Tears Of The Black Tiger

Wisit Sasanatieng's classic Tears Of The Black Tiger will be screened at the Thai Film Archive on 31st July. Tears Of The Black Tiger was also shown as part of the BACC Cinema Diverse season last year. It was screened previously at the Thai Film Archive in 2010 and 2009.

Tears Of The Black Tiger was Wisit's debut film. It's a camp and melodramatic tribute to vintage Thai cinema - if Douglas Sirk had made a spaghetti western with Andy Warhol, it might have looked something like this. Wisit's other films are the romantic fantasy Citizen Dog, the period ghost story The Unseeable, and the action film The Red Eagle. He has also directed the short film Norasinghavatar, the music video เราเป็นคนไทย, and a segment of the portmanteau film Sawasdee Bangkok.

The Art Museum

The Art Museum, edited by Amanda Renshaw and published by Phaidon, is an enormous history of art that weighs more than eight kilos (as heavy as Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon). The book is divided into 'galleries' and 'rooms', instead of chapters, and it contains photographs of more than 2,500 works of art.

The illustrations are most impressive when they are presented as full-page images or double-page spreads (such as the tapestry The Lady & The Unicorn), though some major works are represented by smaller pictures and each 'room' includes only a handful of exhibits. Each section has a brief introduction for context, though the large-scale illustrations are clearly the main focus (as they are in The Art Book and The 20th Century Art Book, also from Phaidon).

Only God Forgives

Only God Forgives, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, stars Ryan Gosling as an American drug dealer running a boxing club in Bangkok. (Lost In Thailand and other films have also been set here.) Refn and Gosling previously collaborated, more successfully, on Drive.

Gosling's brother murders a Thai prostitute, and her father kills him in revenge. The father then has his hand cut off by a corrupt Thai cop wielding a sword. Gosling's mother arrives in Bangkok, and asks Gosling to avenge his brother's death. Tougher than Gosling's conflicted, Oedipal character, she dominates each of her scenes, largely because everyone else is so blank.

The film's cinematography, by Larry Smith, is outstanding, with its film noir shadows and circle-of-hell red lighting. Smith worked with Stanley Kubrick on several films, and Only God Forgives is very Kubrickian with its slow zooms and symmetrical compositions.

In another similarity with Kubrick, the characters in Only God Forgives are unrealistic and impassive; they sit perfectly still or walk slowly in long, silent sequences punctuated only by loud footsteps. Strange, stilted karaoke scenes add to the sense of unreality.

Gosling's character is potentially interesting (a drug-dealing gangster with a conscience), though his moral ambiguities are never explored. There is a single chase sequence, and occasional bursts of graphic, ritualistic violence, as the cop tortures everyone connected with the prostitute's death, though the film's inertia and lack of suspense make it unsuccessful as a thriller.

Boundary

Nontawat Numbenchapol's Boundary, a documentary about the disputed Preah Vihear Temple in Cambodia, will be screened in Bangkok from tomorrow. The film is politically sensitive: last month, the Ministry of Culture announced that it had been banned, though two days later they performed a suspicious U-turn, explaining that the earlier announcement had been made by an unauthorised sub-committee.

A cut was required before the film was eventually approved by the Ministry of Culture: background audio of a crowd chanting "Long live the king!" at a New Year countdown was muted. Inexplicably, the film received a restrictive '18' rating.

Unable to secure regular theatrical distribution, Nontawat has been forced to negotiate with cinemas independently, selling tickets personally in the lobby of each venue. After screenings upcountry earlier this month, he is bringing the film to Bangkok's Esplanade cinema for four days, from 18th to 21st July. Nontawat will be present for a Q&A after each screening; he took part in Freedom On Film last month.

Boundary is composed largely of silent, still sequences depicting the serenity of rural life, as a counterpoint to the fierce border dispute surrounding the temple. Nontawat begins by interviewing Aod, a young soldier, in his home village. Idyllic sequences of novice monks bathing and Aod's father fishing are contrasted with Aod describing his military conscription and the army's crackdown against the red-shirts.

After footage of the Thai military firing at their Cambodian counterparts near Preah Vihear, we see damage to houses and a school close to the temple, caused by bombs and gunfire from Cambodian troops. Finally, at the end of the film, Nontawat's camera explores the temple itself, the ruined Khmer compound that has caused such bloodshed and ultra-nationalism in the past few years.

The sensitivity surrounding Boundary follows the equally controversial political documentary Paradoxocracy, whose release was similarly delayed. Paradoxocracy was screened at Esplanade and Paragon, though incredibly the cinemas actually discouraged customers from seeing it: screenings were not advertised or listed online, and callers were told that the film was unavailable.

Encounter Thailand

I have interviewed actor Ananda Everingham as the cover feature for the July issue of Encounter Thailand magazine (In Bed With Ananda, on pages 26-33). The article has also been translated into Thai.

For the June cover story, I interviewed Pla Komaratat and Kay Sitongdee, and I interviewed Apichatpong Weerasethakul for the May issue. I edited the February, March, and April issues. My previous articles were published in October, November, and December last year.

The 100 All-Time Greatest Movies

Yesterday, Entertainment Weekly magazine published a special edition ranking the all-time greatest films, TV programmes, albums, and novels. The magazine's managing editor Jess Cagle explains that the lists were compiled by "writers and editors from each section [of the magazine] overseen by EW editors Jeff Giles and Jason Adams".

The 100 All-Time Greatest Movies list is surprisingly traditional, dominated by the 'golden age' of Hollywood. In fact, only four films on the list (The Dark Knight, The Lord Of The Rings III, The Hurt Locker, and There Will Be Blood) were released after 2000. Silent films are equally marginalised: there are only three examples included, all of which are American (The Gold Rush, Sunrise, and Intolerance).

Citizen Kane is restored to its regular #1 position, after being usurped by Vertigo in last year's Sight & Sound list; in contrast, Entertainment Weekly ranks Vertigo at only #38. When Entertainment Weekly published its original 100 Greatest Movies list in 1999, The Godfather was #1 and Citizen Kane was #2, though now their positions have been reversed. The 1999 list contained slightly more foreign-language and silent films than the 2013 version.

The 100 All-Time Greatest Movies, according to Entertainment Weekly, are as follows:

1. Citizen Kane
2. The Godfather
3. Casablanca
4. Bonnie & Clyde
5. Psycho
6. It's A Wonderful Life
7. Mean Streets
8. The Gold Rush
9. Nashville
10. Gone With The Wind
11. King Kong
12. The Searchers
13. Annie Hall
14. Bambi
15. Blue Velvet
16. Singin' In The Rain
17. Seven Samurai
18. Jaws
19. Pulp Fiction
20. The Sorrow & The Pity
21. Some Like It Hot
22. Toy Story
23. Notorious
24. The Sound Of Music
25. 2001: A Space Odyssey
26. Bicycle Thieves
27. The Maltese Falcon
28. The Wizard Of Oz
29. North By Northwest
30. Sunrise
31. Chinatown
32. Duck Soup
33. The Graduate
34. Adam's Rib
35. Apocalypse Now
36. Rosemary's Baby
37. Manhattan
38. Vertigo
39. The Rules Of The Game
40. Double Indemnity
41. The Road Warrior
42. Taxi Driver
43. The Lord Of The Rings III: The Return Of The King
44. On The Waterfront
45. Mr Smith Goes To Washington
46. The Adventures Of Robin Hood
47. A Clockwork Orange
48. It Happened One Night
49. Goldfinger
50. Intolerance
51. A Hard Day's Night
52. Titanic
53. Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back
54. Breathless
55. Frankenstein
56. Schindler's List
57. Midnight Cowboy
58. The Seventh Seal
59. All The President's Man
60. Top Hat
61. The Silence Of The Lambs
62. ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
63. Network
64. The Best Years Of Our Lives
65. Last Tango In Paris
66. The Shining
67. Rebel Without A Cause
68. GoodFellas
69. Dr Strangelove
70. L'Avventura
71. American Graffiti
72. The 400 Blows
73. Cabaret
74. The Hurt Locker
75. Touch Of Evil
76. Lawrence Of Arabia
77. Dog Day Afternoon
78. Raiders Of The Lost Ark
79. Night Of The Living Dead
80. Dazed & Confused
81. Blade Runner
82. Scenes From A Marriage
83. The Wild Bunch
84. Olympia
85. Dirty Harry
86. All About Eve
87. La Dolce Vita
88. The Dark Knight
89. Woodstock
90. The French Connection
91. Do The Right Thing
92. The Piano
93. A Face In The Crowd
94. Brokeback Mountain
95. Rushmore
96. Sullivan's Travels
97. Diner
98. All About My Mother
99. There Will Be Blood
100. Sweet Smell Of Success

Note that Frankenstein is the James Whale version and Titanic is the James Cameron version. Some Like It Hot is the 1959 classic, not the obscure 1939 comedy; and Psycho is the original version.

Encounter Thailand

I interviewed film producers Kay Sitongdee and Pla Komaratat as the cover feature for the June issue of Encounter Thailand magazine (Free As A Bird, on pages 28-31). The article has also been translated into Thai.

I've written a feature on the Thai ghost Mae Nak, for the same issue, reviewing the new film Pee Mak Phra Kanong (the most successful Thai film ever made). The article (The Haunted Screen, on pages 32-33) traces Mae Nak's extensive film appearances, including the classic Nang Nak.

I interviewed Apichatpong Weerasethakul for the May issue of the magazine, and I edited the February, March, and April issues. My previous articles were published in October, November, and December last year.

La Vie De Mahomet

The French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo has published the second part of its comic biography of Mohammed, La Vie De Mahomet, by Stephane Charbonnier and Zineb el Rhazoui. The comic depicts Mohammed's adult life, and is subtitled Le Prophete De L'Islam. The first part, which dealt with Mohammed's childhood, was published earlier this year.

Charlie Hebdo first published a Mohammed cartoon appeared in 2002, followed by a front-page Mohammed caricature in 2006. This was followed by a Charia Hebdo edition 'guest-edited' by Mohammed in 2011, and a naked Mohammed caricature last September (criticising the protests against Innocence Of Muslims).

Mohammed cartoons first caused controversy when a dozen of them were published by Jyllands-Posten in 2005. Since then, many other newspapers and magazines have also printed Mohammed caricatures: Weekendavisen, France Soir, The Guardian, Philadelphia Daily News, Le Monde, Liberation, Het Nieuwsblad, The Daily Tar Heel, Akron Beacon Journal, The Strand, Nana, Gorodskiye Vesti, Adresseavisen, Uke-Adressa, Harper's, and the International Herald Tribune (in 2006 and 2012).

Spielberg: A Retrospective

Spielberg: A Retrospective, by Richard Schickel, is a chronological survey of Steven Spielberg's career as Hollywood's most commercially successful director. Schickel reviews each film, and quotes from his interviews with Spielberg, though this is not a full-length interview book like Conversations With Scorsese or Woody Allen: A Life In Film.

Schickel previously interviewed Spielberg for the television documentary Spielberg On Spielberg, from which many of this book's quotations are taken. Spielberg also wrote the book's foreword. Schickel and Spielberg both acknowledge their friendship, and while this results in co-operation and candour from Spielberg, it also makes Schickel's commentary less objective. Thus, there is little overt criticism of Spielberg's films here. Also, each film is given approximately equal space, which means that chapters on the classics (such as Jaws and Jurassic Park) are not long enough, while less substantial films (Indiana Jones IV, War Of The Worlds, Hook, 1941, Always, War Horse, etc.) receive disproportionate coverage. The book was published before the release of Lincoln.

Schickel's television series and book The Men Who Made The Movies include interviews with Alfred Hitchcock and other directors of the classical Hollywood period. More recently, he has directed the documentaries Scorsese On Scorsese and Woody Allen: A Life In Film. He contributed reviews to the updated Film Noir: The Encyclopedia, and wrote a monograph on Double Indemnity for the BFI.

Paradoxocracy

Paradoxocracy, the new film by Pen-ek Ratanaruang and Pasakorn Pramoolwong, is a documentary charting the progression (and frequent regressions) of Thai politics since the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in 1932. The film has a surprisingly conventional documentary structure: chronological narrative, voice-over narration, and talking heads (fourteen prominent Thai academics, not identified until the final credits).

The title reflects the paradoxical nature of the 1932 revolution, as noted by Thongchai Winichakul: it supposedly replaced absolute monarchy with democracy, though it also paved the way for Thailand’s military to seize power. The transition is discussed at length, as are the massacres of 1973 and 1976.

The roles of the military and the monarchy are, to say the least, highly sensitive topics in Thailand. The army is essentially a law unto itself, and acts with impunity; the monarch is shielded by the lèse-majesté law. The film begins with Pridi Banomyong’s criticism of King Rama VII, though the subsequent roles of Rama VIII and IX are not discussed in the documentary at all.

The fact that the protagonists of recent Thai political dramas are still involved in politics today means that Paradoxocracy doesn’t include any criticism of them. Prem Tinsulanonda’s premiership, for example, is noted only as a time of economic boom, though its somewhat undemocratic nature is glossed over due to his current status as head of the Privy Council. Similarly, ‘Black May’ 1992 is not dwelt upon, as Chamlong Srimuang is still politically active. This self-censorship prevents the documentary from fully exploring Thailand’s tumultuous political history.

Thaksin Shinawatra does feature, though only his relatively uncontroversial first term in office is covered. At one point, Sulak Sivaraksa says, “Your movie shouldn’t waste too much time on Thaksin”, which received a round of applause at a screening in Bangkok. Perhaps audiences have reached Thaksin fatigue?

Paradoxocracy’s release was delayed due to censorship issues, and a few quotes by Worajet Pakeerat and the typically straight-talking Sulak Sivaraksa have been muted. The English subtitles have also been blacked out during these moments, drawing attention to the censorship.

Taxidermy

Taxidermy, by Alexis Turner, is (like The Empire Of Death, also published by Thames & Hudson) a beautiful and fascinating book about a morbid subject. It provides a history and taxonomy of taxidermy accompanied by hundreds of glossy photographs depicting historical and contemporary specimens, from the quaint anthropomorphic tableaux of Walter Potter to the macabre sculptures of Polly Morgan (Psychopomps) and Thomas Grunfeld (Misfits).

Turner discusses taxidermy in natural history museums, interior design, contemporary art, and other contexts. He summarises taxidermy's place in modern art too briefly, though, with no illustrations of works by Robert Rauschenberg or Damien Hirst, and no mention of Maurizio Cattelan. Surprisingly, there is no bibliography.

New Queer Cinema

New Queer Cinema: The Director's Cut is a collection of articles written by film critic B Ruby Rich, the writer who coined the term New Queer Cinema. Her original New Queer Cinema essay, highlighting a wave of "Homo Pomo" independent gay films such as My Own Private Idaho, was first published as A Queer Sensation by The Village Voice in 1992. It was reprinted later that year by Sight & Sound under the now famous title The New Queer Cinema.

The Village Voice removed some of the essay's original text, and "all prior [sic] reprints" were based on this truncated version, though this new book prints the full essay for the first time. Other chapters include a survey of gay cinema in Asia (featuring Apichatpong Weersethakul, though not Tsai Ming-Liang). Like Linda Williams's Screening Sex, Rich over-rates Brokeback Mountain. Underground directors such as Bruce LaBruce and Thunska Pansittivorakul are omitted, and recent films such as Weekend are relegated to the conclusion.

Taxi Driver

Taxi Driver, published by Taschen, is a collection of previously unpublished photographs by Steve Schapiro taken during the filming of Martin Scorsese's masterpiece. It was first published in a limited edition, though is now available in a standard hardback version. (Schapiro also designed Taxi Driver's theatrical release poster.)

Scorsese wrote the book's foreword; interviews with Scorsese, writer Paul Schrader, and actor Robert De Niro are also included, though they are reprints from other sources. The book was edited by Paul Duncan, who has edited many other film books for Taschen, including Cinema Now, Art Cinema, Horror Cinema, Film Noir, Stanley Kubrick: Visual Poet, and Alfred Hitchcock: Architect Of Anxiety.

Ugetsu

Tomorrow, Bangkok's Japan Foundation will screen Kenji Mizoguchi's classic Ugetsu, as part of a month-long season of ghost films. The Japan Foundation previously presented a screening of another classic ghost film, The Ghost Of Yotsuya, at the 2008 Japanese Film Festival. The Foundation also organised an incredible Akira Kurosawa centenary retrospective in 2011.

Encounter Thailand

I have interviewed director Apichatpong Weerasethakul for the May issue of Encounter Thailand magazine (on pages 36-39). He discusses his entire career: his films Tropical Malady, Blissfully Yours, Syndromes & A Century, Uncle Boonmee, and Mekong Hotel; his Primitive project and other short films; and the Free Thai Cinema Movement.

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

Italian Film Festival 2013

The Italian Film Festival returns to Bangkok next month. As a prelude, there will be a free screening of Federico Fellini's classic La Strada at the Italian embassy on Monday.

Last year's Italian Film Festival included a superb retrospective of Sergio Leone's films, and the year before that featured a Mario Monicelli retrospective. This year's screenings will take place at the SF World cinema from 24th to 28th July.

Stanley Kubrick: Fotografo

Stanley Kubrick: Fotografo is the catalogue for an exhibition held in Italy last year. There have been three previous exhibitions of Kubrick's photographs - Still Moving Pictures, Fotografie 1945-1950, and Visioni & Finzioni 1945-1950 - all curated by Rainer Crone, thus it's surprising that Crone had no involvement with this latest project. (The catalogue was edited instead by Dario Dondi.)

The range of photographs reproduced in Stanley Kubrick: Fotografo is fortunately wider than in Crone's recent books. The images are less manipulated (the original borders from the contact sheets are all visible, for example), though they are similarly decontextualised (without their original titles or publication dates).

There's an interesting trend relating to the cover photos of this and other recent Kubrick books. Of the seven books about Kubrick's photographs, the first four (Ladro Di Sguardi, Still Moving Pictures, Drama & Shadows, and Fotografie 1945-1950) did not use Kubrick self-portraits on their covers, while the three most recent ones (Visioni & Finzioni, Stanley Kubrick At Look Magazine, and Stanley Kubrick: Fotografo) all do.

Kubrick worked as a photographer for Look for five years, beginning in 1945. His contact sheets can now be found at the Stanley Kubrick Archive, the Museum of the City of New York, and the Library of Congress.

Stanley KubrickVisioni & Finzioni 1945-1950

Before he became a director, Stanley Kubrick worked as a photographer for Look magazine. Look published hundreds of his photographs over a period of five years, and Philippe Mather's book Stanley Kubrick At Look Magazine analyses this neglected period of Kubrick's career.

Stanley Kubrick: Visioni & Finzioni 1945-1950, the catalogue for an exhibition held in Italy in 2011, is Rainer Crone's fifth project examining Kubrick's photojournalism. Crone previously curated the exhibitions Still Moving Pictures and Stanley Kubrick: Fotografie 1945-1950, wrote the book Stanley Kubrick: Drama & Shadows, and co-wrote an essay (Kubrick's Kaleidoscope) for the Stanley Kubrick exhibition catalogue.

Still Moving Pictures and Drama & Shadows offered a general overview of Kubrick's Look photos, though Crone has subsequently focused on a limited number of Kubrick's assignments. Thus, Fotografie 1945-1950 (co-written by Wouter Wirth) contains examples of a dozen photo-stories, and Visioni & Finzioni includes only nine of them. Crone's various books all offer beautiful full-page reproductions, though each publication recycles the same ever-diminishing selection of photographs. Also, Crone increasingly decontextualises the photographs: he retitles each photo-story, and provides no bibliographical details of the original Look titles or dates.

Kubrick's photographs were first reprinted in the Italian book Ladro Di Sguardi, and mostly recently in the Italian exhibition catalogue Stanley Kubrick: Fotografo. Kubrick's contact sheets can now be found at the Stanley Kubrick Archive, the Museum of the City of New York, and the Library of Congress.

Headshot

Pen-ek Ratanaruang's noir thriller Headshot will be screened tomorrow at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya, near Bangkok. Pen-ek's new political documentary Paradoxocracy will be released later this month.

Like Mike

On Saturday, police removed parts of an installation by Paul Yore from an exhibition in Melbourne, Australia. The installation, titled Everything Is Fucked, was part of a group exhibition celebrating the influence of Australian artist Mike Brown, who was prosecuted for obscenity in 1966.

Yore's work includes collaged photographs of children, and a shrine to Justin Bieber decorated with dildos. The exhibition, Like Mike: Now What??, opened on 18th May at the Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts, and will close on 7th July. Five years ago, police removed photographs by Bill Henson from a Sydney gallery.

Freedom On Film

After a hiatus of several years, the Free Thai Cinema Movement has recently been revived following the confusion surrounding Boundary (ฟ้าต่ำแผ่นดินสูง), a documentary about the disputed Preah Vihear Temple. Last month, the Ministry of Culture announced that Boundary had been banned, though two days later they performed a suspicious U-turn, explaining that the earlier announcement had been made by an unauthorised sub-committee.

Nontawat Numbenchapol, director of Boundary, will take part in Freedom on Film, a seminar on Thai film censorship at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre today. He will be joined by fellow directors Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Tanwarin Sukkhapisit, and Nonzee Nimibutr.

The seminar will be preceded by a screening of Censor Must Die (เซ็นเซอร์ต้องตาย), a documentary by Ing Kanjanavanit and Manit Sriwanichpoom about the banning of their film Shakespeare Must Die (เชคสเปียร์ต้องตาย). The documentary films Manit as he waits for the censors’ verdict on Shakespeare Must Die, and follows him as he appeals against the ban at the Ministry of Culture and files a case with the Office of the National Human Rights Commission.

Censor Must Die’s most revealing and depressing sequence takes place at the Ministry of Culture’s headquarters: in the lobby is a TV playing a looped video demonstrating the traditional Thai method of sitting in a polite and respectful manner. The Ministry, which should be supporting contemporary Thai art, instead promotes an outdated interpretation of Thai culture.

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.