Thailand’s Political History:From the 13th Century to Recent Times

The second edition of Thailand’s Political History, by B.J. Terwiel, was published in 2011 with a new subtitle (From the 13th Century to Recent Times). This edition contains new chapters on Thailand’s political origins (the Sukhothai era) and contemporary events (the People’s Alliance for Democracy protests, the nullification of the 2006 election, the 2006 coup, the disqualification of Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, the dissolutions Thai Rak Thai and the People Power Party, the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship riots, the red-shirt protests, and the 2010 military massacre).

Terwiel, who has been writing about Thai history for forty years, takes a refreshingly skeptical view of the nationalistic accounts of early Thai history, which he calls “national myths.” For example, he compares six different accounts of King Naresuan’s elephant duel. While the objective truth remains lost in the mists of time, recognising that these events are open to multiple interpretations is significant in itself: “It is doubtful whether anyone will unravel the details of this battle in a decisive way. Suffice to say that The Royal Chronicle version, which has had a monopoly in Thai history writing, is only one version among many.”

The Nation

Myanmar Pongpipat, a Thai mining company, has filed a defamation lawsuit against The Nation and one of its journalists, Pratch Rujivanarom. The newspaper published an article by Pratch on 1st March (headlined “Thai mine ‘destroyed Myanmar water sources’”), quoting local residents who claim that the company’s Heinda tin mine has polluted the Myaung Pyo River in Myanmar.

The article appeared to endorse the claims, which it presented as facts rather than allegations: “Tailings from the mine have drained directly into the river for many years, clogging it with a large amount of sediment and contaminating the village’s water sources with heavy metals from the mine.” Also, it didn’t include a statement from the mining company, and there is no indication that the journalist even contacted the company before publication.

The Bangkok Post newspaper’s Spectrum supplement ran a cover story on the mine on 19th March. The Spectrum article also quoted residents complaining about the mine’s impact, though unlike The Nation it distanced itself from the claims, treating them as allegations rather than facts. Also in contrast to The Nation, Spectrum included a lengthy statement from the MPC managing director, who “rejected accusations that the company had caused the water contamination.”

The company’s lawsuit against Pratch and The Nation accuses them of defamation and violation of the Computer Crime Act, as the article was also published on the newspaper’s website. (Defamation, like lèse-majesté, is a criminal offence in Thailand.) Last year, the Tungkum mining company lost a defamation case against Thai PBS for reporting that a mine had caused water pollution in Loei, Thailand.

Alien: Covenant

Alien: Covenant is Ridley Scott's sequel to Prometheus, and both films are prequels to Scott's original classic, Alien. After a prologue featuring Guy Pearce minus his old-age Prometheus make-up, Covenant has more in common with the original Alien, to the extent that it feels like a retread of the earlier film. (It also has references to Scott's Blade Runner, including the line "That's the spirit!" used in similar circumstances, and alien POV shots inspired by It Came From Outer Space.)

Covenant's action takes place several years before Alien's storyline, though Alien really needs to be seen first, not for narrative reasons but to fully appreciate the original 'chestburster' sequence. In that respect, Prometheus and Covenant are similar to the (inferior) Star Wars prequels: they provide convoluted and largely unnecessary backstories, they depict 'older' worlds that paradoxically seem more advanced, and they disclose the plot twists in the earlier films.

Covenant's final revelation, involving Michael Fassbender's two characters, was far too predictable. (Revealing it to the audience sooner would have led to more Hitchcockian suspense.) Covenant benefits from Scott's typically superb production design and cinematography, though ultimately it's Alien without the tension or (Fassbender excluded) the depth of character.

Are We There Yet?

Sompot Chidgasornpongse's short film Diseases & A Hundred Year Period will be screened at Dam'n Cineclub in Bangkok, a new film venue co-founded by Nontawat Numbenchapol (director of Boundary) and Abichon Rattanabhayon. The event, titled Are We There Yet?, will be held tomorrow. Sompot's film was previously shown at the 12th Thai Short Film and Video Festival, โปรแกรมหนังสั้นไทยคัดสรร, and Six Degrees of Separation.

The Art Of The Hollywood Backdrop

The Art Of The Hollywood Backdrop, by Richard M Isackes and Karen L Maness, is a history of Hollywood studio backdrops (scenic trompe l'oeil backgrounds). There have been a few books on related aspects of filmmaking, such as matte paintings (The Invisible Art, by Mark Cotta Vaz and Craig Barron) and production design (Caligari's Cabinet & Other Grand Illusions, by Leon Barsacq; and Designs On Film, by Cathy Whitlock), though this "DEFINITIVE HISTORY" (as the back cover justifiably proclaims) is the first survey of film backdrops.

Whereas theatrical backdrops are often stylised, cinematic backings are (like matte paintings) designed to deceive the audience: to create a realistic 2D simulation of a 3D environment. As the authors explain, "backings created for the movies of Hollywood were rarely recognized for what they were - nor was that their purpose. These special effect backings, the largest paintings ever created, were breathtaking in their artistic and technical virtuosity."

Aside from double-page photographs of Georges Melies and Fritz Lang, The Art Of The Hollywood Backdrop is devoted entirely to films from the American studio system. A 100-page introduction traces the history of the Hollywood backdrop, and subsequent chapters profile individual backdrop artists. This is a substantial and comprehensive book, lavishly presented in a slipcase. It has 300 illustrations, many of which are stunning full-page photographs (though twenty-eight pages on Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events is perhaps excessive).

Puppetry: A World History

Puppetry: A World History, written by Eileen Blumenthal and published by Abrams, is the first comprehensive global survey of puppetry. It includes more than 300 photographs, and features puppetry as tribal ritual (African fertility dolls), children's entertainment (Punch and Judy; Kermit the Frog), and even political satire (Spitting Image). The book was published in the UK by Thames & Hudson, under the alternative title Puppetry & Puppets: An Illustrated World Survey. It includes an excellent annotated bibliography.

Blumenthal writes in her preface: "Puppetry: A World History encompasses all kinds of constructed actors and performing objects from all times and all places. Given this gigantic scope, the default methodology would have been to sort the material by genre, time, or place - particularly since no other existing study does that job." She argues, however, that the shared functions and aesthetics of puppetry around the world lend themselves to a thematic survey rather than a chronological history.

The Meaning Of Life

Irish police have announced that they are investigating a complaint of blasphemy in relation to comments made by Stephen Fry in a television interview. The interview, for an episode of The Meaning Of Life, was broadcast by RTE One on 1st February 2015.

In the programme, presenter Gay Byrne asked Fry what he would say to God if there was an afterlife. Fry, who has been a life-long atheist, didn't mince his words: "I'll say, 'Bone cancer in Children? What's that about? How dare you! How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault. It's not right, it's utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?'"

Irish law states that anyone who intentionally "publishes or utters blasphemous matter" is guilty of criminal defamation. The 2009 Defamation Act defines "blasphemous matter" as "grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion," though there are exemptions for content of "literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic value".

The law of blasphemy was abolished in the UK in 2008. Famously, the editor of Gay News was prosecuted for blasphemous libel after he published James Kirkup's poem The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name on 3rd June 1976. Extracts from the poem subsequently appeared in Socialist Challenge magazine (14th July 1977); Gay Left magazine (Winter 1977); The Observer newspaper (17th July 1977); Geoffrey Robertson's memoir, The Justice Game (1998); Bound & Gagged, a history of obscenity by Alan Travis (2000); A Voyage Round John Mortimer (2007) by Valerie Grove; the Channel 4 documentary The Secret Life of Brian (1st January 2007); and an episode of Joan Bakewell's TV series Taboo (12th December 2001).

“Delete the picture...”

A commemorative plaque has been removed from its position in Bangkok’s Royal Plaza. The brass plaque commemorated Thailand’s transition from absolute to constitutional monarchy in 1932, and was a symbol of the country’s democratic revolution. It has now been replaced by a new plaque with an inscription promoting prosperity and happiness.

The original plaque was installed in 1936, next to a statue of King Rama V. Apart from a hiatus from 1960 to 1963, it had remained in place until approximately one month ago, when it was removed by persons unknown. The plaque’s current whereabouts, and the reason for its replacement, have not been revealed. According to the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority, CCTV cameras in the area were not operational when the plaque was removed.

Early last month, the plaque’s removal generated plenty of critical comments on social media. However, that debate has since died down, as the military government has discouraged any commentary on the issue. A panel discussion on the subject, which had been due to take place at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand last night, was cancelled by the police.

Even a month after the replacement, a policeman still stands guard near the new plaque, to prevent photography. Today, the police officer was friendly, yet insistent: “You can delete? Delete. Delete. Delete! Delete the picture! OK, you delete.”

German Film Week 2017

The fifth annual German Film Week will take place from 23rd to 28th May at Paragon Cineplex. Organised by the Goethe Institut, it includes a screening of Fritz Lang's classic M, starring Peter Lorre, on 25th May. M will also be shown on 3rd June at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya, near Bangkok.

Veep

Veep, created by Armando Iannucci, stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus as US Vice-President (and subsequently President) Selina Meyer. The fifth season of the sitcom, released on DVD last month, includes an episode titled C**tgate, in which a White House staff-member causes a minor scandal by calling Meyer the c-word.

C**tgate (a pun on Watergate) was broadcast by HBO on 29th May 2016. It was co-written by Will Smith, who presented The C Word (2007), a documentary about the word 'cunt'. In the DVD audio commentary for the episode, director Brad Hall says: "I have a feeling this particular episode is going to set a record for the amount of times the word 'cunt' has been said in an audio commentary!"

The plot of the episode, with Meyer trying to identify the person who called her a cunt, is similar to an episode of 30 Rock (2007), in which the main character overheard one of her staff calling her the same word. Iannucci's UK series The Thick Of It (2005) also included a similar plot device in one episode, with an investigation into which staff-member called another a cunt in an email.

Polish Arts & Culture Week

Polish Arts & Culture Week, which began on 23rd April and finishes tomorrow, will include a screening of Francis Coppola's classic Apocalypse Now today at BACC. The film was inspired by Heart Of Darkness, a novella by Polish writer Joseph Conrad.

Czech New Wave Month II

Bangkok's Jam Cafe will host its second Czech New Wave season next month. The opening film, on 3rd May, will be Jiri Menzel's superb Closely Observed Trains (previously shown during the 5th World Film Festival of Bangkok, at a screening introduced by the director himself). Czech New Wave Month II concludes on 31st May with Milos Forman's The Firemen's Ball.

Jam's first Czech New Wave Month took place in November 2016. Jam's previous seasons have included Derek Jarman Month, Seduction Month, Dreams Month, Forking Paths Month, Resizing Month, Banned Month, Doppelganger Month, American Independent Month, Anime Month, 'So Bad It's Good' Month, Philip Seymour Hoffman Month, and Noir Month.

Tears of the Black Tiger

Next month, Bangkok Screening Room will be showing Wisit Sasanatieng’s debut film, Tears of the Black Tiger (ฟ้าทะลายโจร). A combination of Italian ‘spaghetti western’ and Thai lakorn melodrama, it has become a cult classic due to its uniquely over-saturated colour palette. It was also one of the first films of the Thai New Wave of the 1990s. It will be playing at Bangkok Screening Room on 10th, 11th, 13th, 14th, 16th, 18th, 20th, 21st, and 24th May.

"Here's why they go ape at Ross"

Kelvin MacKenzie, columnist for The Sun newspaper, has been suspended following complaints about his description of Everton footballer Ross Barkley. The article has been deleted from The Sun's website. In the column, published on 14th April (and headlined "Here's why they go ape at Ross"), MacKenzie compared Barkley to a gorilla: "There is something about the lack of reflection in his eyes which makes me certain not only are the lights not on, there is definitely nobody at home. I get a similar feeling when seeing a gorilla at the zoo. The physique is magnificent but it's the eyes that tell the story."

The Mayor of Liverpool has accused MacKenzie of racism, a charge now being investigated by Merseyside police. MacKenzie is a notorious controversialist, and his deliberately provocative comments often generate criticism. MacKenzie was editor of The Sun throughout the 1980s, during which time it published numerous homophobic and xenophobic editorials. MacKenzie and The Sun have particularly low reputations in Liverpool, as he was the newspaper's editor when it blamed Liverpool FC fans for the Hillsborough stadium disaster in 1989.

“We apologise to Mrs Trump...”

The Daily Mail newspaper has paid damages to Melania Trump, the US First Lady, in settlement of a lawsuit she filed last year. The damages are undisclosed, though the total settlement paid by the Mail is rumoured to be $3 million—a large sum by UK libel standards, though less than the $150 million originally sought by Trump’s lawyer, Charles Harder (who had previously sued the gossip website Gawker into bankruptcy).

Trump sued the Mail over an article it published on 20th August last year, headlined “Racy photos and troubling questions about his wife’s past that could derail Trump”. The article, written by Natalie Clarke, discussed allegations that Melania Trump’s former modelling agency had provided escort services, and suggested that she had worked as an escort. The Mail quoted the owner of the modelling agency denying the story, though this was overshadowed by the insinuations in the headline.

After Trump filed her lawsuit, the Mail went to unusual lengths to remove all traces of the article online, including having it deleted from Google’s cache and the PressReader digital archive. The Mail also printed a lengthy response to the lawsuit on 2nd September last year, though this repeated the claims in the process of retracting them: “To the extent that anything in our article was interpreted as stating or suggesting that Mrs Trump worked as an ‘escort’ or in the ‘sex business’... it is hereby retracted, and we regret any such misinterpretation.”

Following the settlement of the case yesterday, the Mail printed an apology on p. 9 of today’s paper. This time, it did not repeat the claims, instead referring euphemistically to “allegations that she provided services beyond simply modelling.” The statement also included an unequivocal retraction and apology: “We accept that these allegations about Mrs Trump are not true and we retract and withdraw them. We apologise to Mrs Trump for any distress that our publication caused her.”

The settlement paid to Melania Trump is one of the largest in any UK defamation case. Previous record-breaking pay-outs all date from the 1980s. Sonia Sutcliffe, wife of the serial killer known as the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’, won £600,000 in damages after Private Eye accused her of profiting from her husband’s notoriety. (On 30th January 1981, the magazine alleged that she “made a deal with the Mail worth £250,000”; after losing the case, editor Ian Hislop said: “If that’s justice, I’m a banana.”) On 1st November 1986, the Daily Star claimed that Jeffrey Archer had been a client of prostitute Monica Coughlan. Archer was awarded £500,000 in damages, though he paid it back, plus costs, after he was convicted of perjury in 2002. On 25th February 1987, The Sun claimed that ““Elton John is at the center of a shocking drugs and vice scandal involving teen-age ‘rent boys’,”, the first of a strong of defamatory articles about him. John filed seventeen libel writs, and the newspaper settled out of court for £1 million. Toby Low was awarded £1.5 million in damages in 1989 after suing author Nikolai Tolstoi over allegations in the book The Minister and the Massacres.

500 Must-See Movies

Total Film magazine has published a new film list it describes as "the essential selection every film fan should watch". 500 Must-See Movies is divided into five genres: comedies, thrillers, action, horror, and sci-fi. Three of the individual genre lists have been published previously as Total Film magazine supplements: science-fiction and fantasy (Summer 2016, issue 247), thrillers (August 2016, issue 248), and comedies (September 2016, issue 249).

Only five genres are represented, though films from excluded genres such as musicals, westerns, and animation have not been omitted. Instead, they have been reclassified: Singin' In The Rain appears in the comedies section, Snow White becomes science-fiction, The Searchers is designated an action movie, and Citizen Kane is apparently a thriller.

Other lists of 500 films include Empire magazine's The 500 Greatest Movies Of All Time (2008) and The Telegraph newspaper's 500 Must-See Films (2013). (I've also compiled my own list of 500 Classic Films.) Total Film's previous film lists are: The 100 Greatest Movies Of All Time (2005), The Top 100 Movies Of All Time (2006), The 67 Most Influential Films Ever Made (2009), and 100 Greatest Movies (2010).

Broken Vows

UK politician Nick Brown is suing author Tom Bower over a sentence in Bower's biography of former Prime Minister Tony Blair. Bower's book, Broken Vows (2016), includes a reference to Brown's relationship with another man: "Nick Brown, the new minister of agriculture, was accused by the News of the World of paying £100 to rent boys in order to be kicked around a room, and admitted his sexuality."

Bower's description of Brown being "kicked around a room" was presumably based on Alastair Campbell's book Power & The People (2011), the second volume of his political diary. Campbell wrote that the News Of The World newspaper gave him advance notice of the story it was planning to run on Brown's private life: "They said they had the confession of a self-confessed rent boy who had been paid £100 a time to beat up Nick and kick him around a room." Campbell's diary includes denials from Brown about the beating, kicking, and payment, making clear that they are untrue.

In its article (published in 1998), the News Of The World also included Brown's denials, and made no reference to the unsubstantiated beating or kicking claim. However, Bower's book does not include any denials; it also distorts the facts (using the plural "rent boys") and implies Brown's guilt (noting that he "admitted" his sexuality). Bower misrepresents the issue by reducing it to a single sentence, and an earlier edition of Campbell's diary, The Blair Years (2007), was similarly misleading: "The News of the World had apparently trapped Nick Brown with rent boys".

Orbit Festival

A nightclub manager has been arrested in Tunisia after a DJ included a sample of the Islamic call to prayer as part of his set at the Orbit Festival. The nightclub, El Guitoune in the town of Hammamet, has been closed down by the local authorities.

Dax J, a techno DJ based in Berlin, was one of the headliners on 31st March, the opening night of the two-day event. The call to prayer, which begins with the expression "Allahu akbar" ("God is great"), was also featured on the single Metal Hammer (1990) by And One.

[Quotations from the Koran have previously caused controversy when they have appeared out of context in non-Islamic songs. Tapha Niang by Toumani Diabate; Arab Money by Busta Rhymes; Maya by Joey Boy; Ana Yousef, Ya Abi by Marcel Khalife; and Noor-Un-Ala by MF Hussain all feature extracts from the Koran.]

Wood

Wood, by William Hall, is an international survey of wooden architecture, published by Phaidon. Like his previous books - Concrete and Brick - it has an embossed dust jacket, full-page photographs with extended captions, and chapters themed according to concepts such as form, light, and scale.

The book includes buildings dating from the Middle Ages, though the emphasis is on modern and contemporary architecture. Most of the 170 examples are wooden structures, though there are a few exceptions, including some bamboo buildings and wooden facades.

Architecture In Wood is more comprehensive than Wood, though its photographs were all taken by its author, Will Pryce. Hall's book, on the other hand, features images from various sources. Wood: The World Of Woodwork & Carving, by Bryan Sentance, is a guide to wood as a medium for art, craft, and design.

Book From The Ground

Book From The Ground: From Point To Point, by Xu Bing, is a novella composed entirely of emoji, pictograms, logos, and other symbols (including 7x8mm reproductions of Marcel Duchamp's Fountain). Though there have been previous translations of texts into emoji, this is the first example of original fiction in emoji form.

The book contains no text (except on the back cover), and punctuation marks are its only concession to conventional typography. The concept is original and fascinating, though the potential for emoji as literature seems limited. The first wordless novels, with narratives depicted in Expressionist woodcuts, were created by Frans Masereel after World War I.

The Osamu Tezuka Story

The Osamu Tezuka Story, by Toshio Ban, was originally published in Japanese (手塚治虫物語) from 1989 to 1992 as a weekly serial in Asahi Shimbun magazine. Last year, it was translated into English for the first time, by Frederik L Schodt, who introduced manga to Western readers with his excellent Manga! Manga! and wrote the introduction to Manga Kamishibai. (Schodt's The Astro Boy Essays and Helen McCarthy's The Art Of Osamu Tezuka are among the few English-language surveys of Tezuka's life and work.)

As Schodt explains in his introduction, "Tezuka was the main force in the creation of the long-arc, story manga format... and in 1963, by animating his own Astro Boy manga for television, he also created the framework for Japan's entire modern manga-anime". He also notes that, in Japan, Tezuka is known as "manga no kami-sama" ("God of Manga"). In Cartoons, Giannalberto Bendazzi calls Tezuka "the 'God of comic-strips'." In The World Encyclopedia Of Comics, Maurice Horn calls him the "King of Japanese Comics".

At more than 900 pages, The Osamu Tezuka Story is a comprehensive biography of Tezuka in manga form. One of Tezuka's recurring characters, the mustachioed Higeoyaji, appears as a narrator. Interestingly, excerpts from Stanley Kubrick's 1965 letter to Tezuka are included, translated from Tezuka's autobiography, Baku Wa Mangaka. There is an invaluable appendix listing the Japanese titles of Tezuka's manga and anime works.

Schodt writes that, although the book "could have turned out to be a crude hagiography - a biography depicting Tezuka in only a heroic light", it offers instead "a realistic portrait of a very complex and unique individual." However, because it's an official Tezuka Productions release, created as a posthumous tribute to Tezuka, an element of hagiography is unavoidable.

The translation of The Osamu Tezuka Story (unlike the Astro Boy Omnibus series, Schodt's translation of Tezuka's Mighty Atom) preserves the original Japanese format, without the Westernised 'flopping' (left-to-right conversion) of some manga translations: "Pages and panels are read in Japanese order from right-to-left, but text in word balloons is read from left-to-right. And "sound effects," especially when part of the original art work, are often left as-is, with unobtrusive translations."

Cat People

Cat People, directed by Jacques Tourneur in 1942, was the first in a cycle of atmospheric horror films produced for RKO by Val Lewton. The studio had recently cancelled its contract with Orson Welles - after releasing his first two films, Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons - and was looking for a commercial horror vehicle to compete with Universal's cycle of monster films (Frankenstein, Dracula, etc.).

The result is a suspenseful B-movie about Irena, a sexually repressed woman who transforms into a panther when she experiences arousal or jealousy. (Almost fifty years later, Michael Jackson transformed into a panther in his Black Or White music video.) The film begins with a meet-cute at the zoo, and compresses the couple's courtship and marriage into a few hurried minutes. Irena's husband, Oliver, is impossibly patient despite her rejection of any intimate contact. Eventually, and more realistically, he falls for his co-worker, Alice, who describes herself as "the new type of other woman" and is the film's only truly likeable character.

The film's Expressionistic lighting is by Nicholas Musuraca, who also photographed the film noir classics Out Of The Past (directed by Tourneur) and Stranger On The Third Floor. There are several striking visual moments: Irena scratching a sofa with her claw-like nails, Oliver in silhouette holding a T-square as a crucifix, and Irena's face under a psychiatrist's spotlight. The sound design is also impressive, especially the use of silence and subtle animal noises. These elements are all combined in the film's most effective sequence, when shadows on the wall and a growling panther frighten Alice in a swimming pool.

Cat People has interesting connections to a couple of other films of the period: it utilises the staircase set from The Magnificent Ambersons, and it was parodied in The Bad & The Beautiful, with Lewton as the model for the Jonathan Shields character. Kim Newman wrote a BFI Film Classics monograph on Cat People in 2001: "each viewing has revealed some new aspect, some unnoticed detail carefully crafted, some resonance perhaps unintended. I would happily watch it again this evening, which may well be the highest praise I can give any film."

Visions Of Music

While there are numerous histories of album covers (including Album: Classic Sleeve Designs, The Art Of The Album Cover, and Art Record Covers), sheet music design is a relatively niche field of interest. Visions Of Music, by Tony Walas, is a history of sheet music covers.

Despite its subtitle (Sheet Music In The Twentieth Century), the book includes examples from the Victorian era onwards, demonstrating that illustrated sheet music covers existed long before Alex Steinweiss designed the first pictorial record sleeves. The covers in the book are only from the author's collection, though it's the first survey of the subject to feature covers from all genres.

Mundane History

This month, Bangkok Screening Room will be showing Anocha Suwichakornpong's masterpiece Mundane History (เจ้านกกระจอก). The film will be screened on 21st, 23rd, 24th, 25th, 26th, 28th, 29th, and 31st March; and 2nd, 4th, 5th, 7th, 8th, 11th, and 12th April.

World Class Cinema

A new film festival of Hollywood classics will take place at the Scala cinema in Bangkok this year. World Class Cinema (ทึ่ง! หนังโลก) will feature nine films, beginning with Gone with the Wind on 12th March. Other highlights include Gentlemen Prefer Blondes on 9th April; 2001: A Space Odyssey on 17th September; and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (the version restored by MGM) on 15th October.

Art Record Covers

Art Record Covers, written by Francesco Spampinato and edited by Julius Wiedemann, features over 500 album covers designed since 1955. Rather than a guide to the greatest album covers (such as The Art Of The Album Cover by Richard Evans, or Album: Classic Sleeve Designs by Nick de Ville), it's the first survey of covers created by artists as opposed to graphic designers. Appropriately, this lavish and comprehensive book is almost the same size as a 12" LP.

"BECKS C-WORD FURY..."

An injunction against The Sunday Times has been partially lifted after details of the case appeared in other publications at the weekend. The injunction, granted in December 2016, prevented The Sunday Times from revealing that David Beckham's email account had been hacked. On 5th February, the newspaper printed a brief notice on its front page: "The Sunday Times has been gagged by an injunction preventing it from reporting details about a celebrity's personal and professional life. The judge anonymised the individual using initials."

Beckham's emails were among thousands leaked to the German news magazine Der Spiegel earlier last year, and Beckham's publicist applied for an injunction after The Sunday Times planned to publish them. Like other anonymised injunctions (such as those relating to PJS, NEJ, RA, and D), the restriction applied only in England and Wales. Unusually, the injunction was granted solely against The Sunday Times, enabling The Sun (despite being owned by the same company) to publish the story on 4th February.

On its front page, under the banner headline "BECKS C-WORD FURY AT 'SIR' SNUB", The Sun wrote that Beckham had criticised the committee recommending new year's honours as "a bunch of cunts" and "unappreciative cunts". This was then reported by other UK and European news websites later that day. The terms of the injunction against The Sunday Times were subsequently relaxed, allowing it to report information already in the public domain.

The Daily Dose

The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission has ordered Voice TV to suspend broadcasting The Daily Dose for seven days. In a majority decision, the NBTC ruled that The Daily Dose, a daily current affairs programme hosted by Nattakorn Devakula, featured politically divisive content in violation of an order issued to the media by the NCPO.

The episode in question, broadcast on 23rd January, began with an assessment of the need for reform of the judiciary. (Contrary to a report in the Bangkok Post newspaper, the programme's 6th February episode was not the reason for the NBTC's ruling.) Voice TV, a digital terrestrial channel, is owned by Panthongthae Shinawatra, son of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

100 Manga Artists

100 Manga Artists, written by Amano Masanao and edited by Julius Wiedemann, is a revised version of Manga Design, which was published by Taschen in 2004. The new edition was published this month in a more compact format. Manga Design profiled 140 artists, while the new book features only 100. (Osamu Tezuka, of course, appears in both editions.) Also, the DVD included with Manga Design does not come with 100 Manga Artists.

Strangely, although Masanao and Wiedemann are both credited on the title page, only Wiedemann's name appears on the cover and spine. Wiedemann has edited numerous books for Taschen, including Art Record Covers, Logo Modernism, Information Graphics, and Understanding The World.

Manga! Manga!: The World Of Japanese Comics, by Frederik L Schodt, was the first English-language book on the subject. Maurice Horn's World Encyclopedia Of Comics features biographies of manga artists. Comics, Comix, & Graphic Novels, by Roger Sabin, includes an introduction to the manga industry. Comics: A Global History covers manga since 1968. (Manga Kamishibai is a history of the illustrated boards that were a precursor of manga comics.)

Crisis In Six Scenes

Crisis In Six Scenes begins with Woody Allen's character, writer SJ Munsinger, telling his barber: "I'm working on an idea for a television series now." This is the first time Allen has directed for television, and the series of six episodes was shown on Amazon Prime Video last year.

In contrast to conventional sitcoms, the episodes are not self-contained, so the series would probably work if it was shown as a single film. In fact, each episode is only twenty-three minutes long, so the entire series is as long as a standard film.

In making a TV series, Allen is joining other directors such as Martin Scorsese (who directed the Boardwalk Empire pilot) and David Fincher (who directed the first two episodes of House Of Cards), though they are all following in the footsteps of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Like House Of Cards, every episode of Crisis In Six Scenes was released simultaneously.

Although Allen hasn't acted in his recent films, he appears in Crisis In Six Scenes as his familiar character, with his usual shtick. If you're already a fan (as I am), his performance will probably make the series worth watching, with the requisite one-liners about atheism, hypochondria, and neuroses. On the other hand, as episode one has virtually no plot, some viewers might stop watching before Miley Cyrus appears in episode two.

The 21st Century Art Book

The 21st Century Art Book features 280 works of contemporary art, one per page, arranged alphabetically by artist. The book (which is similar to Taschen's Art Now) is effectively a sequel to The 20th Century Art Book, and follows the same format as other Phaidon titles such as The Art Book, The Photography Book, The Design Book, The Pot Book, and The Fashion Book. (It's less substantial than the others in the series, and its title is premature, because it covers only the first decade of the 21st century.)

Reincarnate

Thunska Pansittivorakul has produced a new version of his 2010 semi-documentary film, Reincarnate (จุติ). The 2017 version, which has brighter and more vivid colour grading, was released on the Vimeo website yesterday.

For the new version, Thunska has added a haze effect in some of the point-of-view shots of the leading actor, Panuwat Wisessiri. At times, this effect represents the director’s voyeuristic gaze, though later it suggests the presence of the daughter that Panuwat describes giving birth to, as if her shadow were following him.

One shot in the new version is shorter than in the original: when Panuwat says “I think I am pregnant”, the film now cuts immediately to the montage sequence symbolising his labour pains. There is also a minor change to the soundtrack: the sound of crickets chirping has been added to one sequence.

The most substantial addition is a new sequence (actually an out-take from Thunska’s more recent film, sPACEtIME/กาล-อวกาศ) of Nathapong Kaewprom naked in a swimming pool, filmed underwater. This scene repeats a motif from elsewhere in Reincarnate and Thunska’s earlier short film, Unseen Bangkok (มหัศจรรย์กรุงเทพ): the director grabbing a particular part of his actor’s anatomy.

Reconstructing Strangelove:Inside Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Nightmare Comedy’

Reconstructing Strangelove: Inside Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Nightmare Comedy’ analyses the political and cultural background to Dr Strangelove, and assesses the accuracy behind the satire. Author Mick Broderick is one of a select few researchers (including Bernd Eichhorn and Jon Ronson) who had access to Stanley Kubrick’s papers in situ at Childwickbury before they were transferred to the Kubrick Archive.

The book is not quite “the definitive work on Kubrick’s Cold War comic masterpiece,” as the back cover claims, though it is an authoritative account of Kubrick’s collaborations with his screenwriters. It also debunks some of the legends surrounding the making of the film: “Over the years a number of myths concerning the production of the film have circulated, stories that only a forensic analysis of Kubrick’s production files can comprehensively evaluate.”

Broderick quotes from Kubrick’s initial letter to Peter George (the author of the source novel), in which the director asks: “Why, if the Russians had built a Doomsday Machine, would they have kept it a secret?” This query found its way into the final script, when Strangelove says, “the whole point of the Doomsday Machine is lost, if you keep it a secret!” Numerous pre-production documents, including this handwritten letter, are quoted and reproduced, and there are extensive footnotes.

In the book’s most fascinating chapter, Broderick uses daily continuity reports “to reconstitute filmed sequences that failed to make the final cut.” This chapter previously appeared in Stanley Kubrick: New Perspectives, though Broderick has added extra material relating to the film’s missing pie-fight sequence. (Broderick criticises the Kubrick estate’s refusal to acknowledge the debate surrounding the pie scene as “futile and ultimately counter-productive.”)

Peter Kramer wrote a monograph on Dr Strangelove for the BFI, and Piers Bizony is currently writing a new book on the film. The Kubrick exhibition catalogue and The Stanley Kubrick Archives (edited by Alison Castle) also include chapters on the making of the film.

Animation: The Global History

Animation: The Global History, by Maureen Furniss, is described by its publisher (Thames & Hudson) as "THE FIRST COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL ANIMATION", though it could more accurately be called the most comprehensive single-volume history of all types of animation. The UK edition was released this month, though it was published in the US last year as A New History Of Animation.

Film and television cartoons are featured in considerable depth, though the main strength of this ambitious and impressive book is its coverage of peripheral forms of animation such as computer games, advertising, music videos, and even performance art. Furniss also provides cultural context by linking trends in animation to art and design movements, and the book is visually appealing, with around 400 colour illustrations.

Furniss inevitably focusses on the American, European, and Japanese animation industries, though there are also sections on China and Russia. Unfortunately, Australia, South Korea, India, South America, and Africa are all lumped into a single chapter. There are footnotes and a glossary, though no bibliography.

The book was written more than twenty years after Giannalberto Bendazzi's Cartoons: 100 Years Of Cinema Animation (1994), which focusses largely on animated films. Bendazzi's book has less coverage of TV animation, and it pre-dates the computer-generated era and the Western popularity of Japanese anime. Furniss, of course, discusses these extensively, though Bendazzi's book remains the definitive study of cinematic animation, unrivalled for its encyclopedic coverage of more than seventy countries.

Maurice Horn's World Encyclopedia Of Cartoons (1980) contains biographies of hundreds of animators, and Stephen Cavalier's The World History Of Animation (2011) features capsule reviews of animated films from around the world. The Anime Encyclopedia and Anime: A History provide the best coverage of Japanese cartoons, and Moving Animation is the first history of computer animation. Bendazzi's three-volume Animation: A World History was published in 2015.

Outside The Box

Outside The Box: Cardboard Design Now profiles designers and manufacturers who are producing cardboard packaging, products, furniture, and architecture. Most of the featured projects are from the turn of the twenty-first century, though there are a handful of earlier examples, such as the set of cards designed by Charles Eames "with his brother Ray" [sic] and the Wiggle chair by Frank Gehry. The book also includes two essays: a brief history of cardboard by Michael Czerwinski, and a technical guide to cardboard architecture by Santiago R Perez.

14th World Film Festival of Bangkok

The 14th World Film Festival of Bangkok (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์โลกแห่งกรุงเทพฯ ครั้งที่ 14) opens today, and runs until 1st February. (It was originally scheduled for 3rd to 11th November last year, though it was postponed due to the mourning period following the death of Rama IX.) Like the 11th, 12th, and 13th festivals, this year’s event will be held at CentralWorld’s SF World cinema. (The 6th, 7th, and 8th festivals were held at Paragon Cineplex; the 5th, 9th, and 10th took place at Esplanade Cineplex.)

One of the highlights this year will be Sompot Chidgasornpongse’s debut feature film, Railway Sleepers (หมอนรถไฟ), showing on 25th and 27th January. Shooting over a period of eight years, Sompot travelled the length and breadth of Thailand’s rail network filming hundreds of train passengers on seemingly endless journeys. The resulting documentary is as much a portrait of Thailand’s people as it is a travelogue. Sompot’s previous short films have been shown at events including the 5th Bangkok Experimental Short Film Festival (หนังทดลองครั้งที่ 5) and the 12th Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้นครั้งที่ 12).

Faking It

Faking It, by Mia Fineman, is the first book to examine the alteration of photographs from an artistic, rather than a purely technical, perspective. As Fineman writes in her introduction: "This book traces the history of manipulated photography from the 1840s through the early 1990s, when computer software replaced manual techniques as the dominant means of altering photographs. It is a story that has never been told in its entirety," and this survey is a fascinating rebuttal of the old saying 'the camera never lies'.

As the book's subtitle - Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop - indicates, contemporary digital editing simply applies new technology to a long-established practice. Fineman's history begins barely a decade after the birth of photography, demonstrating that photographic manipulation is as old as photography itself. (Faking It also features commentaries on 200 photographs from a 2012 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.)

The book includes Pictorialist composite images such as Henry Peach Robinson's Fading Away (1858), novelty double-exposures similar to the trick films of Georges Melies, airbrushed propaganda portraits (including a 1937 image of Stalin, also discussed in Controversies), and Surrealist and Dadaist photomontages (covered in depth by Dawn Ades in Photomontage). The most recent examples are from the start of the computer era, such as a 1982 National Geographic magazine photograph in which two Egyptian pyramids were digitally pasted closer together.

Fineman argues that the photographic canon favours realism over artifice - in other words, the 'new objectivity' of Edward Weston and Albert Renger-Patzsch outlasted the 'new vision' of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy - and she attributes this to Beaumont Newhall's "keen preference for straight photography." (Newhall's History Of Photography did "more than any other English-language publication to establish photography as a subject of serious art-historical study.") She later identifies Yves Klein's Leap Into The Void (1960) as a turning point that paved the way for more experimentation and manipulation.

"The King may appointa person as Regent..."

On 15th January, the National Legislative Assembly voted to approve an amendment to the constitution, after King Maha Vajiralongkorn (Rama X) requested changes to the articles related to the appointment of a regent. Following the amendment of the interim constitution, the draft constitution will now be revised in the same way.

The articles relating to the appointment of a regent in the interim and draft charters were unchanged from the 2007 constitution: "Whenever the King is absent from the Kingdom or unable to perform His functions for any reason whatsoever, the King will appoint a person Regent" [my emphasis]. The King, via the Privy Council, requested that this be amended to "...the King may appoint a person as Regent," thus making the appointment optional rather than compulsory.

When Prime Minister Prayut announced the amendments, he stressed that "they are not related to the rights and freedoms of the people," as if to justify altering the draft after it had been endorsed by 61.35% of voters in last year's referendum. Rama X became King on 1st December last year, seven weeks after the death of his father, King Bhumibol, on 13th October. He and his wife, Srirasmi, separated in 2014, after her parents and siblings were jailed for lèse-majesté.