Cosmigraphics

Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time, by Michael Benson, contains 300 examples of celestial maps and diagrams, revealing how the cosmos has been depicted by astronomers and artists over the past 3,000 years, beginning with the Nebra Sky Disc, "the oldest-known graphic depiction of celestial objects in human history." It's a remarkable visual guide to the history of cosmology, though unfortunately it has no footnotes or bibliography.

Some of the most elaborate illustrations are taken from Harmonia Macrocosmica by Andreas Cellarius (1660); several of his plates are reproduced, as are a selection of volvelles from Peter Apian's Astronomicum Caesareum (1540). Some of the examples are well-known, such as the panels representing the six days of creation from the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493). Incredibly, an illustration of the void before creation (1617) by Robert Fludd pre-dates Kazimir Malevich's famous Black Square by almost exactly 300 years.

Rebel Heart

Last December, Madonna digitally released six tracks from her forthcoming album, Rebel Heart: Living For Love, Devil Pray, Ghosttown, Unapologetic Bitch, Illuminati, and Bitch I'm Madonna. A further three tracks were digitally released earlier this month: Joan Of Arc, Hold Tight, and Iconic. The full album will be available next month.

Rebel Heart will be released three years after Madonna's last studio album, MDNA. (That album inspired The MDNA Tour and the live album MDNA World Tour; Madonna also released the promo single Broken in 2012, and produced the short film secretprojectrevolution in 2013.)

The catchy Living For Love and Unapologetic Bitch are among the album's strongest tracks, as are the powerful Ghosttown and the autobiographical Rebel Heart. The least successful tracks are those featuring other artists: Nicki Minaj reappears on Bitch I'm Madonna, and Iconic opens with convicted rapist Mike Tyson. (Curiously, the album does not include any liner notes; guest vocalists are credited, though producers and other collaborators are not listed.)

The self-referential Bitch I'm Madonna echoes the final line of MDNA's I Don't Give A ("There's only one queen, and that's Madonna. Bitch!"). S.E.X. clearly evokes the infamous 1992 book Sex, though it feels too much like self-parody. Veni Vidi Vici's lyrics are a collage of titles from previous Madonna tracks ("I expressed myself, came like a virgin down the aisle..."). Holy Water, like 1993's Deeper & Deeper, quotes several lines from Vogue ("Ladies with an attitude...").

Rebel Heart will be available in three versions, each with a different cover: the 'standard' edition (featuring Madonna wearing a red sweater), the 'deluxe' edition (featuring Madonna's face bound with chord), and the 'super deluxe' edition (featuring a red-tinted cover). The standard version contains fourteen tracks: Living For Love, Devil Pray, Ghosttown, Unapologetic Bitch, Illuminati, Bitch I'm Madonna, Hold Tight, Joan Of Arc, Iconic, HeartBreakCity, Body Shop, Holy Water, Inside Out, and Wash All Over Me. (Strangely, this version doesn't include the title track, Rebel Heart.) The standard version is also available in a censored 'clean' edition.

The deluxe version adds five more tracks to the original fourteen: Best Night, Veni Vedi Vici, S.E.X., Messiah, and Rebel Heart. (This is the version released on vinyl.) The super deluxe version contains the original fourteen tracks, the five deluxe tracks, and a further four tracks: Beautiful Scars, Borrowed Time, Addicted, and Graffiti Heart. A bonus track, Auto-Tune Baby, is available in Germany.

Decorative Arts

Decorative Arts From The Middle Ages To The Renaissance: The Complete Plates contains all the illustrations from Kunstewerke & Gerathschaften Des Mittelalters & Der Renaissance, first published in three volumes (1852, 1857, and 1863). Like other Taschen reprints (such as the Atlas Maior), this is a lavish, folio-sized book, with several fold-out pages.

Kunstewerke & Gerathschaften was illustrated with hand-coloured copperplate engravings, many of which were produced by Jakob Heinrich von Hefner-Alteneck. In the original publication, he is listed as co-author alongside Carl Becker; in the introduction to Decorative Arts, Hefner-Alteneck is recognised as the primary author, though strangely Taschen gives Becker sole credit on the cover.

Shortly after the first volume of Kunstewerke & Gerathschaften, Owen Jones pioneered the use of chromolithography with The Grammar Of Ornament. Jones was concerned with ornamental patterns, reproducing isolated details and motifs, though Becker and Hefner-Alteneck focused on decorative artefacts themselves, celebrating them as objects d'art.

Decorative Arts was edited by Carsten-Peter Warncke, co-author of Codices Illustres (reissued as Masterpieces Of Illumination) and a two-volume Picasso monograph. In his introduction, he quotes Becker and Hefner-Alteneck's aim of presenting objects "whether they be everyday or luxury items, for ecclesiastical or secular purposes". This inclusive approach made Kunstewerke & Gerathschaften particularly useful as a survey of applied arts, as it was not limited only to the realms of liturgy or nobility.

Pat Kirkham and Susan Weber's definitive History Of Design begins in 1400, thus there is some overlap with Kunstewerke & Gerathschaften. John Fleming and Hugh Honour's encyclopedic Dictionary Of Decorative Arts covers a wider historical period, as does Judith Williams's glossy Decorative Arts.

Are You Charlie?

A new book published in Japan has reprinted a selection of Charlie Hebdo's most controversial cartoons. The book, Are You Charlie? イスラム・ヘイトか、風刺か, also includes several Mohammed cartoons from Jyllands-Posten. Mohammed's face has been pixelated in each cartoon reprinted in the book, though the cartoons on the cover have been only slightly blurred.

Are You Charlie? includes all of Charlie Hebdo's Mohammed covers (2006, 2011, 2014, and 2015), and its back-page Mohammed cartoons from 2012. Oddly, in the cartoons of Mohammed naked, only his face has been pixelated, while his genitals and buttocks remain uncensored. Also, the pixelation is not entirely successful: two images have been mistakenly pixelated, even though they depict generic Muslim men rather than Mohammed; only the larger of the two Mohammed caricatures on the Charia Hebdo cover has been pixelated; and two covers featuring adverts for La Vie De Mahomet Part 2 have not been pixelated.

Meanwhile, following the attack on Charlie Hebdo's office last month, there has been an attempted assassination of Danish cartoonist Lars Vilks in Copenhagen. A lone gunman fired into a cafe where Vilks was holding a meeting on Sunday morning; one person inside the cafe was killed, though Vilks escaped unharmed. (A previous plot to murder Vilks was uncovered in 2010, and cartoonist Kurt Westergaard's life was also threatened earlier that year. Vilks became a target after he exhibited caricatures of Mohammed as a dog in 2007.)

"C'est dur d'etre aime par des cons"

"C'est dur d'etre aime par des cons", a documentary directed by Daniel Leconte, profiles the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and its staff as they defend themselves against a lawsuit brought by the Grand Mosque of Paris and the Union of French Islamic Organisations. (The magazine was acquitted in 2007, and the BBC programme Bloody Cartoons also covered the trial and its aftermath. Last year, Charlie Hebdo was sued by the Muslim Judicial Defence League.)

The documentary takes its name from a 2006 Charlie Hebdo cover which depicts Mohammed weeping and complaining that "It's hard being loved by idiots". The cover appears in the film, and was even included on its theatrical poster, and Leconte's choice of title immediately dispels any notion of impartiality. (Charlie Hebdo's current issue again features a weeping Mohammed on its cover. The documentary was made before the infamous Charia Hebdo issue, and the terrorist attack on the newspaper last month.)

The film also features the twelve Jyllands-Posten Mohammed caricatures, a front-page France Soir newspaper cartoon commenting on the controversy, preparatory sketches of Mohammed drawn by Jean Cabut and Georges Wolinski, and a cartoon inspired by Kurt Westergaard's drawing of Mohammed with a bomb in his turban. A featurette on the DVD includes a rejected version of the film's poster, depicting a cartoonist stabbed in the back after drawing Mohammed.

International Film Heritage Festival

The International Heritage Film Festival will take place in Bangkok later this month, from 26th February to 6th March. The Festival's theme is Memory!, and it will include screenings of several classic comedy films. All screenings are free.

The opening film, the Georges Melies masterpiece A Trip To The Moon, will be shown on 26th February at Alliance Francaise. (It was previously screened at the 5th World Film Festival of Bangkok, and the restored version was shown at La Fete 2012.) Later screenings include Alexander Mackendrick's Ealing comedy The Ladykillers (27th February, also at Alliance Francaise) and Buster Keaton's The General (1st March, at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya).

Pulp Fiction

Tomorrow, Cinema Winehouse in Bangkok will screen Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, celebrating twenty years since the film was first released. Pulp Fiction is arguably the greatest film of the past four decades, and a landmark of the American independent film movement.

The Art & History Of Globes

The Art & History of Globes, by Sylvia Sumira, features sixty examples of terrestrial and celestial globes, from the earliest extant terrestrial globe (1492) to the Victorian era, including several by the great cartographers Gerardus Mercator and Willem Blaeu (whose son published the Atlas Maior). Most of the globes illustrated are from the British Library, though almost a third are from other collections.

Sumira provides a concise history of globe production, but the cultural history of the globe is not explored. (Globes have been cultural signifiers of power for at least 500 years, as in the 'Armada portrait' of Elizabeth I, James Gillray's 1805 cartoon of Pitt and Napoleon, and Charlie Chaplin's inflatable globe in The Great Dictator.) The book was published in America under the alternative title Globes: 400 Years Of Exploration, Navigation, & Power.

الحياة الجديدة

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has ordered an investigation into the newspaper الحياة الجديدة, after it published a drawing of Mohammed. The cartoon, by Mohammed Saba'aneh, was printed on Sunday. Mohammed is depicted sowing seeds, a metaphor for peace, and the cartoon is perhaps the first modern drawing of Mohammed by a Muslim artist.

In a similar case, the Iranian newspaper Mardom-e Emrooz was closed down last month, after it used the slogan "Je suis Charlie" as a headline. Also, the editor of the Indian newspaper Avadhnama, Shirin Dalvi, was arrested on 28th January, after her newspaper printed Charlie Hebdo's 2006 Mohammed cover on its front page on 17th January. She wrote a front-page apology the following day, though the newspaper was closed down on 19th January.

The contemporary debate surrounding representations of Mohammed began with the publication of a dozen caricatures by Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005. Other newspapers subsequently printed their own Mohammed cartoons: Weekendavisen, France Soir, The Guardian, Philadelphia Daily News, 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 (2006 and 2012).

French newspaper Charlie Hebdo's depictions of Mohammed made global headlines recently, after many of its staff were killed by Islamic terrorists. In 2006, Charlie Hebdo published a cartoon of Mohammed complaining that he is "loved by idiots". Its offices were firebombed in 2011, after it published a Charia Hebdo issue guest-edited by Mohammed. In 2012, it printed a caricature of Mohammed naked. In 2013, it produced a comic-strip biography of Mohammed (part 1, part 2), with an expanded edition in 2014. Last year, it depicted Mohammed being beheaded by an Islamic State terrorist.

El Universo

Today, Ecuador's state media watchdog SuperCom, the Superintendency of Information and Communication, ordered the newspaper El Universo to print an apology for publishing a cartoon by Xavier Bonilla (known as Bonil) that violated an anti-discrimination law. The cartoon, published on 5th August last year, featured two photographs of politician Agustin Delgado, with speech bubbles mocking his stumbling delivery.

Delgado and President Rafael Correa both accused Bonil of racism, though the cartoonist argued that he was commenting on Delgado's political inexperience rather than his African ancestry. Bonil has now been ordered to produce a revised version of the cartoon. El Universo and Bonil were also censured by SuperCom last year, after a previous complaint from Correa.

“Thai democracy is dead...”

The National Legislative Assembly voted today to impeach former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra. She has therefore been banned from political activity for the next five years. (Her brother, former PM Thaksin Shinawatra, also received a five-year ban, in 2007.) The verdict was largely a foregone conclusion, as the NLA members were all appointed by the junta.

Yingluck will also face a criminal investigation, the Attorney General announced today. Yingluck had planned to give a press conference following the impeachment vote, though the military prevented her from doing so. Instead, she issued a statement online: “Even as Thai democracy is dead and the rule of law destroyed, anti-democratic forces still remain prevalent as a destructive force, as evident from what I am experiencing.”

Yingluck’s impeachment had been recommended by the National Anti-Corruption Commission, following its investigation into her controversial rice subsidy scheme. (In 2011, the Pheu Thai government agreed to pay farmers up to 50% above the market rate for their rice, intending to withhold it from the world market and thus drive up the price. The result, however, was that other countries increased their rice exports, leaving the government with vast stockpiles that it could not sell.)

Given that Yingluck was removed from office by the Constitutional Court on 7th May last year, her impeachment eight months later seems designed purely to prevent her from returning to power in future elections. It also, therefore, reinforces the impression that last year’s coup (as in 2006) was intended primarily to remove all traces of Thaksin’s political influence. (Thaksin led the most popular political movement in Thai history, though he was viewed as a threat by the military and the Privy Council, thus his nominees Samak Sundaravej and Somchai Wongsawat were both removed by the Constitutional Court.)

The NACC had also recommended the impeachment of Somsak Kiatsuranon and Nikhom Wairatpanich—former speakers of the House of Representatives and the Senate, respectively—though their impeachments were rejected by the NLA. Somsak and Nikhom had organised parliamentary votes to amend article 117 of the constitution, in an attempt to restore a fully-elected Senate.

(The 1997 constitution established an elected Senate for the first time, though after the military’s 2007 constitution the Senate was only 50% elected; the proposed amendment was rejected by the Constitutional Court.) Ironically, the military violated the constitution by declaring martial law, and then tore up the entire charter when they launched the coup, yet Somsak and Nikhom faced the threat of impeachment for attempting to amend individual articles in parliament.

Yingluck was elected in 2011. Just as Thaksin was deposed following People’s Alliance for Democracy protests, Yingluck was dismissed after protests by the People’s Democratic Reform Committee. In both cases, the protesters caused maximum disruption as a pretext for a coup—the PAD occupied Suvarnabhumi airport in 2008, and the PDRC sabotaged the election in 2014—though no protest leaders have been prosecuted. In Yingluck’s case, the protests began after her attempt to secure an amnesty for Thaksin, a policy that was condemned by both sides of the political divide.

Cartographies Of Time

Cartographies Of Time: A History Of The Timeline, by Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton, is a history of the visual representation of chronological data. This specialised branch of information graphics has not been studied before, as the authors explain: "little has been written about historical charts and diagrams... This book is an attempt to address that gap." The result is a fascinating, comprehensive, and profusely illustrated history of timelines.

The most impressive timelines featured in Cartographies Of Time are those that attempt to represent the entirety of human history. Joseph Priestley's A New Chart Of History (1769) was one of the first significant examples, followed by Friedrich Strass's Strom Der Zeiten (1804). (Sandra Rendgren's Information Graphics includes Eugene Pick's Tableau De L'Histoire Universelle from 1858, one of several timelines inspired by Strass.)

The Book Of Trees

The Book Of Trees: Visualizing Branches Of Knowledge is a history of tree diagrams and their influence on information graphics. Author Manuel Lima begins by discussing figurative tree diagrams, though subsequent chapters cover "a number of visual methods and techniques for the representation of hierarchical structures".

The book is most significant for its inclusion of diagrams created from the Middle Ages onwards. As the author explains, the field of data visualisation has a surprisingly extensive history, and it is therefore "critical for us to understand this long evolution and not be overly infatuated with work created in the last decade alone". (Sandra Rendgen's Information Graphics and Understanding The World focus primarily on contemporary infographics, though Lima includes numerous recent examples, too.)

The Book Of Trees doesn't succeed in its ambitious attempt "to convey the long, millennial history of information visualization", as it would likely be impossible to produce a comprehensive history of 1,000 years of infographics in a single volume. But it's a fascinating study, and a useful expansion of the first chapter of Lima's earlier book, Visual Complexity. (Edward R Tufte's classic The Visual Display Of Quantitative Information examines the history of charts, tables, and graphs.)

Mardom-e Emrooz

An Iranian newspaper has been closed down after it expressed support for Charlie Hebdo, the French newspaper which suffered a terrorist attack earlier this month. On 13th January, Mardom-e Emrooz published the back-page headline (in Arabic) "I am Charlie, too". A court in Tehran this weekend revoked the newspaper's publishing licence, ruling that expressing solidarity with Charlie Hebdo, which has printed a new Mohammed cartoon, was unacceptable in an Islamic country.

Understanding The World

Understanding The World: The Atlas Of Infographics, written by Sandra Rendgen and edited by Julius Wiedemann, is a somewhat premature sequel to the excellent Information Graphics. Like that earlier book, also published by Taschen, Understanding The World features a new infographic by Nigel Holmes, a historical introduction by Rendgen, and an extensive selection of contemporary infographics organised by category. Both books are folios with brightly colour-coded chapters, and they share the same high-quality colour reproduction and print clarity.

There are several differences between the two books. Nigel Holmes's contribution to Understanding The World is a double-page infographic, though he produced a poster for Information Graphics. Understanding The World is organised thematically (nature, science, economy, society, and culture), whereas Information Graphics was classified by format. While Information Graphics cited the sources in which its infographics first appeared, Understanding The World sometimes omits these citations.

Most significantly, Understanding The World's historical introduction is substantially shorter than that of Information Graphics. The few examples it cites are well chosen, though: Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle, Abraham Ortelius's Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (from which a world map is reproduced), and Denis Diderot's Encyclopedie.

As in Information Graphics, the historical examples remain the highlights of Understanding The World. These hand-drawn maps and diagrams were created hundreds of years before the computer-generated contemporary examples that dominate the book. (Fortunately, there are a few additional historical examples inserted into each chapter.) From the portfolio of recent infographics, one of the most interesting is Noah Smith's timeline Pulp Fiction In Chronological Order, a deconstruction of the film's convoluted narrative.

Charlie Hebdo

The French newspaper Charlie Hebdo published a new edition today, just a week after Islamic extremists killed twelve people at its editorial offices in Paris. The murders led to international condemnations of religious terrorism, and a collective commitment to freedom of expression. French President Francois Hollande led over a million people in Paris on Sunday, marching in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo and the victims of the killings.

In an act of extreme defiance and principle, today's edition features a new front-page cartoon of Mohammed, by Renald Luzier (known as Luz). The prophet is depicted weeping, as he was on Charlie Hebdo's first Mohammed cover in 2006. He is shown holding a "Je suis Charlie" banner, which has become a symbol of support for the newspaper since last week's attack. Luz also caricatured Mohammed in Liberation in 2011.

The new cover appeared yesterday in several newspapers, including The Independent in the UK, Liberation in France, Sueddeutsche Zeitung in Germany, Corriere Della Sera in Italy, The Star in Kenya, and the New York Post. The cover filled the entire front page of Germany's Die Tageszeitung yesterday, and a collage of covers fills the front page of todays Liberation. It also appears in The Citizen (South Africa) today. In Japan, The Tokyo Shimbun printed the cover yesterday and again today. Turkish newspaper Cuhmuriyet published the cover twice in today's issue.

Today's issue of Le Monde has a front-page cartoon by Jean Plantureux (known as Plantu), showing Catholic, Muslim, and Jewish men all enjoying the new Charlie Hebdo. (Plantu previously drew a Mohammed cartoon for Le Monde in 2006, after the Jyllands-Posten controversy.) This week's issue of the French magazine Les Inrockuptibles, published today, has a new Mohammed cartoon on its front page, drawn by Charles Berberian.

Charlie Hebdo's offices were firebombed in 2011, after it published the Charia Hebdo issue guest-edited by Mohammed. In 2012, it printed a caricature of Mohammed naked. In 2013, it produced a comic-strip biography of Mohammed titled La Vie De Mahomet (part 1 and part 2), with an expanded edition in 2014. Last year, it published a front-page cartoon of Mohammed being beheaded by an Islamic State terrorist.

At the beginning of the century, depictions of Mohammed were not considered problematic: the South Park episode Super Best Friends and the cartoon What Would Mohammed Drive? did not cause significant controversy. However, the publication of a dozen Mohammed caricatures by Jyllands-Posten in 2005 sparked protests around the world. After this, subsequent appearances of Mohammed in South Park (in 2006 and 2010) were censored, leading to the Everybody Draw Mohammed Day! campaign.

Following the Jyllands-Posten controversy, many newspapers printed their own Mohammed cartoons: Weekendavisen, France Soir, The Guardian, Philadelphia Daily News, Liberation, Het Nieuwsblad, The Daily Tar Heel, Akron Beacon Journal, The Strand, Nana, Gorodskiye Vesti, Adresseavisen, Uke-Adressa, and Harper's. The International Herald Tribune has depicted Mohammed twice, in 2006 and 2012.

Le Point

The current issue of French magazine Le Point, published yesterday, contains an illustration of Moahmmed on its front cover. The cover story, La Vraie Vie De Mahomet, is a historical account of Mohammed's life, illustrated with numerous paintings of the prophet, in most (though not all) of which his face has been obscured in accordance with Islamic tradition.

Le Point's article is its response to the killing of several Charlie Hebdo staff this week. Charlie Hebdo published its own Mohammed biography, the irreverent La Vie De Mahomet in 2013 (part 1, part 2), with an expanded edition in 2014. Another French magazine, L'Express, printed historical images of Mohammed's face in 2008 and 2011.

Charlie Hebdo

Twelve people were shot dead on Wednesday in Paris, at the offices of the satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The newspaper's editor, Stephane Charbonnier (known as Charb), was among those who died. Several cartoonists, including Jean Cabut (known as Cabu), were also killed.

This is possibly the most violent attack ever committed against a media organisation. The killers were Islamic extremists, and Charlie Hebdo is notorious for its provocative caricatures of Mohammed. Last year, the newspaper was sued for blasphemy, and its offices were firebombed in 2011 after its Charia Hebdo edition. (The German newspaper Berliner Kurier yesterday featured a new cartoon of Muhammed in a bath of blood, holding a copy of Charia Hebdo.)

Charlie Hebdo published its first Mohammed cartoon in 2002. This was followed by a front-page Mohammed caricature in 2006, one of many Mohammed cartoons printed in Europe after the Jyllands-Posten controversy. In 2012, it printed a cartoon of Mohammed naked. In 2013, it produced a comic-book biography of Mohammed (La Vie De Mahomet, part 1 and part 2), with an expanded edition in 2014. Most recently, its 1st October 2014 edition featured a highly provocative front-page cartoon by Charb depicting an Islamic State terrorist beheading Mohammed.

Banned Month

Bangkok's Jam Cafe is hosting a Banned season this month, as part of its regular Cult Move Night event. The season begins tonight with a screening of Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust, the notoriously violent 'video nasty' that inspired the film-within-a-film horror sub-genre. (Previous Cult Movie Night seasons have included Doppelganger Month, American Independent Month, Anime Month, 'So Bad It's Good' Month, Philip Seymour Hoffman Month, and Noir Month.)

The Governance of China

The Governance of China (translated from the Chinese 谈治国理政) is an anthology of public statements by Chinese President Xi Jinping. The first entry is Xi’s acceptance speech following his appointment as General Secretary of the Communist Party in November 2012. The book also includes photographs of Xi, one of which, showing the President holding an umbrella, has since been appropriated by pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.

Most of the book’s texts are speeches delivered by Xi, or diplomatic correspondence signed by him. The only exception, from Rossiya-1 television, is a softball interview with Xi: it was broadcast in Russia (China’s main ally), and Xi’s answers are extended monologues (with no interruptions from the interviewer). In what could almost be a parody of obsequious questioning (p. 113), the presenter asks: “How do you feel as the leader of such a big country? What hobbies do you have? What are your favourite sports?”

Internationally, Xi’s most famous remarks are from a January 2012 anti-corruption speech: “We should continue to catch “tigers” as well as “flies” when dealing with cases of leading officials in violation of Party discipline” (p. 429). The most notorious ‘tiger’, Xi’s potential rival Bo Xilai, is currently serving a life sentence.

Ultimately, The Governance of China is a propaganda exercise. It concludes with an overtly hagiographic Xi biography: “Xi is a man of compassion” (p. 482); “Xi regularly shows a strong sense of responsibility towards the future of the nation” (p. 483); “A dutiful son, Xi often strolls and chats with his mother” (p. 494).

Broken

In 2012, Madonna released a limited edition gatefold 12" single, Broken, which is available only to members of her Icon fan club. The pink vinyl record features an extended remix of Broken, which is a previously unreleased non-album track. Previously, Icon members were able to download the exclusive Confessions On A Dance Floor bonus track Superpop.

Dateline Bangkok

2015 will be Dateline Bangkok’s tenth year online. Over the past decade, Thailand has undergone one of the most volatile periods in its political history, with military coups in 2006 and 2014. On the other hand, cultural highlights have included Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (ลุงบุญมีระลึกชาติ) winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010.

The Interview

The release of the new film The Interview has been cancelled indefinitely by its studio, Sony Pictures. Sony had its computer system hacked earlier this month by a group known as the Guardians of Peace. The sophisticated hacking operation was apparently a response to Sony's planned release of The Interview, which was scheduled to open on Christmas Day.

The Interview is a comedy directed by Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogan, starring Rogan and James Franco as journalists who assassinate the President of North Korea, Kim Jong-Un. Its premiere was held in Los Angeles on 11th December, though all subsequent showings were cancelled after the hackers warned cinemas not to screen it. The major American cinema chains all pulled out of plans to show it, and Sony announced today that it would not be released in any form.

Kim's death scene, in which his helicopter is hit by a missile and his head is engulfed in flames, had already been significantly toned down before the film's premiere. Exceptionally, Sony Corp. CEO Kazuo Hirai personally approved the modifications to the scene, insisting that images of exploding flesh and skull fragments should be reduced. Hirai also stipulated that the entire death sequence should be removed from all international prints, and included only in the domestic American version.

Sony's decision to shelve the film entirely is almost unprecedented. It's especially surprising as Kim Jong-Un's father and predecessor, Kim Jong-Il, was ridiculed and assassinated in the puppet comedy Team America: World Police (2004). In that film, Kim was impaled on a spike, and after his death a cockroach crawled out from his mouth. A fictional assassination of American President George W Bush has also been filmed, in the Channel 4 drama Death Of A President (2006).

Gone With The Wind: A Legacy

Gone With The Wind has been the subject of two recent BBC radio documentaries. Gone With The Wind: A Legacy, part of Radio 4's Archive On 4 series, was broadcast on 14th December. An episode of the World Service's Witness series, about the film's Atlanta premiere, was broadcast yesterday.

Both documentaries are largely based on interviews with several Gone With The Wind cast and crew members, recorded by Barbra Paskin in 1981. Paskin herself presented the short Witness episode, though the longer Archive On 4 programme was hosted by Diane Roberts. The documentaries don't include any dialogue clips from the film, presumably for copyright reasons. Like Steve Wilson's book The Making Of Gone With The Wind, they mark the film's seventy-fifth anniversary.

The Jakarta Post

The editor of The Jakarta Post, Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, is facing a blasphemy trial in Indonesia, after his newspaper published a cartoon by Stephane Peray (known as Stephff) satirising the Islamic State terrorist group. Suryodiningrat could be jailed for up to five years if he is found guilty.

The cartoon, published on page seven on 3rd July, depicts an armed man raising a skull-and-crossbones flag bearing the words "There is no God but Allah" in Arabic. This slogan forms part of the Islamic shahada, which has been used on black flags by various Islamic terrorist groups including IS. (This year, IS has beheaded several Western hostages on video, echoing the actions of Al Qaeda in 2004.)

The editor issued an apology for the cartoon five days later, in a front-page editorial: "We sincerely apologize for and retract the editorial cartoon... The cartoon contained religious symbolism that may have been offensive. The Post regrets the error in judgment, which was in no way meant to malign or be disrespectful of any religion."

Art In Time

Art In Time: A World History Of Styles & Movements, edited by Tom Melick, is a history of art in reverse chronological order, from the present to the past. It's published by Phaidon, which also published The Art Museum, The Art Book, The 20th Century Art Book, Design Classics, The Design Book, and the Themes & Movements series.

150 'isms' or artistic styles are included, each in an individual chapter. There are 600 illustrations, including most major works (though not Leonardo's Mona Lisa or Last Supper). Only a handful of the illustrations are full-page, though they're well chosen (Michaelangelo's David; Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon; Monet's Impression, Sunrise; Richard Hamilton's Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?).

The book's scope extends beyond the Western canon, to include art movements from India, China, Japan, and Africa. It also features lesser-known Western isms, such as Luminism and Photo-Secessionism. Due to its proliferation of isms, modern art receives significantly more coverage than other eras: the twentieth century spans almost 200 pages, for example, while Classical art is summarised in less than ten pages. Each chapter begins with a single-page essay, though this uniformity also seems disproportionate: the 300-year Hellenistic era receives the same space as the Young British Artists, for instance.

There are numerous other guides to art isms, including Understanding Art (by Stephen Little) and Understanding Modern Art (by Sam Phillips). Styles, Schools, & Movements (by Amy Dempsey) is particularly useful, with its mini bibliographies and comprehensive coverage of art trends since Impressionism. Art In Time has no references, though it covers a wider time period, from Classical art onwards.

The central concept of the book - placing each art movement within a historical context - isn't really effective, but fortunately it's not important anyway. Each chapter is accompanied by a timeline of key events, though they overlap rather confusingly, and there's no real attempt to make any historical connections in the essays themselves. Disregarding the 'art in time' concept, though, the book works very well as a clear and systematic introduction to the history of art.

"We are badly in needof a mad computer expert..."

Recently, the British Film Institute has published three letters written by Stanley Kubrick during the pre-production of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The current issue of the BFI's Sight & Sound magazine includes a letter from Kubrick to David Robinson dated 9th April 1966. This week, the BFI posted two Kubrick letters on its website, both from the Kubrick Archive: one to Roger Caras dated 22nd September 1965, and one to Arthur C Clarke dated 31 March 1964.

Extracts from the Clarke letter ("the proverbial "really good" science-fiction movie") have been quoted extensively, and a draft of the letter is currently included in the exhibition They Used To Call It The Moon at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, UK. The exhibition opened on 31st October, and will close on 15th January 2015. (A 1975 letter from Kubrick to cinema projectionists was previously published online; I have a circa 1978 Kubrick Christmas card.)