Spielberg

Spielberg, Susan Lacy's feature-length documentary on the career of director Steven Spielberg, premiered on HBO on 7th October. The film is similar to Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, Jan Harlan's profile of Kubrick: both documentaries are more than two hours long, and both benefit from extensive access to their subjects' archives.

Spielberg begins with Jaws, which is not only (arguably) Spielberg's greatest film but also the movie that (for better or worse) set the wide-release template for summer blockbusters that Hollywood has depended on ever since. Lacy then rewinds to Spielberg's short 8mm films, his television work for Universal, and his feature films in broadly chronological order.

The documentary features interviews with Spielberg himself, his fellow directors (Martin Scorsese, Francis Coppola, and George Lucas), and the leading actors from practically all of his films. In fact, there are so many A-list contributors that some of them (such as Harrison Ford and Tom Cruise) barely have time to say anything. Even Spielberg's mother (who died shortly afterwards) and his centenarian father are included.

Spielberg has made some of Hollywood's most entertaining and acclaimed films, including Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET, Schindler's List, Jurassic Park, and Saving Private Ryan, and these are explored in some depth in the documentary. Despite the long running time, interesting late-career films such as AI, Minority Report, and Lincoln are relegated to brief clips without much (or any) analysis.

As an authorised retrospective, the documentary is largely positive in its assessment of Spielberg's career, though it accomplishes this by simply ignoring the less successful films, with the exception of 1941. There are a couple of dissenting voices among the talking heads, notably the screenwriter of Empire of the Sun, who criticises Spielberg's sentimental tendencies. There's a discussion about whether Spielberg really had the chutzpah to sneak into a vacant Universal office, but Spielberg himself is not asked to confirm or deny the rumour. (He told the story, unchallenged, in the documentary Spielberg on Spielberg and book Spielberg: A Retrospective, both by Richard Schickel.)

Sapuman:Man of Steal

Another book of cartoons by Zulkifli Anwar Ulhaque (known as Zunar) has been banned by the Malaysian government. Sapuman: Man of Steal, published in 2015, satirises Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak and his corrupt business transactions. (In 2015, The Wall Street Journal revealed that $681 million had been transferred from the state-owned company 1MDB to Najib’s personal bank account.)

Zunar’s book launches and exhibitions are raided by police on a fairly regular basis. An exhibition of his work was forced to close last year. Three of his older books were banned in 2015: Pirates of the Carry-BN, Komplot Penjarakan Anwar, and Ros in Kangkong Land.

Death: A Graveside Companion

Death: A Graveside Companion (2017), edited by Joanna Ebenstein, is a collection of images and essays exploring artistic and cultural attitudes to death, from ritual venerations of the deceased to macabre illustrations of skeletons. Many of the 1,000 photographs are from the collection of Richard Harris, whose archive was also the basis of a Wellcome Collection exhibition on the same subject in 2012.

The book's extensive range of material is encapsulated in an illustrated "timeline of death" in the introduction. The bibliography is quite brief, and mostly limited to recent publications. There is inevitable overlap with two books by Paul Koudounaris, The Empire of Death and Memento Mori, also published by Thames & Hudson. The Book of Skulls, by Faye Dowling, includes more recent examples of memento mori imagery.

Camera

Camera: A History of Photography from Daguerrotype to Digital, published in 2009, is a comprehensive history of the camera, featuring 350 vintage examples from the George Eastman House collection along with some examples of classic photographs. Seemingly every type of photographic camera is included, covering almost 200 years of technical development.

Todd Gustavson is credited as the book's author, and he wrote the introduction, though the acknowledgements page reveals that other chapters, and the extended captions, were written by others (including an essay by Steve Sasson, the inventor of the digital camera). There is no bibliography.

By the Time It Gets Dark

A showing of Anocha Suwichakornpong’s film By the Time It Gets Dark (ดาวคะนอง), which was due to take place yesterday at Warehouse 30 in Bangkok, was cancelled by the police at the last minute. The event, organised by Doc Club Theater, was planned as one of three screenings of the film yesterday.

The screenings at the Thai Film Archive and Thammasat University went ahead without any police intervention. Also, the film was released on DVD in Thailand on the same day, making the censorship of the Warehouse 30 screening even more inexplicable.

ลืมเสียเถิดอย่าคิดถึง(‘forget it, don’t think about it’)

On 6th October 1976, at least forty-six people, most of whom were students, were killed in a military massacre at Thammasat University in Bangkok. The massacre remains one of the most shocking moments in Thailand’s modern history, though it’s also part of a cycle of military violence, with similarly brutal suppressions of pro-democracy protesters in 1973 (also at Thammasat), 1992 (‘Black May’), and 2010.

The Thammasat students had been protesting against the return from exile of Thanom Kittikachorn, who had been prime minister during an extended period of military rule. On 25th September 1976, two anti-Thanom activists (Choomporn Thummai and Vichai Kasripongsa) were hanged by the police, and on 4th October 1976 a group of Thammasat students staged a reenactment of the event. One of the students who posed as a hanging victim bore a resemblance to Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn (who is now King Rama X), and on its front page on 6th October 1976, the Dao Siam (ดาวสยาม) newspaper printed his photograph and accused the students of hanging the Prince in effigy.

Military-owned radio stations demonised the students as communists who should be killed, and militia groups (the Village Scouts, Nawaphon, and Red Gaurs) joined the police and army in storming Thammasat. A photograph by Neal Ulevich, of a man ready to hit a corpse hanging from a tree with a folding chair, has come to symbolise the extreme violence and prejudice of the massacre. (The photo was reprinted in Moments.)

Today, the Thai Film Archive in Salaya will commemorate the anniversary of the massacre with an event ironically titled ลืมเสียเถิดอย่าคิดถึง (‘forget it, don’t think about it’). Four films that address the tragedy will be screened: They Will Never Forget, directed by Ooka Ryuuchi; Pirab (พีเจ้น), by Pasit Promnampol; The Two Brothers (สองพี่น้อง), by Patporn Phoothong and Teerawat Rujenatham; and By the Time It Gets Dark (ดาวคะนอง), by Anocha Suwichakornpong. A similar event, 41 ปี 6 ตุลา ปกป้องประชาธิปไตยประชาชน (‘41 years since 6th Oct., protecting people’s democracy’), is taking place simultaneously at Thammasat.

41 ปี 6 ตุลา ปกป้องประชาธิปไตยประชาชน (‘41 years since 6th Oct., protecting people’s democracy’)

On 6th October 1976, at least forty-six people, most of whom were students, were killed in a military massacre at Thammasat University in Bangkok. The massacre remains one of the most shocking moments in Thailand’s modern history, though it’s also part of a cycle of military violence, with similarly brutal suppressions of pro-democracy protesters in 1973 (also at Thammasat), 1992 (‘Black May’), and 2010.

The Thammasat students had been protesting against the return from exile of Thanom Kittikachorn, who had been prime minister during an extended period of military rule. On 25th September 1976, two anti-Thanom activists (Choomporn Thummai and Vichai Kasripongsa) were hanged by the police, and on 4th October 1976 a group of Thammasat students staged a reenactment of the event. One of the students who posed as a hanging victim bore a resemblance to Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn (who is now King Rama X), and on its front page on 6th October 1976, the Dao Siam (ดาวสยาม) newspaper printed his photograph and accused the students of hanging the Prince in effigy.

Military-owned radio stations demonised the students as communists who should be killed, and militia groups (the Village Scouts, Nawaphon, and Red Gaurs) joined the police and army in storming Thammasat. A photograph by Neal Ulevich, of a man ready to hit a corpse hanging from a tree with a folding chair, has come to symbolise the extreme violence and prejudice of the massacre. (The photo was reprinted in Moments.)

Today, Thammasat University will commemorate the anniversary of the massacre with an event titled 41 ปี 6 ตุลา ปกป้องประชาธิปไตยประชาชน (‘41 years since 6th Oct., protecting people’s democracy’). Two films that address the tragedy will be screened: The Two Brothers (สองพี่น้อง), by Patporn Phoothong and Teerawat Rujenatham; and By the Time It Gets Dark (ดาวคะนอง), by Anocha Suwichakornpong. A similar event, ลืมเสียเถิดอย่าคิดถึง (‘forget it, don’t think about it’), is taking place simultaneously at the Thai Film Archive.

Napoleon (DVD)

Last year, the BFI released Abel Gance's Napoleon on DVD and blu-ray. The BFI edition features a 332-minute version of Gance's silent masterpiece, meticulously restored by Kevin Brownlow, with a score composed by Carl Davis. (The bonus features include an interview with Brownlow, his BBC documentary on Gance's films, and a booklet with an extract from his book on the film.) Napoleon famously climaxes with a triptych sequence, and each of the three panels is included on a separate disc, so the triptych effect can be recreated (if you have three DVD/blu-ray players and three TVs side-by-side).

This UK release of Napoleon is the first time Brownlow's restoration has been released on any video format. Even theatrical screenings are rare events, partially due to the logistics of the triptych finale though also because of an excessive copyright claim by Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola's father composed a score to accompany a truncated version of the film, and this version has previously been released by MCA in the US on VHS (in 1989) and by Universal in Australia on DVD (2003). Coppola's version is almost 100 minutes shorter than Brownlow's restoration, though until the BFI's release, Coppola's was the only version available.

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (blu-ray)

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo), Dario Argento's directorial debut, reinvented the giallo thriller template established by Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace. Argento would later direct arguably the greatest giallo film, Deep Red, and the horror classic Suspiria.

Italian DVD editions of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage were framed at 1.85:1 rather than the original 2.35:1 widescreen ratio. In the US, VCI released it on DVD (in 1999 and 2013) and blu-ray (2015), in the original aspect ratio, though a transfer error cut the first word of dialogue from the line "Right, bring in the perverts." This error was repeated on the Blue Underground DVD (released in 2005) and blu-ray (2011). The Blue Underground releases also used English-language opening titles and closing credits, and replaced the original mono soundtracks with surround sound remixes.

In the UK, Arrow released the film on DVD and blu-ray in 2011, in an uncut print, with original Italian and English mono soundtracks, and both the English and original Italian opening titles and closing credits (via seamless branching). This release also included an audio commentary by horror experts Kim Newman and Alan Jones (also available on the Blue Underground editions). The only flaw in Arrow's release was that the film was reframed to 2.0:1, the Univisium ratio retroactively applied by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. (Apocalypse Now, also with cinematography by Storaro, suffered from the same issue in all its video versions, until the Full Disclosure edition of 2010.)

Arrow released the film again this year on DVD and blu-ray, this time in the correct 2.35:1 ratio, making their 2017 edition the first definitive video release of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. This new edition, limited to 4,000 copies, comes in a deluxe package with a poster, lobby cards, and a booklet. It features a different selection of bonus features, and unfortunately the previous audio commentary has been replaced.

By the Time It Gets Dark

Anocha Suwichakornpong’s By the Time It Gets Dark (ดาวคะนอง) will be screened by Documentary Club on 6th October at their Doc Club Theater, part of the Warehouse 30 art space in Bangkok. The film has previously been shown at the 13th International Conference on Thai Studies, Homeflick, and Echoes of French Cinema.