Jurassic Park (IMAX DMR 3D)

Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park has been rereleased in 3D, retrofitted (or dimensionalised) like Top Gun and Toy Story. I saw Jurassic Park four times at the cinema when it was first released, and it's great to see it back on the big screen after twenty years. (Time flies...) It's screening in IMAX DMR 3D and non-IMAX digital 3D formats.

In 70mm IMAX, the image is enormous, though Jurassic Park has been reframed from 1.85:1 closer to the IMAX 1.43:1 ratio, thus cropping some of the frame. One of the potential advantages of IMAX is its increased image quality (as in the 70mm IMAX DMR print of Inception); however, in this case the 3D projection and glasses result in a darker and sometimes more blurred image.

In 1993, the digital effects in Jurassic Park were truly revolutionary. Along with the T-1000 android in Terminator II, Spielberg's digital dinosaurs introduced realistic CGI into mainstream cinema. Since then, CG dinosaurs have become a cliche, appearing in everything from Walking With Dinosaurs to The Tree Of Life. The effects have, thankfully, not been tweaked for the 3D version, though additional layers of rain and woody debris were added to the Tyrannosaurus rex chase sequence.

มรดกภาพยนตร์ของชาติ

This Saturday and Sunday, Paragon Cineplex in Bangkok will screen four classic Thai films. Apichatpong Weerasethakul's award-winning Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives will be screening on Saturday, and all screenings are free.

Nang Nak

Nonzee Nimibutr's classic ghost film Nang Nak will be screening tomorrow at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya, near Bangkok. The film was inspired by the legend of Mae Nak, which was also the basis for this year's Pee Mak Phra Khanong.

Stanley Kubrick At Look Magazine

Stanley Kubrick At Look Magazine: Authorship & Genre In Photojournalism & Film, by Philippe Mather, is the first full-length analysis of Kubrick's photojournalistic work. Mather provides valuable background on the practices and conventions of Look and other post-war magazines, contextualising Kubrick's photo-stories before analysing them aesthetically.

Kubrick worked for Look after he finished high school, from 1945 to 1950, and hundreds of his photographs were published. (I have compiled a comprehensive list.) Some of his photo-stories have been reprinted in Ladro Di Sguardi, Art By Film Directors, Only In New York, and Stanley Kubrick: Fotografo.

Few writers have studied Kubrick's photojournalism in depth. Rainer Crone has published four books on the subject: Still Moving Pictures, Drama & Shadows, Fotografie 1945-1950, and Visioni & Finzioni 1945-1950. However, Crone focuses exclusively on the artistic qualities of the photographs, rather than on their actual production. Also, Crone recycles the same selection of images in each of his books, and (as noted by Mather) he misidentifies several photos.

Mather has examined back-issues of Look and other contemporaneous books and magazines by Look's writers, and this research allows him to make detailed studies of Kubrick's photographs in their original contexts. He has also included a useful appendix cataloguing the prints archived by the Library of Congress and the Museum of the City of New York.

La Fete 2013

This year's La Fete arts festival opens at various venues around Bangkok tomorrow, and runs until 22nd June. It follows the Clap! French Film Festival, held earlier this year. (Cinema has always been one of the strongest elements of La Fete: open-air film screenings were also held in 2012 and 2011.)

Chris Marker's short film La Jetee will be screened at Viva & Aviv, a cafe at the River City mall, on 8th June, with a new soundtrack performed live by Bangkok DJs Wrong Disco. La Jetee, comprised almost entirely of still images, was described by its director as a "photo-roman". It remains one of the most original works of avant-garde cinema, and was the inspiration for Terry Gilliam's film Twelve Monkeys.

Encounter Thailand

The April issue of Encounter Thailand, the magazine I edit, includes two of my articles articles about Thai elephants. The cover feature, Thailand's Ivory Trade (on pages 2-5), analyses the illegal ivory market. Elephants In The Movies (on pages 33-34) discusses the representation of Thai elephants in cinema.

I also edited the February and March issues. My previous articles were published in October, November, and December last year.

The Performance Art

The Performance Art, an exhibition by Mongkol Plienbangchang, opened at BACC on 20th April. It will close on 29th May.

The exhibition includes a sculpture from 2006, titled Crashing Horizon, which consists of a dead bird in a glass case, next to another case containing a plastic butterfly. Another sculpture features a skull on top of a rock.

A Study Of Buddhist Philosophy & The Creativity In Contemporary Art

A Study Of Buddhist Philosophy & The Creativity In Contemporary Art, an exhibition of artists inspired by the Buddhist concept of 'dharma', opened at BACC on 28th February. It will close on 5th May.

The exhibition includes an installation by Vichaya Mukdamanee, who has filmed himself dropping a series of ceramic urns. Vichaya's video was presumably inspired by Ai Weiwei's famous performance in which he dropped a priceless Han vase.

The Art Of Controversy

Victor S Navasky's book The Art Of Controversy: Political Cartoons & Their Enduring Power provides a potted history of the political cartoon, with chapters discussing the works of individual cartoonists from the past three centuries. Leonard Freedman's The Offensive Art covers similar ground, though Navasky provides a wider historical perspective.

Navasky begins with the caricaturists William Hogarth and James Gillray (also discussed in the Rude Britannia exhibition catalogue, which, unlike Navasky, reproduces Gillray's iconic cartoon of Napoleon and William Pitt). Navasky also profiles artists such as Pablo Picasso, Francisco Goya, John Heartfield, and George Grosz, who are not primarily cartoonists yet have produced satirical works.

Several of the world's most controversial cartoons are included. Honore Daumier was jailed for lèse-majesté after his portrait of Louis Philippe as Gargantua was published in La Caricature. During World War II, a Philip Zec illustration angered Winston Churchill so much that he attempted to close down the Daily Mirror. A photomontage on the cover of the News Statesman, by Steve Platt, depicting John Major with his alleged mistress, resulted in a lawsuit from Major. In South Africa, Zapiro was sued by Jacob Zuma after his cartoon in the Sunday Times depicted the President preparing to literally rape the justice system.

Navasky does not reprint the infamous Jyllands-Posten Mohammed cartoons. He does, however, include the ingenious Plantu cartoon commenting on the controversy in Le Monde, and What Would Mohammed Drive? by Doug Marlette. (Marlette's cartoon was published in 2002, before Jyllands-Posten's caricatures, not in 2009 as Navasky claims.) The cover of Navasky's book - a bomb censored by a diagonal stripe - is similar to the cover of Stern, commenting on the Mohammed cartoons, from 9th February 2006.

Quote of the day...

“Thailand’s army chief... added that the army has already stopped using the devices for 2-3 years. However, he admitted that some military personnel still use them since there is no other alternative instrument.”
— NNT

According to NNT today, Prayut Chan-o-cha has “asked the public to stop making comments or criticisms about the controversial bomb detector GT200”. He also insisted that the notorious devices were no longer used by the army, and immediately contradicted himself by admitting that “some military personnel still use them”. Previous quotes of the day: a yellow-shirt leader says Thailand should be more like North Korea, the Information and Communication Technology Minister openly admits to violating the Computer Crime Act, and a Ministry of Culture official patronises Thai filmgoers.

Jaws: Memories From Martha's Vineyard

Jaws: Memories From Martha's Vineyard, by Matt Taylor, features over a thousand photographs taken during the filming of Jaws. The book also includes examples of Jaws memorabilia collected by Jim Beller. Its expanded second edition has sixteen pages of additional material. Director Steven Spielberg wrote the foreword, indicating his approval of the project, though he was not interviewed for the book.

There have been several documentaries about Jaws, including The Making Of Jaws, In The Teeth Of Jaws, Jaws: The Inside Story, and The Shark Is Still Working. Also, Carl Gottlieb's The Jaws Log gives an on-set account of the making of the film. Taylor's book is not a comprehensive guide to the making of Jaws, as it focuses only on photographs and anecdotes provided by local residents, though it provides a valuable collection of previously unpublished images documenting the production of Jaws.

Encounter Thailand

The March issue of Encounter Thailand, the magazine I edit, includes my feature Destination Thailand (on pages 30-32). The article is a review of the recent Chinese comedy Lost In Thailand.

I also edited the February issue. My previous articles were published in October, November, and December last year.

2001: The Lost Science

Adam K Johnson's book 2001: The Lost Science - The Science & Technology Of The Most Important & Influential Film Ever Made is a guide to the various model spaceships from Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick's 2001 is a masterpiece, and it's my favourite film, though even I wouldn't go so far as to call it "The Most Important & Influential Film Ever Made", as Johnson's subtitle does.

The book contains blueprints, photographs, and correspondence from the Fred Ordway archive, and a documentary on an accompanying DVD. (Criterion's CAV laserdisc, released in 1988, also includes material "from Ordway's personal collection.") Ordway was Kubrick's scientific advisor on the film, and his archive includes a handful of previously unpublished photographs of Kubrick, though the bulk of the book consists of detailed drawings and photographs of the model spaceships featured in the film. These are of limited interested to Kubrick fans, though there is a thriving community of model-builders who are presumably the book's target market.

Piers Bizony's book 2001: Filming The Future also contained a chapter on the models, in addition to more general behind-the-scenes information about the making of the film. Jerome Agel's The Making Of Kubrick's 2001, now out of print, was an authorised account of the film's production. Anthony Frewin's Are We Alone? also features production materials from the film, as do Alison Castle's The Stanley Kubrick Archives and the Kubrick exhibition catalogue.

“I’m willing to offer $5 million to Donald Trump...”

On the NBC late-night chat show The Late Show on 7th January, comedian Bill Maher joked that Donald Trump was the son of an orangutan, and pledged Trump $5 million if he could prove otherwise: “unless he comes up with proof, I’m willing to offer $5 million to Donald Trump”. This was clearly a satire on Trump’s racist ‘birther’ conspiracy theory regarding President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, though Trump evidently took Maher’s offer at face value.

The following day, Trump sent Maher a copy of his birth certificate, with a letter from his lawyer stating that “he is the son of Fred Trump, not an orangutan.” When Maher didn’t respond, Trump sued him for the $5 million, though he withdrew the lawsuit yesterday.

Lincoln

Lincoln, directed by Steven Spielberg, portrays Abraham Lincoln's campaign, in the last few months of his life, to pass the thirteenth amendment to the US constitution. The amendment, which outlawed slavery, was passed shortly after the end of the American Civil War, in 1865.

Lincoln is played, definitively, by Daniel Day-Lewis. Spielberg worked again with his regular collaborators, composer John Williams (whose score is, thankfully, used relatively sparingly), editor Michael Kahn, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, and producer Kathleen Kennedy.

This is Spielberg's second film dealing with slavery, the first being Amistad, in which former president John Quincy Adams defended rebellious slaves in court. Lincoln is also essentially a courtroom drama, with the court replaced by the House of Representatives. As in Amistad, the emphasis is on legal arguments by politicians rather than the lives of the slaves themselves.

The script was written by playwright Tony Kushner, and the film feels more stage-bound than Spielberg's previous work. Characters speak in long, declamatory monologues, using arcane polysyllabic vocabulary. The cinematography - backlit hot windows, underlit interiors, smoky exteriors - and even the creaking floorboards also suggest a theatrical atmosphere.

Lincoln was not the only slave-related film released last year: Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained is the antithesis of Lincoln. Lincoln is a self-consciously worthy period drama, the type of 'prestige film' released by studios eager for Oscars. Django, on the other hand, is a revisionist exploitation film, with gleeful provocation in place of earnest historical realism.

Encounter Thailand

Since the start of this year, I have been editor of Encounter Thailand magazine. My previous articles were published last year, in October, November, and December.

I've written two features for the February issue. Play It Again, Siam (on pages 38-40) discusses Thai movie remakes. Filming The Tsunami (on pages 42-44) reviews the recent film The Impossible and compares it to previous movies about the 2004 tsunami.

[Note: for reasons of space, the tsunami article omits the films Vinyan and Hi-So; the remakes article omits the Telugu film Photo, and was published before the release of Bangkok Traffic Love Story: Redux.]

Amour

Amour, directed by Michael Haneke, takes place almost entirely within the Paris apartment of retired couple Georges and Anne. (The central characters in most of Haneke's films - Amour, Cache, The Seventh Continent, Benny's Video, Code Unknown, Time Of The Wolf, and Funny Games - are called Georges and Anne, or slight variations of those names.)

In the opening sequence, police break open the door and find Anne's body laid out on her deathbed. The film then shows us the last few weeks of Anne's life, after she suffers a series of debilitating strokes. The practical and emotional realities of coping with terminal illness are slowly revealed, as Georges cares for Anne while her condition inevitably deteriorates.

Georges and Anne are an intellectual, cultured couple, unlike the superficial bourgeois characters Haneke often depicts. They are the opposites of the faux-intellectual couple from Cache, for example: they read books, rather than using them as decorative status symbols. Amour is an emotional and tender film, not Haneke's more familiar 'epater les bourgeois' approach (seen most directly in Funny Games and its American remake).

We first see Georges and Anne in long-shot, in the audience for a piano concert. As in the ambiguous final sequence of Cache, we have to search the frame looking for the protagonists. The rest of the film is a chamber piece, as Georges and Anne deal with the final stages of their long marriage. They are occasionally visited by their daughter, played by Isabelle Huppert, though visits from her and other outsiders feel like intrusions. Huppert also starred in Time Of The Wolf and The Piano Teacher; in Amour, Anne is a retired piano teacher.

The two leading actors, both more than eighty years old, give brave and moving performances. Jean-Louis Trintignant dominates the film, though Emmanuelle Riva (who starred in the New Wave classic Hiroshima Mon Amour) is arguably even more impressive. Her physical vulnerability and emotional intensity are profound.

Amour won the Palme d'Or at Cannes last year (three years after another Haneke film, The White Ribbon). It was screened at the Clap! French Film Festival, and as part of the Bioscope Theatre season.

500 Must-See Films

Last Saturday and Sunday, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph published a two-part supplement titled 500 Must-See Films. Their 500 films include top-twenty lists chosen by the newspapers' film critics (Robbie Collin, David Gritten, Jenny McCartney, and Tim Robey) and categorised into genres (musical, comedy, western, British cinema, thriller, horror, biopic, animation, film noir, silent cinema, war, crime, directorial debut, children's non-animation, action, films about film, tearjerkers, sequels, science-fiction, and documentaries).

The critics' lists mostly contain foreign-language classics that don't fit into the main genre categories. There are actually only 499 films listed, as Out Of The Past mistakenly appears twice. The list is much more credible than The Sunday Telegraph's previous attempt, 100 Best Films. Contributor David Gritten was responsible for the 2008 Halliwell's Film Guide and the final nail in Halliwell's coffin, The Movies That Matter.

The Art Of Pop-Up

The Art Of Pop-Up: The Magical World Of Three-Dimensional Books, by Jean-Charles Trebbi, includes a concise history of pop-up books (by Jacques Desse) and a survey of contemporary examples. (Pop-up books are now produced for young children, though the earliest examples were interactive infographics.)

There are hundreds of photographs, including numerous fascinating historical examples, though an obvious drawback is that the illustrations are all 2D: ironically, no actual pop-ups are included (although there is a fold-out historical timeline). The book was originally published in French, as L'Art Du Pop-Up & Du Livre Anime.

Supernatural

Thunska Pansittivorakul’s latest film, Supernatural (เหนือธรรมชาติ), explores themes familiar from his earlier work, though stylistically it marks a significant departure and progression. It’s his most ambitious film and his most artistically mature work to date.

Thunska’s previous films were either documentaries (This Area Is Under Quarantine/บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน; The Terrorists/ผู้ก่อการร้าย) or semi-documentaries (Reincarnate/จุติ), and Supernatural is his first entirely fictional narrative. Also, his previous naturalistic, hand-held camerawork is superseded by Supernatural’s meticulous compositions and stylised lighting.

Supernatural is a science-fiction film (another first for Thunska, who has not previously worked within a conventional genre), imagining Thailand’s development over the next century. The film is divided into chapters, each taking place at fifty-year intervals: one chapter, 2060, was screened in isolation last October, just a few days after it was filmed.

Thailand’s future is depicted as glossy and sterile, with human interaction replaced by communication with online avatars. (The title, Supernatural, refers to futuristic virtual-reality software.) This is a dystopian future, inspired by George Orwell’s 1984, with a totalitarian state ruled by “the Leader”.

Like most futuristic sci-fi, Supernatural is also a comment on the present: Thunska’s critique of unquestioning obedience is a brave political statement, though the lèse-majesté law makes a public screening in Thailand unlikely. (The film will not be submitted for classification in Thailand. This Area Is Under Quarantine was previously refused classification.)

As in The Terrorists, Supernatural directly criticises some of Thailand’s military figures (the sanctimonious Chamlong Srimuang and the unrepentant Pallop Pinmanee) for their various crimes. The characters in Supernatural are all gay, though the film (also like The Terrorists) is more political than sexual. There is one brief sex scene, though it’s more subtle than Thunska's earlier films.

With a considerably higher budget and a longer schedule than previously available, Thunska has produced a visually stunning film. Almost every scene is beautifully lit and framed, though a sequence featuring a backdrop of multi-coloured spotlights is particularly effective.

Formal compositions, attempted in brief sequences in Reincarnate, are sustained throughout Supernatural. Reincarnate’s metaphysical ending is also expanded in Supernatural, as Reincarnate was adapted from an early draft of the Supernatural script. The final sequence, set in a desert, evokes the conclusion of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life.

Death: Photography 1994-2011

Death: Photography 1994-2011 is a collection of images by Japanese photographer Tsurisaki Kiyotaka. Since 1994, Kiyotaka has specialised exclusively in photographing corpses, and the book contains photos of accident victims, crime scenes, mortuaries, and funerals.

Most of the images were taken in South America, which has a long cultural association with death, from the traditional Dia de Muertos festival to the exploitative 'prensa roja' tabloids. The book begins, however, with a series of grisly photographs from Thailand, mostly depicting fatal car crashes.

Kiyotaka's photographs are remarkable largely for their shocking subjects rather than for their artistic quality. The single exception - Kiyotaka's only manipulated image - is a double-exposure depicting a foetus being removed from its mother's body in Colombia. Aside from this self-consciously artistic composition, most of the photographs resemble those in the book Death Scenes.

Other photographers have also produced works examining the taboo surrounding death, notably Andres Serrano's aestheticised Morgue images and Joel-Peter Witkin's tableaux of dismembered bodies. Kiyotaka's work is perhaps most similar to Sally Mann's recent series What Remains. (Serrano and other death photographers were profiled in a Channel 4 documentary, Vile Bodies: The Dead, in 1998.)

House Of Cards (Netflix)

House Of Cards, the Netflix drama series, was inspired by the BBC mini-series of the same name broadcast in 1990. The Netflix version, adapted by Beau Willimon, transposes the setting from Westminster to Washington DC. The central character, Frank Underwood - retaining the FU ('fuck you') initials of the original's Francis Urquhart - is played by Kevin Spacey. Underwood is as Machiavellian as Urquhart, and both characters deliver direct-to-camera asides to the audience; Underwood even repeats Urquhart's most famous line, "I couldn't possibly comment." The first two episodes were directed by David Fincher (director of Seven and Fight Club).

The series is even darker and more gripping than the original, though it's most significant for its distribution model: all thirteen episodes were released simultaneously, available to stream or download either individually or all at once. Viewers could binge-watch multiple episodes, instead of waiting for a weekly broadcast schedule. Netflix streaming now accounts for around a third of all North American internet traffic; House Of Cards marks its first significant move from distribution to original content production, as it transitions (along with competitors such as Amazon) from a technology company to a media company.

Bioscope Theatre

Bioscope magazine will present a preview screening of Michael Haneke's Amour next Tuesday. The film will be shown at Paragon Cineplex, Bangkok, as part of the Bioscope Theatre project. Tickets are free for Bioscope members, though they must be reserved in advance. Amour was shown previously at the Clap! French Film Festival.

Clap! French Film Festival 2013

The Clap! French Film Festival opens in Bangkok next Wednesday. Most screenings will be at SFX Emporium, though there'll be a Valentine's Day outdoor showing of The Artist at Museum Siam. (A Trip To The Moon and Monrak Transistor were screened there in previous years.) The closing film, on 20th February at Emporium, will be Michael Haneke's Amour.

Visual Project: Woody Allen

TCDC in Bangkok is currently screening a mini season of Woody Allen films as part of its Visual Project series. His masterpieces Annie Hall and Manhattan, and his recent commercial success Midnight In Paris, will be shown on alternate days for the whole of this month.

Forever Young

Fashion photographer Leslie Kee was arrested in Japan today, and has been charged with distributing pornography. His new book Forever Young: Uncensored Edition contains, as the title suggests, uncensored images of male nudity.

The book had been on sale during Kee's current exhibition, which opened on Saturday at the Hiromi Yoshii gallery in Tokyo. Under Japanese law, genital images are illegal, and they are routinely pixelated to avoid obscenity charges.

Encounter Thailand

My third feature for Encounter Thailand magazine, Reeling In The Cliches, was published in December last year (on pages 42-44). The article examines how Thailand has been portrayed by foreign films set in the country.

[Note: Banco A Bangkok OSS 117, Deep River Savages, Teddy Bear, Mammoth, Elephant White, The Detective, and Stealth were omitted for reasons of space; Bangkok Revenge will be reviewed in a later issue.]

My portrait of artist Chris Coles, and three photographs of his paintings, have also been published in the same issue (on pages 34-36). My previous Encounter Thailand features were published in October and November last year.