28 August 2013

Gothic

Gothic
Gothic: The Dark Heart Of Film, edited by James Bell, is the second in a series of anthologies published by the BFI. (The first was 39 Steps To The Genius Of Hitchcock, also edited by Bell.) The BFI has also organised a season of Gothic films, screening in London and around the UK.

The book's essays cover a diverse range of horror themes: monsters, the occult, ghosts, and Gothic romance. Expressionist classics (The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari, Nosferatu), Universal monster films (Frankenstein, Bride Of Frankenstein) and Hammer horrors (The Curse Of Frankenstein, Dracula) are discussed extensively, though the scope also extends to tropes such as Gothic landscapes and architecture, and a wide variety of sub-genres.

The artistic and theatrical influences on Gothic cinema are explored, though there is less discussion of Gothic literature, except in Christopher Frayling's foreword. (Frayling also wrote Spaghetti Westerns.) There are two chapters by Kim Newman (author of Nightmare Movies). Other contributors include Roger Clarke (author of Story Of The Scene), Mark Kermode (author of BFI Classics: The Exorcist) and Marina Warner (author of Phantasmagoria).

27 August 2013

Правители

Paintings by Konstantin Altunin were removed by Russian police from a gallery yesterday. The gallery, the Museum of Authority in St Petersburg, has now been closed by the police. The confiscated paintings were part of the gallery's inaugural exhibition, Правители (Leaders), which opened on 15th August.

Four of Altunin's paintings were seized, all of which are satirical portraits of Russian politicians and religious leaders. Радужный Милонов (Rainbow Milonov) is a portrait of Vitaly Milonov surrounded by a rainbow, mocking Milonov's anti-gay legislation. От исповеди (Confession) depicts Patriarch Kirill I with tattoos of Lenin, Stalin, the Virgin Mary, and skulls on his bare chest. The explicit diptych Эротические сны Мизулиной (The Erotic Dreams Of Mizulina) portrays the conservative politician Yelena Mizulina as a contortionist, and shows her performing oral sex. The most provocative work, Травести (Travesty), shows President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev wearing lingerie.

Art satirising Putin has been censored on several previous occasions. In 2009, Alexander Shednov was arrested after projecting a collage of Putin wearing a dress, and an abstract painting inciting violence against Putin was banned in 2010.

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12 August 2013

...Isms
Understanding Modern Art

...Isms: Understanding Modern Art
...Isms: Understanding Modern Art, by Sam Phillips, is the latest in the ...Isms series that also includes Understanding Architecture and Understanding Cinema. Phillips charts the familiar trajectory of modern and contemporary art movements, from Impressionism onwards.

There is some overlap with ...Isms: Understanding Art by Stephen Little. (Tellingly, Phillips claims that the term 'Sensationalism' was "coined for this book", though in fact it first appeared in Little's book.) To avoid duplicating the illustrations from Little's work, Phillips doesn't include iconic paintings such as Les Demoiselles d'Avignon: Cubism, for example, is represented by Gris, instead of Picasso or Braque. This makes the book less useful as an introduction to modern art.

Styles, Schools, & Movements by Amy Dempsey, 100 Artists' Manifestos by Alex Danchev, and Manifesto by Mary Ann Caws all take a similarly 'ismatic' approach to modern art. Dempsey's book, in particular, is a superior guide to modern art 'isms'.

09 August 2013

Paradoxocracy

Paradoxocracy
Next week, there will be another chance to see the Thai political documentary Paradoxocracy. It will be screened on 17th August at the House of Commons cafe in Thonburi.

07 August 2013

My Lunches With Orson

My Lunches With Orson
My Lunches With Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom & Orson Welles was edited by Peter Biskind, author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. The book is a series of transcripts of conversations recorded at the Ma Maison restaurant in Hollywood, in the years before Welles died.

There's an obvious comparison to be made between My Lunches With Orson and This Is Orson Welles, a book of Peter Bogdanovich's interviews with Welles published in 1992. In fact, Bogdanovich introduced Welles to Jaglom: "In 1970 I had introduced Orson to my old friend, filmmaker Henry Jaglom... When Orson and I fell out, Henry stepped in to fill that sort of role in Orson's life". My Lunches With Orson and This Is Orson Welles both contain transcripts of tapes recorded years before they were published, though their contents are quite different.

This Is Orson Welles was an attempt to preserve Welles's account of his entire life and work, one of several such projects Welles collaborated on shortly before he died. (The others were an authorised biography, Orson Welles by Barbara Leaming; and an extended BBC Arena interview, The Orson Welles Story.) The book was written with Welles's co-operation, and he redacted any material he didn't like. (Welles wrote to Bogdanovich: "I said that [name deleted] ought to be put in jail. Well, let's commute the sentence. The book doesn't need it".)

In contrast, after his conversations with Jaglom, Welles did not collaborate on the editing of My Lunches With Orson. In fact, it's debatable whether or not he even knew that Jaglom planned to publish the material. Thus, the result is far more candid than This Is Orson Welles. Welles is surprisingly frank about his personal life ("I loved her, yeah. Very much. But, by that time, not sexually. I had to work myself up to fuck her") and his associates (including Bogdanovich, who he calls "your friend"; Jaglom reminds him: "He was your friend, too").

Welles sometimes appears pretentious: a simple question from a waiter ("And roast pork?") prompts a long quotation from The Merchant Of Venice ("Bassanio says to Shylock..."), while the waiter waits patiently to take Welles's order. Also, his inability to negotiate is extraordinary: Welles starts pitching a mini-series to an HBO executive, though he gives up almost immediately. The executive insists that "it does interest me very much", though Welles responds defensively: "You're wrong. You're really wrong. Boy, are you wrong". Ultimately, the exasperated executive walks out.

Biskind's introduction to the book is quite superficial, recycling well-known details about Welles's Hollywood productions (from Citizen Kane to Touch Of Evil), but skirting over the Shakespeare films in a single sentence. Biskind also claims that Welles "unofficially directed" The Stranger, although he was officially credited as its director. There's no index, and only limited endnotes.

This Is Orson Welles has a more formal Welles interview, and Discovering Orson Welles and Orson Welles At Work have more research about Welles's career, though My Lunches With Orson is a fascinating series of informal conversations. It's pure gossip, but it reveals another side to one of the cinema's greatest directors.

06 August 2013

Moving Innovation

Moving Innovation
Moving Innovation: A History Of Computer Animation, by Tom Sito, is the first comprehensive history of CGI and digital animation. Sito discusses pioneering computer animators such as John Whitney, computer-game graphics, cinematic visual effects (including Jurassic Park), and animation studios such as Pixar (Toy Story and its sequels).

The book also includes recent developments such as the motion-capture technology used in The Lord Of The Rings (I, II, III), The Hobbit, the recent King Kong remake, and Avatar. It's a useful companion to Cartoons (Giannalberto Bendazzi) and The World Encyclopedia Of Cartoons (Maurice Horn), histories of hand-drawn animation. The first survey of computer art - HW Franke's Computer Graphics, Computer Art - was published over forty years ago.

Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs
The Creation Of A Classic

Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs: The Art & Creation Of Walt Disney's Classic Animated Film
Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs: The Creation Of A Classic (subtitled The Art & Creation Of Walt Disney's Classic Animated Film on the jacket) is the catalogue of an exhibition held at the Walt Disney Family Museum in California last year. The book was written by JB Kaufman, who is also the author of The Fairest One Of All.

The catalogue contains around 200 examples of Snow White production art, though it doesn't feel quite as substantial as The Fairest One Of All. In fact, the strengths of Kaufman's other Snow White book unfortunately don't apply to the catalogue. Also, the catalogue falls into several traps that the other book avoided: chapters titled Collecting The Magic and Celebrating Walt's Genius are too close to 'magic of Disney' studio propaganda.

The Fairest One Of All

The Fairest One Of All
The Fairest One Of All: The Making Of Walt Disney's Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs, by JB Kaufman, is a comprehensive account of the production of Snow White, which remains the quintessential Disney animated feature. The book was published by the Walt Disney Family Foundation, which is significant for two reasons: their imprimatur granted Kaufman full access to the Disney archives, though the Foundation is not affiliated with the Disney corporation, so the book is not a product of the 'magical world of Disney' self-mythologising publicity machine.

While not as hagiographic as expected, Kaufman still lavishes praise on the film (comparing it to Intolerance and Citizen Kane) and dismisses criticism of it. After quoting a negative review, for example, he notes that the critic "of course, was not an artist himself, nor did he have the luxury of screening the film repeatedly and studying the animation in detail, as we can do today".

Overall, though, this is a scholarly study of Snow White, not merely a studio puff piece, and Kaufman is careful not to perpetuate the myths associated with the film. He acknowledges, for instance, that "there had been other animated features before this one", and includes two stills from The Adventures Of Prince Achmed.

The book features hundreds of large and full-page colour illustrations of production sketches and other concept art. (Many of these also featured in an exhibition - Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs: The Creation Of A Classic - and its catalogue, also by Kaufman.) The illustrations are accompanied by an extensive history of the film's production, with surprisingly detailed footnotes and appendices.

01 August 2013

101 Greatest Films Of All Time!

Barry Norman's 101 Greatest Films Of All Time Barry Norman's 101 Greatest Films Of All Time
Last year, Radio Times magazine published 101 Greatest Films Of All Time!, a list selected by veteran film critic Barry Norman. Norman chose 100 films, and the 101st entry was selected by the magazine's readers.

The list was categorised by genre and published in two parts, on 21st January (thrillers, romance, family, drama, comedy, and war) and 28th January (action/adventure, musicals, horror, sci-fi, and westerns). The 101st film was announced on 29th February.

Norman previously compiled a 100 Best Films Of The Century list, published in 1992. Radio Times produced a 100 Landmark Films list in 2006, and it publishes the Radio Times Guide To Films annually.

The Landmark Films list, and Norman's own list from 1992, were both far more wide-ranging than Norman's current selection. There are only two foreign-language films in the present list, and it has no silent films at all.

The 101 Greatest Films Of All Time are as follows:

Thrillers
  • GoodFellas
  • Dirty Harry
  • The Big Sleep
  • The Godfather
  • The Silence Of The Lambs
  • LA Confidential
  • North By Northwest
  • Chinatown
  • Psycho
  • The Third Man
Westerns
  • Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
  • The Outlaw Josey Wales
  • High Noon
  • Unforgiven
  • The Wild Bunch
  • Shane
  • Red River
  • The Searchers
  • No Country For Old Men
  • The Magnificent Seven
Horror
  • Halloween
  • The Exorcist
  • Frankenstein
  • Rosemary's Baby
  • Night Of The Living Dead
Romance
  • Romeo & Juliet
  • Casablanca
  • Gone With The Wind
  • A Matter Of Life & Death
  • Brief Encounter
  • It Happened One Night
  • When Harry Met Sally
  • I Know Where I'm Going!
  • Gregory's Girl
  • The Graduate
Family
  • Mary Poppins
  • Great Expectations
  • Toy Story
  • ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
  • Bambi
  • Shrek
  • The Railway Children
  • The Jungle Book
  • The Wizard Of Oz
  • Harry Potter I-VIII
Musicals
  • Cabaret
  • Moulin Rouge!
  • Singin' In The Rain
  • West Side Story
  • Chicago
  • The Red Shoes
  • My Fair Lady
  • High Society
  • Saturday Night Fever
  • Kiss Me Kate
Action & Adventure
  • Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade
  • The Adventures Of Robin Hood
  • Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
  • Jaws
  • Gladiator
  • Seven Samurai
  • Lawrence Of Arabia
  • Deliverance
  • The Dark Knight
  • Master & Commander: The Far Side Of The World
War
  • The Great Escape
  • Apocalypse Now
  • To Be Or Not To Be
  • The Bridge On The River Kwai
  • Dr Strangelove
  • Paths Of Glory
  • The Hurt Locker
  • Shoah
  • The Cruel Sea
  • Schindler's List
Drama
  • It's A Wonderful Life
  • Citizen Kane
  • The Shawshank Redemption
  • Sunset Boulevard
  • Raging Bull
  • Bad Day At Black Rock
  • 12 Angry Men
  • All About Eve
  • To Kill A Mockingbird
  • One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
Sci-Fi
  • Alien
  • Blade Runner
  • Star Wars IV: A New Hope
  • Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey
Comedy
  • Some Like It Hot
  • Annie Hall
  • Groundhog Day
  • Ninotchka
  • Airplane!
  • Duck Soup
  • Blazing Saddles
  • Kind Hearts & Coronets
  • Bringing Up Baby
  • Monty Python & The Holy Grail
101
  • Pulp Fiction
There are more than 101 films on the list, as all eight Harry Potter films are listed as a single entry. Note that Frankenstein is the James Whale version from 1931, not the earlier Thomas Edison silent version. Also, Some Like It Hot is the Billy Wilder classic from 1959, not the obscure 1939 film of the same name; and Psycho is the original version. There have been numerous adaptations of Romeo & Juliet; the one listed here is the Baz Luhrmann version from 1996.

29 July 2013

Tears Of The Black Tiger

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.

26 July 2013

The Art Museum

The Art Museum
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).

22 July 2013

Only God Forgives

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.

17 July 2013

Boundary

Boundary
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

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.

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The 100 All-Time Greatest Movies

The 100 All-Time Greatest
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.

16 July 2013

Encounter Thailand

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.

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03 July 2013

La Vie De Mahomet

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).

02 July 2013

Spielberg: A Retrospective

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.

26 June 2013

Paradoxocracy


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.

24 June 2013

Taxidermy

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.

23 June 2013

New Queer Cinema

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
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.

20 June 2013

Ugetsu

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.

15 June 2013

Encounter Thailand

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.

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14 June 2013

Italian Film Festival 2013

Italian Film Festival 2013
La Strada
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
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 Kubrick
Visioni & Finzioni 1945-1950

Stanley Kubrick: Visioni & 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.

07 June 2013

Headshot

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.

03 June 2013

Like Mike

Like Mike
Everything Is Fucked
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.

01 June 2013

Freedom On Film


Freedom on Film Censor Must Die

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.

31 May 2013

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.

28 May 2013

มรดกภาพยนตร์ของชาติ

มรดกภาพยนตร์ของชาติ
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
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.

23 May 2013

Nang Nak

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.

22 May 2013

Stanley Kubrick At Look Magazine

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.

16 May 2013

La Fete 2013

La Fete 2013
La Jetee
La Jetee: Take Two
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.

15 May 2013

Encounter Thailand

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.

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