2475Dawn of Revolution

When the animation 2475 Dawn of Revolution (๒๔๗๕ รุ่งอรุณแห่งการปฏิวัติ) was released earlier this year, Prachatai reported that the film’s production company, Nakraphiwat, was paid almost ฿4 million by the army for other projects between 2020 and 2022. Yesterday, Prachatai revealed that it had received a defamation lawsuit from Nakraphiwat, alleging that Prachatai’s online article falsely implied that 2475 had been funded by the military.

The film’s credits include a long list of individual donors, some of whom gave as little as ฿100 each, though the bulk of the budget was provided anonymously. 2475 (directed by Wivat Jirotgul) tells the story of the 1932 coup from a royalist-nationalist perspective, though its makers are clearly sensitive to the suggestion that the film is an example of military propaganda.

The lawsuit was filed on 11th October, and there will be a preliminary hearing at the Criminal Court in Bangkok on 9th December. Prachatai’s report—headlined “พบเจ้าของแอนิเมชัน ‘2475 Dawn of Revolution’ รับโครงการทำสื่อแบบวิธีเฉพาะเจาะจง ‘กองทัพบก’ 11 สัญญา” (‘the maker of 2475 Dawn of Revolution took on 11 media contracts from the army’)—which was published on 15th March, is still online.

The 100 Best Movies of All Time

The 100 Best Movies of All Time, a magazine published by A360 Media earlier this year, lists 100 classic films, though only six are foreign-language titles. The list is very mainstream, which is hardly surprising as A360 is a rebranding of American Media, the publisher of the National Enquirer and other supermarket tabloids. The Godfather is at the top of the list.

Lazada

Today the Criminal Court in Bangkok dismissed lèse-majesté charges in relation to online videos promoting the shopping website Lazada and Nara skincare. Lazada had posted a video on 5th May 2022 featuring Thidaporn Chaokhuvieng in a wheelchair, which led to allegations that it was mocking Princess Chulabhorn and disabled people in general. Another TikTok video showed Thidaporn alongside Kittikoon Thammakitirad, who was dressed similarly to Queen Sirikit.

The video campaign was surprisingly audacious for a mainstream, market-leading company like Lazada, as lèse-majesté is rigorously enforced and the references to Chulabhorn and Sirikit were unambiguous. Two days later, Srisuwan Janya (dubbed “Thailand’s complainer-in-chief” and mocked by comedian Udom Taephanich) filed lèse-majesté charges against Thidaporn and Kittikoon, amongst others, and they were arrested on 16th June 2022.

The Criminal Court’s decision today was as surprising as the initial Lazada campaign. Previously, lèse-majesté has been broadly interpreted, though today’s judgement followed the precise letter of the law (article 112 of the criminal code). Article 112 specifies that only defamation or insults directed at the King, Queen, heir to the throne, or regent are illegal, and the court today made clear that it would only prosecute lèse-majesté cases related to those named individuals.

Therefore, as Chulabhorn is not the heir to the throne, the case against Thidaporn was dismissed, perhaps setting a precedent that criticism of some royals is not a crime. The court also ruled that the imitation of Queen Sirikit was not disrespectful, and therefore dismissed the charges against Kittikoon. Again, this was unexpected, as it seems to permit the impersonation of a senior royal, even for commercial purposes.

Central Park Five

Donald Trump is being sued for libel by the men known as the Central Park Five, whose convictions for rape and attempted murder were overturned in 2002. Their joint defamation lawsuit, filed yesterday, seeks at least $75,000 in damages.

The five men, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown, and Korey Wise, were accused of attacking Trisha Meili in New York’s Central Park on 19th April 1989. They made videotaped confessions, though they later pleaded not guilty. Their confessions were later deemed to have been coerced by the NYPD.

Speaking during a debate with fellow presidential candidate Kamala Harris on 10th September, in a live broadcast on ABC News, Trump incorrectly stated that the five men “pled guilty.” He also falsely claimed that they “killed a person ultimately”.

Trump was successfully sued for libel last year by E. Jean Carroll. However, Trump’s own libel suits—filed against Bill Maher, Timothy L. O’Brien, Michael Wolff, Bob Woodward, The New York Times, ABC, and CNN—have all been unsuccessful.

Prawit Wongsuwon:“Give me a chance to be the number one...”

Prawit Wongsuwon, leader of the Palang Pracharath Party, has pressed criminal charges against a TV presenter in relation to leaked audio clips that were broadcast on Channel 9 last week. The charges were filed at Huamak police station yesterday on Prawit’s behalf by Palang Pracharath secretary-general Paiboon Nititawan.

Danai Ekmahasawat played four clips, all featuring a man who sounded like Prawit, on his Inside Thailand (เจาะลึกทั่วไทย) show on 11th September, and a fifth clip two days later. In the first recording, the man says: “I’ve been a deputy and worked for the Prime Minister for a long time. I’ve made many accomplishments, and now I want the people to give me a chance to be the number one.” (Prawit was deputy PM under Prayut Chan-o-cha for nine years; his party was excluded from the governing coalition last month.)

When the clips were broadcast, Palang Pracharath initially dismissed them as AI deepfakes, though the charges filed yesterday seem to be a tacit admission that they are genuine. Prawit is suing for defamation and illegal distribution of a wiretapped recording, though only the “give me a chance to be the number one” conversation is cited in the police complaint.

10 ข้อที่คนไม่รู้เกี่ยวกับมาตรา 112 (‘10 things you don’t know about 112’)

Suchart Sawadsi, one of Thailand’s most respected writers, has been charged with sedition (article 116 of the criminal code) for posting a social media link to a video by iLaw, a non-governmental organisation promoting human rights. iLaw uploaded the video, 10 ข้อที่คนไม่รู้เกี่ยวกับมาตรา 112 (‘10 things you don’t know about 112’), to TikTok on 29th October 2022 as part of its No More 112 campaign, and Suchart shared it on Facebook along with a comment calling for the abolition of article 112 (the lèse-majesté law).

The King Protection Group, an ultra-royalist pressure group, filed charges against Suchart the next day. Suchart was described by David Smyth in the first issue of the journal Asiatic (2007) as “without doubt, the single most influential figure in the contemporary Thai literary world.” The King Protection Group has previously filed similar charges against other public figures, ranging from the rapper P9D to the former Move Forward leader Pita Limjaroenrat.

Foreign Correspondent Thailand’s Bad Monks

Thailand’s Bad Monks, last night’s episode of Foreign Correspondent (one of the flagship current affairs programmes on the ABC in Australia), highlighted the growing number of monks succumbing to the temptations of sex, drugs, and money: “In Thailand, constant scandals involving monks are threatening a crisis of faith.” Al Jazeera broadcast a similar exposé a decade ago—101 East: Thailand’s Tainted Robes, on 18th December 2014—which reported that reverence for monks was in decline “as a series of scandals shake the public’s faith in the monkhood.”

Despite controversies involving corrupt monks, there are strict censorship rules governing the representation of the monkhood, in an attempt to protect the image of the institution. Thai Cinema Uncensored describes a ‘Buddhist lobby’ of religious organisations engaged in reputation management, campaigning against negative representations of monks in movies, and the book examines more than a dozen films either cut or banned for their portrayal of monk characters.

In some cases, the movies were inspired by real life, such as หลวงตา 3 สีกาข้างวัด (‘Luang Ta 3’), based on Nikorn Dhammavadi, a monk who dominated the headlines in 1990 when he fathered a lovechild. The film was criticised for bringing Buddhism into disrepute, though surely more reputational damage was caused by Nikorn than by the movie. Similarly, Poj Arnon, director of a series of monk comedies, told The Nation newspaper: “The way some monks behave in real life is far worse than anything I present on film” (16th March 2016).

When Ing K.’s film My Teacher Eats Biscuits (คนกราบหมา) was banned for its depiction of debauched monks, the director protested that she was merely reflecting incidents reported in the news. The censor’s candid reply was: “ข่าวสารเรา control ไม่ได้ แต่หนังเรา control ได้” (‘we can’t control the news, but we can control movies’).

“Nixon Resigns”

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation as US president. The second term of his presidency had been dominated by investigations into the Watergate scandal, and in his resignation speech on 8th August 1974 he conceded that he was vacating the office to avoid almost certain impeachment by both the House of Representatives and the Senate: “because of the Watergate matter I might not have the support of the Congress that I would consider necessary to back the very difficult decisions and carry out the duties of this office in the way the interests of the nation would require.” (The speech was released on vinyl as Resignation of a President.)

Famously, at a press conference on 17th November 1973, Nixon had insisted: “People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.” But after his so-called ‘White House plumbers’ broke into the Democratic National Committee’s Washington headquarters in the Watergate building, Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered a criminal conspiracy that led all the way to the presidency. (Woodward and Bernstein’s work was one of the greatest examples of investigative journalism in newspaper history. Their main source, nicknamed ‘Deep Throat’, was deputy FBI director Mark Felt.)

It was the ‘smoking gun tape’ transcript, released following a Supreme Court ruling, that finally confirmed Nixon’s attempt to obstruct the FBI’s investigation into the Watergate burglary. On the tape, a recording of an Oval Office meeting on 23rd June 1972, Nixon says that the CIA “should call the FBI in and say that we wish for the country, don’t go any further into this case, period.” The transcript was published on 5th August 1974; Nixon resigned three days later. In his inauguration speech, Nixon’s successor Gerald Ford drew a line under the Watergate controversy and declared: “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.”

In an interview with David Frost (broadcast on 19th May 1977), Nixon implied that a president has immunity from prosecution: “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” At the time, this was seen as a gross misreading of the US constitution, though earlier this year the Supreme Court ruled that a president does indeed have legal immunity for any official act carried out while in office. This ruling was particularly controversial as it came at a time when former president Donald Trump had been convicted of covering up a hush money payment and was under investigation for other crimes.

“IT’S THE SUN WOT WON IT”?

When Donald Trump was convicted of falsifying business records to conceal his hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, the next day’s newspaper headlines were almost unanimous: “GUILTY”. The exception was the New York Post: of all the major US newspapers, the Post was the only one to criticise the verdict, and its front page headline on 31st May was “INJUSTICE”.

The Post’s proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, supported Trump’s presidency, albeit through gritted teeth: he was quoted calling Trump a “fucking idiot” in Michael Wolf’s Fire and Fury. Murdoch’s Fox News acted as a Trump mouthpiece, even knowingly broadcasting false conspiracy theories about ‘rigging’ the 2020 election. Tucker Carlson, one of Fox’s highest-profile presenters, dismissed Trump in private—as revealed in emails disclosed before the Dominion Voting Systems defamation trial—yet endorsed him on the air.

After the 2022 midterms, Murdoch seemed to distance himself from Trump. The Post ridiculed him as “TRUMPTY DUMPTY” on its 10th November 2022 front page. Six days later, it denied Trump what he craves most—publicity—by relegating his declaration that he was running for re-election to a single line at the bottom of the page: “FLORIDA MAN MAKES ANNOUNCEMENT”.

Yet Trump continues to dominate the Republican party, hence the Post’s recent olive branch “INJUSTICE” headline. Murdoch is motivated by profit and political influence: the ‘Trump bump’ (the increase in clicks and subscribers caused by Trump news coverage) is hard to resist, and there’s an increasing likelihood of Trump winning this year’s US election. (Trump’s CNN debate with Joe Biden on 28th March was disastrous for Biden.)

In the UK, The Sun—also owned by Murdoch—has backed the winning party in every election since 1979, giving it a long-standing reputation for influencing public opinion. But the reality is that Murdoch knows which way the wind is blowing, and The Sun switches its allegiances accordingly, reflecting the prevailing mood rather than manipulating it.

The Sun endorsed the Conservatives in the 1979, 1983, 1987, 2010, 2015, 2017, and 2019 elections, and in each case the party had a significant lead in the opinion polls. After much effort by Tony Blair, he received The Sun’s endorsement in the run-up to the 1997 election—the 18th March 1997 headline was “THE SUN BACKS BLAIR”—but by that point Labour’s victory was already a foregone conclusion. Similarly, The Sun backed Blair and Labour in 2001 and 2005 as the party was ahead in the polls.

After the 1992 election, The Sun famously took credit for the Conservative victory with the headline “IT’S THE SUN WOT WON IT” (11th April 1992). Exceptionally, the paper had endorsed the Conservatives despite Labour’s lead in the opinion polls, but the self-congratulatory headline was hardly justified. Labour’s lead was very slight, and pollsters are aware that Conservative voters are generally less likely to admit their voting preference. Unlike 1997—and 2024—there wasn’t an overwhelming desire for change in 1992.

MRP polls have predicted a historic Labour landslide in today’s election. (The most damning polls for the Tories have been those commissioned by The Daily Telegraph, which predicted a “wipeout” on 15th January and 20th June.) Although the six-week election campaign was disastrous for the Conservatives, it was only on election day itself that The Sun came out in favour of Starmer. The paper’s support is fairly lukewarm, with a headline calling for a “NEW MANAGER” (a football pun) without naming either Labour leader Keir Starmer or the Labour party directly, in contrast to its enthusiastic endorsement of Blair in 1997. Like Blair, Starmer has courted The Sun during the election campaign, but although newspapers still set the news agenda, they don’t determine election outcomes.

While their influence on party politics is limited, newspapers have more impact on single-issue politics, especially when they cover an issue over an extended period of time. The News of the World’s exposés of Conservative ministers’ sex scandals contrasted with the party’s ‘back to basics’ slogan in the 1990s. The Daily Telegraph’s long-running coverage of the MPs’ expenses scandal in 2009 revealed significant levels of corruption in public office. There is also a pernicious influence: Euroscepticism founded on what Tim Shipman calls “the ‘straight bananas’ school of reporting from Brussels” (invented by Boris Johnson in the 1990s), leading to regular anti-immigration headlines in the Daily Express and Daily Mail that fuel right-wing populism and xenophobia.

BBC News Thai

I was interviewed by Napasin Samkaewcham for an online video from BBC News Thai, published today, which examines the current state of film censorship in Thailand. (Twenty years ago, on 5th February 2004, I was interviewed on BBC3 television.)

Baby Reindeer

Fiona Harvey is suing Netflix for defamation, and seeking $170 million in damages, after its drama series Baby Reindeer portrayed her as a convicted stalker. Netflix claims that the show, released on 11th April, is a true story, which Harvey’s lawsuit describes as “the biggest lie in television history.”

Baby Reindeer is based on writer Richard Gadd’s experiences of being harassed by Harvey. Her name was changed—to Martha Scott—and her character is eventually convicted of stalking Gadd amongst others, though Harvey insists that, in real life, she has not been found guilty of a criminal offence. In a statement, she said: “I have never been charged with any crime, let alone been convicted, still less pleaded guilty and of course I have never been to prison for anything.”

Comics and the Origins of Manga: A Revisionist History

Many Western readers were first introduced to Japanese manga by Frederik L. Schodt’s seminal book Manga! Manga! in 1983. One of Schodt’s chapters was titled A Thousand Years of Manga, situating manga within the entire tradition of Japanese visual culture. This approach is also adopted by Japanese manga scholars, and by the country’s cultural institutions, as it establishes manga as both artistically significant and inherently Japanese. Similarly, recent books such as Eric P. Nash’s Manga Kamishibai and Adam L. Kern’s Manga from the Floating World link manga to earlier, largely unrelated forms of Japanese art for commercial reasons: putting manga in the title sells more copies.

In his book Comics and the Origins of Manga: A Revisionist History, published in 2022, Eike Exner challenges this concept of an apparently unbroken line from ancient scrolls to modern manga, debunking the “tradition of historiography that for nearly a century has sought to establish a continuity between present-day narrative Japanese comics and centuries of domestic visual art preceding them.” Exner argues that manga represents a break from traditional Japanese art, and that it developed instead as a result of innovations adopted from American comics. He shows how early US comic strips utilised new devices such as speech bubbles, which were later employed by Japanese mangaka: “Japanese and American comics came to rely on transdiegetic content like speech balloons instead of external narration to tell stories. Such audiovisual comics first developed in the United States and from there moved to Japan.”

Specifically, he cites the Bringing Up Father comic strip, which was first serialised in Japan in 1923. This American comic was popular in Japanese translation, and the following year it inspired the Japanese strip フキダシ (‘easygoing father’) by Yutaka Asō, which shared Bringing Up Father’s use of transdiegetic devices. Schodt also identified the link between these two strips, noting that フキダシ was “a direct spin-off of Bringing up Father, but its everyday-life situations and the self-effacing character of its hero had a quality Japanese readers naturally warmed to. Initially, the American influence was obvious”. But Schodt saw this as a fad rather than a paradigm shift: “Japanese newspapers realized the power of comic strips to attract readers and began hiring Japanese artists who used American styles. Foreign comics were exotic but, in the end, alien. Japanese comics were a smash hit.”

Exner is careful to avoid accusations that manga is a mere imitation of American comic style: “It would be simplistic to say that modern comics were “invented” in America and “copied” by the Japanese.” Instead, he argues that the relationship between the two cultures is one of cross-fertilisation, as the creator of Bringing Up Father was himself inspired by Japan’s ‘floating world’ woodblock prints: “The influence of Japanese ukiyo-e prints on George McManus, whose Bringing Up Father in turn became the most influential and longest-running graphic narrative in prewar Japan, exemplifies the complexity of transnational cultural influence.”

Exner’s research represents a ground-breaking approach to manga studies. Rather than “portraying manga as something both older and more specifically Japanese than it really is”, he demonstrates that manga as a Japanese multipanel comic format has its roots in the 1890s, and that manga in the modern sense—with its transdiegetic speech bubbles—is exactly 100 years old. He suggests that the impact of American comics on manga has previously been downplayed as it “complicates the popular account of contemporary manga as the culmination of domestic popular art, which may explain why few have been interested in the recovery of this foreign influence.”

Super Soft Power

Thai police are investigating a Netflix special hosted by the popular stand-up comedian Udom Taephanich, following complaints about his show Super Soft Power (ซูเปอร์ซอฟต์พาวเวอร์), which was released on 1st May. Udom is accused of mocking King Rama IX’s notion of ‘sufficiency economy’, and charges against him have been filed by Sonthiya Sawasdee and disgraced former MP Parina Kraikupt (both of whom were previously members of the pro-military Palang Pracharath Party).

The ‘sufficiency economy’ concept simply encourages people to live within their means. In his show, Udom doesn’t challenge the notion of ‘sufficiency economy’ itself; instead, he criticises the hypocrisy of influencers who falsely claim to adhere to ‘sufficiency economy’ principles. Sonthiya has accused Udom of spreading misinformation about ‘sufficiency economy’, while Parina has filed lèse-majesté charges against him.

Sonthiya has previously filed charges against four singers for mild political satire, and against a former Miss Thailand Universe for disrespecting the national flag. Two years ago, Udom was investigated after complaints about the political content of his previous Netflix special, Deaw 13 (เดี่ยว 13).

The Celebration Tour in Rio

Madonna will end her Celebration Tour, which began last year, with a concert on the beach at Copacabana in Rio on 4th May. The event, which is expected to be attended by more than a million people, will be broadcast live by the Brazilian TV channel Globo. (The Celebration Tour in Rio will be the first live TV transmission of a Madonna concert since HBO broadcast the Drowned World Tour in 2001.)

One of the highlights of the Celebration Tour came when Kylie Minogue joined Madonna on stage earlier this month to sing Can’t Get You Out of My Head. The set list was modified slightly at some venues: Madonna performed an a cappella version of Express Yourself on the American leg of the tour, she sang Sodade in Lisbon, and I Love New York in New York. On selected dates, she sang Frozen, Take a Bow, and a cover version of This Little Light of Mine. In Chicago, she performed This Used to Be My Playground live for the first time in her career.

“Donald Trump has been found liable for rape...”

Donald Trump has filed a defamation lawsuit against ABC News and George Stephanopoulos, after Stephanopoulos asked Republican politician Nancy Mace why she had endorsed Trump as a presidential candidate despite Trump having been “found liable for rape.” Stephanopoulos interviewed Mace on The Week, in a segment broadcast on 10th March.

Stephanopoulos began the interview with a reference to a civil prosecution in which Trump was found guilty of sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll: “You’ve endorsed Donald Trump for president. Donald Trump has been found liable for rape by a jury. Donald Trump has been found liable for defaming the victim of that rape. It’s been affirmed by a judge.”

Mace, who is herself a rape victim, stated that she found the premise of the interview “disgusting.” Stephanopoulos again asked her to justify her endorsement of Trump: “I’m asking a question about why you endorsed someone who’s been found liable for rape.” Mace accused Stephanopoulos of victim-shaming her, and Stephanopoulos attempted to clarify: “I’m questioning your political choices, because you’re supporting someone who’s been found liable for rape.”

Stephanopoulos then pressed Mace again to answer his initial question: “why are you supporting someone who’s been found liable for rape?” She replied that the question was offensive, to which Stephanopoulos responded: “You don’t find it offensive that Donald Trump has been found liable for rape?”

Mace’s answers, and Trump’s libel claim, hinge on the fact that Trump was convicted of sexually assaulting Carroll, rather than raping her. Trump’s lawsuit quotes Stephanopoulos on previous broadcasts referring to sexual assault, in an attempt to prove that Stephanopoulos was aware of the distinction and had used the word ‘rape’ in the Mace interview either recklessly or maliciously.

Trump also sued Carroll for the same reason, after she accused him of rape despite the sexual assault conviction. That lawsuit was dismissed, however, as the judge in the sexual assault case issued a written clarification: “that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was “raped” within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump “raped” her as many people commonly understand the word “rape.” Indeed... the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

Unlike the recent interview with Mace, the previous references by Stephanopoulos to sexual assault were all made prior to 19th July 2023, when the judge’s clarification was published. Stephanopoulos was thus using the term ‘rape’ “as many people commonly understand the word”, meaning that yesterday’s lawsuit against Stephanopoulos and ABC will almost certainly be dismissed.

Boys Love Media in Thailand: Celebrity, Fans, and Transnational Asian Queer Popular Culture

BL (‘boys’ love’) stories—tales of romance between young men, aimed at a largely female audience—originated as a genre of Japanese manga, though for the past decade Thailand has produced its own BL drama series, many of which have become popular throughout Asia. In fact, in Boys Love Media in Thailand: Celebrity, Fans, and Transnational Asian Queer Popular Culture, the first book on Thai BL culture, Thomas Baudinette argues that Thailand’s BL industry has now superseded Japan’s: “the center of queer cultural production within the Asia-Pacific has shifted from Japan—long considered the most influential producer of queer media in Asia—to Thailand.”

Thailand’s first BL drama, Love Sick: The Series (รักวุ่น วัยรุ่นแสบ), was broadcast on Channel 9 in 2014. Baudinette acknowledges the significance of this series, though he also notes the influence of the earlier film Love of Siam (รักแห่งสยาม), directed by Chookiat Sakveerakul, which introduced BL conventions into mainstream Thai cinema. Love of Siam was released in 2007, and Queer Bangkok: 21st Century Markets, Media, and Rights—edited by Peter A. Jackson, the leading scholar in the field—argues that it was in this precise period, in the immediate aftermath of the 2006 coup, that Thai culture experienced an “early twenty-first-century queer boom”.

Eros Reinterpretation

Eros Reinterpretation was the inaugural exhibition at Ming Artspace, a new Bangkok gallery founded by Vichai Imsuksom. The group exhibition featured photography, installations, and video art from thirteen Thai artists, linked by their exploration of erotic imagery.

The show’s most daring artwork was produced by Vichai himself, with Kittisak Tongprasert. Their video installation Eros: The Secret Room consists of three videos of themselves (each around five minutes long) that blur the line between art and pornography. The only comparable works in Thai art are perhaps Thunska Pansittivorakul and Harit Srikhao’s documentary Avalon (แดนศักดิ์สิทธิ์), and Ohm Phanphiroj’s short film The Meaning of It All.

Eros Reinterpretation opened on 12th January and closed on 3rd March, though its lavish exhibition catalogue, limited to 1,000 copies, also serves as a survey of Thai contemporary erotic art. Some (explicit) sections of the book are sealed with perforations, which is reminiscent of Uthis Haemamool’s novel Silhouette of Desire (ร่างของปรารถนา) and the sealed sections in magazines such as Bizarre.

The catalogue is beautifully printed, with a debossed (and somewhat suggestive) cover design, foldouts, selected translucent pages, two notebooks, and several items of ephemera (postcards, stamps, and a flyer) laid in. Alongside other recently published works, such as Ark Saroj’s Lust and Love and Shotbyly’s Vintage Magazine series, Eros Reinterpretation signals a new frankness in Thai art publishing.

In fact, the new issue of Shotbyly’s Vintage Magazine (vol. 2) was printed by the same company as the Eros Reinterpretation catalogue, after the printer of the first issue refused to handle the more explicit imagery in the second one. The second issue of Vintage Magazine, limited to fifty copies, is a portfolio of photographs of model Theeraphat Khajornsuwan.

100 Greatest Films Ever

Daily Mail film critic Brian Viner has compiled a list of the 100 greatest films ever made, in a cover story for today’s issue of the newspaper’s Weekend magazine supplement. The list skews towards mainstream titles, as Viner readily acknowledges: “I’ve deliberately left out some of the mighty early silents, and there aren’t too many foreign-language films because this has to be an accessible collection.” Another stipulation is that all titles are available on streaming platforms, thus disqualifying some esoteric arthouse films. (The Mail published a previous list of Viner’s 100 favourite films in 2020.)

The 100 Greatest Films Ever are as follows:

100. Oliver!
99. Thelma and Louise
98. Raiders of the Lost Ark
97. Goldfinger
96. In the Heat of the Night
95. This Is Spinal Tap
94. To Kill a Mockingbird
93. The Sting
92. The Vanishing
91. When We Were Kings
90. Twelve Angry Men
89. It Happened One Night
88. Chariots of Fire
87. Shane
86. Kes
85. The Exorcist
84. High Noon
83. All the President’s Men
82. Parasite
81. Star Wars IV
80. Rear Window
79. The Night of the Hunter
78. Get Out
77. Ben-Hur
76. The Best Years of Our Lives
75. Gone with the Wind
74. City Lights
73. Sunset Boulevard
72. Zulu
71. Chinatown
70. The Shining
69. Henry V
68. His Girl Friday
67. Shakespeare in Love
66. The Third Man
65. West Side Story
64. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
63. The Lives of Others
62. Toy Story
61. Spartacus
60. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
59. Apollo 11
58. Deliverance
57. The Elephant Man
56. Tokyo Story
55. Monty Python’s Life of Brian
54. No Country for Old Men
53. The Producers
52. Schindler’s List
51. Boyhood
50. Dr Strangelove
49. The Conversation
48. The Searchers
47. Duck Soup
46. Rome, Open City
45. Nashville
44. On the Waterfront
43. Bicycle Thieves
42. Top Hat
41. All About Eve
40. Vertigo
39. Seven Samurai
38. 2001
37. The Deer Hunter
36. Taxi Driver
35. There Will Be Blood
34. The Bridge on the River Kwai
33. The General
32. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
31. It’s a Wonderful Life
30. Pulp Fiction
29. Raging Bull
28. Annie Hall
27. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
26. Alien
25. The French Connection
24. The Maltese Falcon
23. The Silence of the Lambs
22. Kind Hearts and Coronets
21. The Sound of Music
20. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
19. The Banshees of Inisherin
18. Double Indemnity
17. Brief Encounter
16. Modern Times
15. Shoah
14. The Apartment
13. Singin’ in the Rain
12. Apocalypse Now
11. Bonnie and Clyde
10. Citizen Kane
9. The Graduate
8. Lawrence of Arabia
7. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
6. Casablanca
5. Some Like It Hot
4. Jaws
3. Psycho
2. The Wizard of Oz
1. The Godfather

(Note that Some Like It Hot is the 1959 comic masterpiece, not the unrelated 1939 comedy. The Maltese Falcon is the John Huston remake, rather than the 1931 original version.)

Office of the Attorney General:“The police notified Thaksin about the allegation...”

Former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra is expected to be paroled later this month, though in another twist to his legal drama, he also faces lèse-majesté charges that could extend his custodial sentence. Thaksin returned from self-imposed exile in August last year, and the Supreme Court sentenced him to an eight-year prison term for corruption and abuse of power.

However, on his first day in jail, Thaksin was transferred to a police hospital for unspecified medical reasons, and has remained there ever since. After he applied for a royal pardon, his eight-year sentence was reduced to one year, and the Department of Corrections confirmed last month that, given his age (seventy-four), he was eligible for parole. (These events were presumably not unrelated to Pheu Thai’s cooperation with the military’s political wing.)

This apparent leniency may have reached its limit, as the Office of the Attorney General announced today that an investigation will be opened into lèse-majesté charges first filed against Thaksin in 2016. An OAG spokesman said that “senior officials from the Office of the Attorney General and the police notified Thaksin about the allegation” on 17th January, and the charges relate to an interview he gave to South Korean media in 2015, when he implied that members of the Privy Council had orchestrated the 2014 coup.

E. Jean Carroll: “Donald Trump assaulted me...”

Donald Trump has been ordered to pay E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in damages, after Carroll sued the former US president for libel. Carroll had accused Trump of sexually assaulting her, and that claim was vindicated last year when Trump was found guilty in a civil trial. Despite the guilty verdict, Trump continued to deny ever having met Carroll, compounding his defamation of her.

The damages awarded yesterday, determined by a jury in New York, include $65 million in punitive retribution, as a punishment for Trump’s repeated denials that the assault took place. Giving evidence in court, Carroll said: “I’m here because Donald Trump assaulted me, and when I wrote about it, he said it never happened.” (Trump is also counter-suing Carroll, over an interview she gave to CNN last year.)