood films), Sidney Gottlieb (a study of Hitchcock's PR strategies, illustrated with rare publicity materials), Bill Krohn (a brief essay on guilt), and David Thomson (an extensive account of Hitchcock's position within the studio system [a subject also discussed by Thomas Schatz in The Genius Of The System]).

Paglia is most famous for her collections of post-feminist essays (Sexual Personae; Sex, Art, & American Culture; Vamps & Tramps), though she also wrote a BFI Film Classics study of The Birds. Gottlieb edited Hitchock On Hitchcock. Krohn wrote a Masters Of Cinema study of Hitchcock, and the superb Hitchcock At Work. Thomson's Biographical Dictionary Of Film has been highly praised (though not by me); he has also written Have You Seen...? and The Moment Of Psycho.

Hitchcock has been analysed and written about more than perhaps any other director. Paul Duncan's Hitchcock: Architect Of Anxiety is an illustrated summary of Hitchcock's career. François Truffaut's book-length interview Hitchcock, and Donald Spoto's filmography The Art Of Alfred Hitchcock, are both indispensable. There are shorter interviews in Who The Devil Made It (Peter Bogdanovich) and The Men Who Made The Movies (Richard Schickel). The standard Hitchcock biography is Spoto's The Dark Side Of Genius, and John Russell Taylor wrote Hitch, an authorised biography. Laurent Bouzereau's Hitchcock: Piece By Piece and Dan Auiler's Hitchcock's Notebooks both delve into the Hitchcock archives.

01 July 2012

The Best 100 Movies

The Best 100 Movies
The 2nd May issue of Newsweek Japan features a list titled The Best 100 Movies. The list was selected by a group of actors and directors, including Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen, who each chose a handful of their favourite films. Previously, renowned Japanese film critic Nagaharu Yodogawa compiled lists of his top 100 (淀川長治 究極の映画ベスト100) and top 1000 (淀川長治映画ベスト1000) films.

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