Information Graphics

Information Graphics, written by Sandra Rendgen and edited by Julius Wiedemann, is a survey of data visualisation, published last month by Taschen. This folio-sized volume has hundreds of full-page, colour illustrations. It also includes the poster Infographia, designed with typical clarity by Nigel Holmes, illustrating the taxonomy and concise history of information graphics.

The book begins with essays that present an overview of the development of information design. This section contains an impressive range of historical illustrations, in chronological order, creating a comprehensive visual history of maps, charts, and diagrams. Fascinating examples from the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Age of Enlightenment are included, and there are no significant omissions.

Historical highlights include Alfred H Barr's Cubism & Abstract Art (which was updated by Daniel Feral last year), the amusing Periodic Table Of Swearing by Modern Toss, and Eugene Pick's epic timeline of civilisation, Tableau De L'Histoire Universelle. [Time magazine produced a similar timeline recently, just a few weeks before Information Graphics was published.] Joseph Minard's representation of Napoleon's Russian campaign, described by Edward R Tufte (in The Visual Display Of Quantitative Information) as "the best statistical graphic ever drawn," is also included.

Providing a wide survey of contemporary information graphics, the book includes over 400 illustrated examples, ranging from art to journalism. The featured graphics are divided into four brightly colour-coded categories: cartography, chronology, taxonomy, and hierarchy.

The selection of contemporary infographics includes ambitious visualisations of the internet (Web Trend Map, by Information Architects) and warfare (Everyone Ever In The World, by Peter Crnokrak). My favourite is the Digital Nostalgia series (by Paul Butt), which traces the evolution of consumer technology formats.

I Am Spartacus!

Kirk Douglas, who starred in Spartacus and produced the film, has written a memoir titled I Am Spartacus!: Making A Film, Breaking The Blacklist. The book expands on the account Douglas previously gave in his autobiography The Ragman's Son.

"Egos clashed like swords" during the making of the film, according to Douglas: "Stanley Kubrick vs. Dalton Trumbo. Charles Laughton vs. Laurence Olivier. Kubrick vs. his cinematographer, Russell Metty". And, of course, Douglas versus Kubrick: "Stanley looked a little intimidated. I hadn't wanted to do this in front of the entire crew, but perhaps it was a good thing".

Though directed by Kubrick, Spartacus was conceived as a Kirk Douglas production. It's notable as one of the few historical epics without an overtly religious theme, though its real significance was that it gave a screen credit to Dalton Trumbo. Trumbo was one of the 'Hollywood Ten', blacklisted as Communists after they were investigated by Joseph McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee.

Barack Obama: The Story

Barack Obama: The Story, by David Maraniss, is a biography of Obama's heritage and youth, covering roughly the same period as Obama's autobiography Dreams From My Father. It was published in the UK with a different subtitle: The Making Of The Man.

The book is over 600 pages long, and involved research trips to Kenya and Indonesia. It's hard to imagine a more thorough account of Obama's formative years. The level of background detail is sometimes excessive, with the first 200 pages devoted to Obama's parents and grandparents. Obama is not even born until page 165, and he starts university at the book's midpoint.

Maraniss characterises the young Obama as a man struggling with his sense of identity, growing up as a mixed-race child and viewed as an Oreo (black on the outside; white on the inside) by some of his college peers. Embracing his black identity became more of a conscious calculation that a natural progression: Maraniss quotes one friend's description of Obama as "the most deliberate person I ever met in terms of constructing his own identity".

The narrative of Obama's memoir Dreams From My Father was central to this identity-construction. In his introduction (which Obama read before publication), Maraniss says that Obama's book "falls into the realm of literature": it presents autobiographical events, though each account is selected "to advance a theme, another thread in his musings about race". In his book, Obama admitted that "some of the characters that appear are composites of people I've known, and some events appear out of precise chronology", though Maraniss reveals the full extent of this artistic licence.

Genevieve Cook, a former girlfriend of Obama's, is one of Maraniss's most revealing sources, and Maraniss quotes extensively from her diary. Genevieve dismisses several of the anecdotes in Obama's book, and Maraniss later discussed the discrepancies with Obama himself: "Obama acknowledged that the scene did not happen with Genevieve. "It is an incident that happened," he said. But not with her". (Obama gave Maraniss an interview at the White House, as he had done for Bob Woodward's Obama's Wars and Ron Suskind's Confidence Men.)

Alongside the issue of racial identity, Maraniss portrays cool detachment as Obama's defining characteristic. He quotes one of Obama's former colleagues describing "that calm, rational, let's think this through demeanor, let's find a common ground. He's had that all along and that's helped shape him. Sometimes I wish he would pound his fists on the table".

Italian Film Festival 2012

The Italian Film Festival opens next month at SF World (CentralWorld, Bangkok). Last year's Festival featured a Mario Monicelli tribute; this year's event includes a retrospective of Sergio Leone's classic 'spaghetti westerns', which will be screened in their Italian-language versions. The Festival runs from 3rd-7th July, and screenings are free.

A Fistful Of Dollars, the film that launched the spaghetti western sub-genre, will be screened on 4th July, followed by its sequel, A Few Dollars More. The last and greatest film in the trilogy, The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly (shown previously at Lido's Festival Of Classic Movies), will be screened on 7th July, in 35mm. The epic Once Upon A Time In The West will be shown on 5th July, also in 35mm.

A Fistful Of Dollars may not have the epic scope of The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly, though it contains some of the most famous sequences in Italian cinema. Clint Eastwood's tense opening confrontation ("Get three coffins ready..."), and his climactic duel ("Aim for the heart, Ramon...") have both become iconic. The film was an unofficial remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, and would later inspire Takashi Miike's Sukiyaki Western Django. Leone was also influenced by the classical Hollywood westerns, notably Shane, that his film subverts.

Prometheus

[Please note: this review contains plot spoilers. Also, Prometheus is showing in 2D, 4DX, and IMAX DMR formats in addition to its original 3D version.]

Prometheus, filmed in 3D, is Ridley Scott's much-anticipated prequel to his science-fiction/horror classic Alien. A few years after Alien, Scott directed Blade Runner, a masterpiece of neo-noir futurism, and Prometheus marks Scott's long-awaited return to science-fiction, more than thirty years later. (Evil Dead director Sam Raimi made a similar return to his genre roots with his recent horror film Drag Me To Hell.) Alien spawned a long-running franchise; the three sequels were all made by outstanding directors (James Cameron, David Fincher, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet), though Scott was not associated with any of them.

Prometheus opens with a title sequence clearly inspired by Alien, as the letters of the title are formed slowly from a series of straight lines. Also, the opening shot resembles the first image of Stanley Kubrick's 2001, and, like 2001 (and Terrence Malick's Tree Of Life), Prometheus explores the origin and evolution of life. In a prologue sequence, we see a muscular man drink a strange black liquid and plunge into a waterfall. His body begins to disintegrate, and his DNA fuses with the water to create life on Earth. Only much later is it revealed that he was an alien from a distant solar system.

As in Alien, a group of astronauts exploring a seemingly barren moon encounters a hostile alien species. The Prometheus expedition was instigated by a scientist, played by Noomi Rapace, who discovers a star map in pre-historic cave paintings. The voyage to this constellation is funded by an elderly industrialist, played by Guy Pearce, and supervised by his assistant, played by Charlize Theron. Potential narrative flaw: the aliens created microbial life on Earth, though that happened long before the paintings, so why were people still aware of their extra-terrestrial origins after millions of years of evolution?

Noomi Rapace (an actress of considerable versatility) plays a character who initially seems similar to Jodie Foster in Contact. In a tense and claustrophobic set-piece that updates the famous chest-bursting scene from Alien, Rapace performs a Caesarean section to abort an alien foetus. (This sequence should inspire an update of Barbara Creed's book The Monstrous-Feminine.) Rapace's character subsequently develops into a heroic precursor to Sigourney Weaver's role in Alien. Charlize Theron gives a performance as icy and authoritarian as her role in Snow White & The Huntsman. Guy Pearce (outstanding in Memento and LA Confidential) is barely recognisable wearing thick old-age prosthetics; presumably, other sequences showing him as a younger man were cut from the final version.

The most impressive performance is that of Michael Fassbender (who starred in the recent film Shame). He plays an android called David, who watches Lawrence Of Arabia and imitates Peter O'Toole. His character's name is presumably a reference to the android child in Steven Spielberg's AI (a project originated by Kubrick). His voice is as calm yet inscrutable as that of the computer, HAL, in Kubrick's 2001, and like HAL, David is not entirely trustworthy. Like the equally devious android in Alien, David is ultimately decapitated and reanimated. Of course, he is also a replicant, like the principal characters in Blade Runner.

Prometheus is surprisingly intense and violent: it may be a science-fiction blockbuster, though it's aimed at adults. It's reassuring that such an expensive event-movie hasn't been sanitised to appeal to a wider audience. However, presumably due to its much larger budget, the film lacks the gritty feel of Alien (and John Carpenter's Dark Star). Also unlike Alien, Prometheus has a constant air of grandiosity, with vast spaceships and landscapes, and philosophising characters. This could have been pretentious, though it's arguably justified by the stunning production design and cinematography.

Less defensible are the various unexplained character motivations. We are led to believe that Guy Pearce's character died before the voyage, though he later turns up on the spaceship in an insignificant plot twist. More intriguingly, David the android deliberately infects one of the astronauts with alien DNA, though we have no real idea why. The film's ending is its only serious weakness, with a CGI alien spacecraft risibly squishing Charlize Theron, and the final sequence merely provides the set-up for a potential sequel.

The Battle For The Arab Spring

The Battle For The Arab Spring: Revolution, Counter-Revolution, & The Making Of A New Era is the first comprehensive account of last year's Arab Spring movement. The writers, Lin Noueihed and Alex Warren, systematically cover the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, the civil war in Libya, and the continuing oppression in Syria, providing a complete survey of the events across the Middle East. They also consider the broader conditions that fermented the uprisings, especially the empowerment created by satellite broadcasting, cellular networks, and social media. Finally, they analyse the potential repercussions of the paradigm shift in Arabian politics and society.

The Arab Spring also influenced citizens of other authoritarian regimes, such as China (where artists called for a Jasmine Revolution) and Russia (where demonstrators marched against Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency). (Thailand's 2010 massacre, in the year before the Arab Spring, was another example of a government using the military to suppress pro-democracy protesters.)

The Wonderful Parisian Cinematographe

Tomorrow, the Thai Film Archive (at Salaya, near Bangkok) will celebrate the 115th anniversary of the development of Thai cinema. The event, titled The Wonderful Parisian Cinematographe, will recreate the first Thai film screening, which took place in 1897. There will be a hand-cranked 35mm projection of the ten films first presented by the Lumiere brothers in Paris in 1895.

The Spectator

The Spectator magazine has been fined £3,000 after it published a column by Rod Liddle that was deemed prejudicial to the trial of Gary Dobson and David Norris. The magazine was also ordered to pay £2,000 in compensation to the family of Stephen Lawrence.

The article, published on 19th November last year, claimed that Dobson and Norris would not receive a fair trial. (The two defendants were accused, and subsequently convicted, of the murder of Stephen Lawrence.) At the trial, the judge ordered the jury not to read The Spectator, and referred the magazine to the attorney general.

Liddle's article began: "I wonder what would happen if I wrote an article for this magazine saying that Gary Dobson and David Norris had nothing to do with the stabbing to death of the black youngster Stephen Lawrence 18 years ago? And that they are entirely innocent? The two are in court at this moment charged with the murder of Lawrence, and therefore I would be in contempt of court".

Five men, including Dobson and Norris, were arrested on suspicion of murdering Lawrence, though the charges were later dropped. Famously, the Daily Mail named the five men and labelled them "MURDERERS" in a banner headline on 14th February 1997: "The Mail accuses these men of killing. If we are wrong, let them sue us". (None of the men sued.)

In Flat Earth News, Nick Davies subsequently claimed that the Mail's coverage was based on a personal connection: "the dead boy's father, Neville Lawrence... had done some plastering" for the newspaper's editor, Paul Dacre. The Mail's decision to identify the suspects echoed that of the ITV programme Who Bombed Birmingham? (28th March 1990), which argued that the 'Birmingham six' were innocent and named the real bombers.

No Expenses Spared

No Expenses Spared, by Robert Winnett and Gordon Rayner, provides an account of the recent UK parliamentary expenses scandal. Winnett and Rayner are the two journalists who initially exposed the story, with a series of scoops in the Daily Telegraph.

A complete database of MP's expenses claims and payments was leaked to the Telegraph in May 2009, and the details were front-page news every day for several weeks. This gradual revelation (or serialisation) of the leaked expenses ensured that the story dominated the news agenda for most of the year.

The most serious breaches of parliamentary rules involved MPs making false claims for mortgages, and these resulted in criminal prosecutions. However, the scandal came to be epitomised by the absurdly anachronistic claims made by privileged and out-of-touch Conservative politicians: Douglas Hogg submitted a £2,000 moat-cleaning bill, and Peter Viggers claimed more than £1,000 for an ornamental duck house.

The repercussions of the scandal included, for the first time in over 300 years, the resignation of the Speaker of the House of Commons. Several cabinet ministers also resigned: Jacqui Smith was humiliated as her expenses included charges for porn films viewed by her husband (an individual story broken by the Sunday Express, before the Telegraph's investigation), and Hazel Blears was forced to quit after Prime Minister Gordon Brown refused to support her. The scandal was one of a series of public-relations crises affecting Brown's government, and when James Purnell resigned from the cabinet he also called for Brown's resignation.

No Expenses Spared is essentially a diary of the scandal's daily developments, from the perspectives of journalists in the Telegraph's newsroom. The background to the leak, and the initial frenzy as the story broke, are covered in minute detail, though the later ramifications (including the various ministerial resignations) are summarised in a single chapter. There is no index.

Page One

Page One: Inside The New York Times & The Future Of Journalism, edited by David Folkenflik, is a collection of essays to complement Andrew Rossi's documentary Page One: Inside The New York Times. Rossi writes the book's first chapter, describing the background to his film.

There are also contributions from several senior New York Times journalists, including media correspondent David Carr. Scott Shane writes about the newspaper's uneasy collaboration with WikiLeaks and the sensitivities of publishing leaked US embassy cables.

For the 'born digital' generation, printed newspapers such as the New York Times are largely an anachronism. Consumers increasingly read on screen rather than on paper, preferring instant Twitter updates instead of detailed newspaper analysis. Also, readers expect that online content should be free, and online advertising is less lucrative than traditional print advertising, so newspaper profits (and print circulations) are in sharp decline.

Page One addresses and advocates this digital transformation, arguing that recent reports of the death of journalism are greatly exaggerated. Emily Bell and Alan Rusbridger suggest that firewalls and 'freemium' models simply drive potential visitors to free alternatives. (Two UK newspapers, The Guardian and the Daily Mail, have successfully penetrated the American market by generating free content for their respective websites, though how to make a profit is another matter.) Jim Bankoff challenges former editor Bill Keller's concerns about news aggregators, though I'm not fully convinced.

Batman Begins

Batman Begins is the first of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. (It was followed by The Dark Knight and the forthcoming The Dark Knight Rises.) Batman and Batman Returns portrayed Gotham City through Tim Burton's Gothic vision, though Nolan's Gotham is closer to the urban decay of Blade Runner.

Nolan's best films, Memento and Inception, both have unconventional narrative structures, though after some early flashbacks Batman Begins is essentially a linear action movie. The flashbacks are part of a drawn-out origin story, with Nolan apparently using his first Batman film to establish the character in preparation for The Dark Knight.

Though Batman has no super powers (like Iron Man and The Red Eagle), he does benefit from gadgets supplied by Lucius Fox, who has the same function as James Bond's Q. (He also has Wayne Tower, like Iron Man's Stark Tower, though Wayne's playboy persona is a facade whereas Stark's isn't.) Michael Caine, as Alfred the butler, gives the first of several performances in Nolan's films (the others being The Prestige, Inception, and the Batman sequels).

International Buddhist Film Festival 2012

The 2012 International Buddhist Film Festival will take place in Bangkok later this month. The Festival, organised by Buddhaleela Bangkok, opens at SF World (CentralWorld) on 7th June and runs for three days.

There will be two screenings of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Morakot, as part of the Thai Short Film Panorama event on 8th and 9th June. (Morakot was previously shown at Tomyam Pladib, Save The Film, and Indy Spirit Project.)

The MDNA Tour

Madonna's MDNA Tour opened last night, and will continue until the end of the year. The show features tracks from her latest album, MDNA, though it also includes older singles such as Express Yourself (incorporating a cover version of Lady Gaga's Born This Way) and Open Your Heart. It's her first world tour since Sticky & Sweet. There are four themed acts: 'transgression', 'prophecy', 'masculine/feminine' (featuring costumes by Jean Paul Gaultier), and 'redemption'.

The full set list is: Girl Gone Wild, Revolver, Gang Bang, Papa Don't Preach, Hung Up, I Don't Give A, Best Friend, Express Yourself, Give Me All Your Luvin', Turn Up The Radio, Open Your Heart, Masterpiece, Justify My Love, Vogue, Candy Shop, Human Nature, Like A Virgin, Nobody Knows Me, I'm Addicted, I'm A Sinner, Like A Prayer, and Celebration.

Caligula Night

On 1st June, film professor Stephen Barber will introduce a free screening of Caligula at the Electric Pussycat Lounge in Bangkok. Caligula, directed by Tinto Brass, remains one of the most controversial films ever made.

The original director's cut featured scenes of graphic violence and simulated sex, though producer Bob Guccioni inserted hardcore sex sequences against the wishes of the director and the distinguished cast (which included Malcolm McDowell and John Gielgud). Brass, director of exploitation classics such as Salon Kitty, later disowned the film, and it has been heavily censored around the world.

Explicit imagery is rarely permitted by Thailand's film ratings board: Insects In The Backyard and This Area Is Under Quarantine were banned for this reason. (However, film-festival screenings, such as Anatomy Of Hell, Serbis, Otto, Antichrist, and Dogtooth, are generally given more leniency.) There have been covert screenings of Taxidermia, Reincarnate, and The Terrorists, all of which are extremely graphic; presumably the forthcoming Caligula Night screening is similarly unauthorised.

Sobre la Cristofagia(‘how to cook Jesus Christ’)

Artist Javier Krahe has been charged with blasphemy after one of his art films was shown on television in Spain. Krahe directed the short film with Enrique Sesena in 1978, and it was immediately banned. It was broadcast on the Canal+ TV show Lo + plus in 2004, and the show’s producers are also facing blasphemy charges. The film’s original title is Sobre la Cristofagia, though it is more commonly known as Cómo cocinar un Cristo (‘how to cook Jesus Christ’).

Citizen Dog

Tomorrow, the Thai Film Archive (in Salaya, near Bangkok) will screen Wisit Sasanatieng's film Citizen Dog. This whimsical romantic comedy retains the over-saturated colours of Wisit's debut film, the incredible Tears Of The Black Tiger (screened at the Archive in 2009 and 2010). After Citizen Dog, Wisit directed more mainstream projects: the horror film The Unseeable (featured in Spirits) and the action movie The Red Eagle (screened at Movies On The Beach).

Wisit has also made the short film Norasinghavatar (part of the Traces Of Siamese Smile exhibition), the music video เราเป็นคนไทย, and a segment of the portmanteau film Sawasdee Bangkok. He wrote the scripts for Nonzee Nimibutr's Nang Nak and Dang Bireley's and Young Gangsters [sic], wrote the outline for Kongkiat Khomsiri's Slice, appeared at the 28 Days festival, and designed the posters for the 2008 and 2009 Bangkok International Film Festivals. Currently, he is working with Thunska Pansittivorakul on the forthcoming film Supernatural.

Artists' Postcards

Artists' Postcards: A Compendium, by Jeremy Cooper, is the first book dedicated to the postcard as an artistic medium. Rather than discussing scenic tourist postcards (as in Frank Staff's The Picture Postcard & Its Origins and Martin Willoughby's A History Of Postcards), Cooper focuses on limited-edition postcards produced by artists.

An excellent introduction traces the cultural history of postcards and their artistic appropriation, and subsequent chapters present a chronological survey of postcard artworks. The bulk of the book is dedicated to an annotated taxonomy of contemporary artists' postcards. There is no bibliography.

The Spear

The South African government, the ANC, has insisted on the removal of a portrait of President Zuma from the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg. The painting, The Spear by Brett Murray, depicts Zuma exposing his genitals, and is based on an iconic propaganda portrait of Lenin; it was due to be exhibited until 16th June, as part of the Hail To The Thief II exhibition.

The painting was also reproduced by the Sunday newspaper City Press, on 13th May. It was vandalised today, when two gallery visitors daubed paint onto it (as shown on eNews Channel). Zuma has been caricatured before, by the cartoonist Zapiro.

There is an artistic precedent for The Spear: Ayanda Mabulu's painting Ngcono Ihlewpu Kunesibhanxa Sesityebi (2010) also depicts a naked Zuma. Mabulu's work was included in his Unmute My Tongue exhibition in Capetown.

ประชาเฌอระลึก

An arts event, ประชาเฌอระลึก, will be held tonight at Bangkok's Soi Rangnam to commemorate the second anniversary of the 2010 massacre. An abridged version of Thunska Pansittivorakul's powerful film The Terrorists will be screened.

Two years after the Thai army massacred its own citizens, there has been no accountability. The military's destructive influence continues, and its immunity is a stain on Thailand's reputation.

Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy, a new exhibition by Vasan Sitthiket, opened this evening at Thavibu Gallery in Bangkok. Vasan's work is often scathingly direct in its condemnation of political figures, and the new paintings in this exhibition are no exception. Most graphically, Hillary Clinton is portrayed nude, giving birth to an enormous and literal representation of phallocentric power. In another painting, a beatific Buddha shoots various world leaders with an automatic rifle.

The paintings are accompanied by Thai Nukes, a supplementary exhibition of more than a hundred wooden phalli painted with ironic globalisation slogans, in an adjacent gallery. Hypocrisy and Thai Nukes will close on 9th June. Vasan's recent exhibitions have included the solo shows Obsessive Compulsive and Ten Evil Scenes Of Thai Politic [sic], and joint shows The Human Clay and Chaotic Victory.

Nameye Amir

An Iranian cartoonist, Mahmud Shokraye, has been sentenced to twenty-five lashes after he drew a cartoon of politician Ahmad Lotfi Ashtiani as a footballer. The caricature was published by the newspaper Nameye Amir.

In solidarity with the cartoonist, and in protest at his barbaric sentence, Martin Rowson reproduced the original cartoon and drew a grotesque portrait of the politician as an obese, wailing baby. Rowson's cartoon was published by The Guardian in the UK on Thursday.

Cryptoart

Cryptoart: The Hidden History Of Art, an exhibition by Rafael Andres, known as The Raf, opens at Eat Me in Bangkok on Monday. The Raf has reproduced iconic paintings, such as Leonardo's Mona Lisa, though with a twist: he digitally adds subversive additional elements to each picture.

The effect is similar to Jake & Dinos Chapman's appropriation of Goya's etchings, or an extension of Marcel Duchamp's LHOOQ. Cryptoart, curated by Pan Pan Narkprasert (Gagasmicism) closes on 29th June.

The Heritage Of World's Prints

An exhibition of signed prints, The Heritage Of World's Prints [sic], opened today at Artery Post-Modern Gallery in Bangkok. The exhibition, featuring works by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and others, will close on 31st May. (Prints by Picasso and other iconic artists were also included in The Art Of Time, in 2008.)

The exhibition's poster is a reproduction of Picasso's 1954 lithograph La Femme Au Singe, which was produced in an edition of fifty. The exhibition also includes another Picasso lithograph, which is perhaps a variation of his Le Chevalier & Le Page from 1951, and three Picasso etchings. (Strangely, the exhibition does not list the titles or dates of any of the exhibits.)

Bastards Of Misrepresentation

Bastards Of Misrepresentation: Doing Time On Filipino Time, a group exhibition showcasing contemporary art from the Philippines, opens today at H Gallery in Bangkok. The exhibition, curated by Manuel Ocampo and featuring MM Yu's photographs of Manila roadkill titled Itch, will close on 11th June.

Museum of the City of New York

The Museum of the City of New York has put its vast collection of Stanley Kubrick's photographs online. In the 1940s, before he became a director, Kubrick worked as a photojournalist for Look magazine, and Look's photographic archive was subsequently donated to the Museum.

Now the Museum has uploaded all 7,271 of Kubrick's photos onto its website. Highlights include a self-portrait of Kubrick's reflection in a mirror, and portraits of Alfred Hitchcock on a train. The photographs are almost exclusively black-and-white, with only one colour image in the entire collection.

The Stanley Kubrick Archive in London and the Library of Congress in Washington both have small collections of Kubrick's Look photos, though MCNY's archive is far more extensive. Many of the photographs originally appeared in Look (1945-1950), and others have been published in various catalogues: Ladro Di Sguardi, Still Moving Pictures, Drama & Shadows, Only In New York, and Fotografie 1945-1950.

100 Artists' Manifestos

100 Artists' Manifestos: From The Futurists To The Stuckists is an anthology of manifestos from 20th century art movements, edited by Alex Danchev and organised with minimalist clarity. Danchev's comprehensive selection includes not only artists but also filmmakers and architects. The concept is similar to the excellent Manifesto: A Century Of Isms, by Mary Ann Caws.

Danchev begins with FT Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto, published on the front page of Le Figaro in 1909, the document that inspired all subsequent art manifestos. The various avant-garde movements of the 1920s all published manifestos inspired by Marinetti's breathless enthusiasm.

The book ends on a sour note with the Stuckists, a reactionary group of anti-Conceptualists who are impossible to take seriously. If Danchev had extended the survey into the early 21st century, he could have concluded instead with the optimistic Sustainism manifesto published in 2010.

500 Classic Films

500 classic films, listed chronologically, representing the history of international cinema.

Talk About Cinema

Talk About Cinema, by Jean-Baptiste Thoret, discusses how contemporary cinema is influenced by stylistic innovations of the past. It was originally published in French, with a more descriptive title: Cinema Contemporain: Mode d'Emploi.

Thoret, who writes for Charlie Hebdo, highlights some cinematic technical breakthroughs, briefly summarises cinema's major artistic movements, and profiles some leading contemporary directors (as in Cinema Now). He also lists 20 Seminal Films, chosen because they contain "motifs, situations, or images destined to be reused again and again".

Talk About Cinema's 20 Seminal Films are as follows:

• Freaks
• The Red Shoes
• Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
• The Searchers
• Rear Window / North By Northwest / Vertigo / Psycho / The Birds
• Big Deal On Madonna Street
• The Twilight Zone
• 'the Zapruder film'
• Inferno
• A Fistful Of Dollars / For A Few Dollars More / The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly / Once Upon A Time In The West / Duck, You Sucker!
• Blow-Up
• Play Time
• The Prisoner
• Le Samourai
• Night Of The Living Dead
• Bullitt
• 2001: A Space Odyssey / A Clockwork Orange / Barry Lyndon / The Shining
• Easy Rider
• Aguirre: The Wrath Of God
• Scarface

The list, in chronological order, actually has far more than twenty titles, because Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and Sergio Leone are each represented by multiple films. Even more esoterically, Thoret includes television series (The Prisoner and The Twilight Zone), an actuality film (Abraham Zapruder's footage of John F Kennedy's assassination), and an unfinished film (Inferno). (Note that Scarface is the Brian de Palma version, not the Howard Hawks original.)

The Greatest Movies Ever

Gail Kinn and Jim Piazza's book The Greatest Movies Ever has been slightly updated for its second edition. The list in the latest edition, published last year, is almost exactly the same as the 2008 version, as only two entries have been changed.

My Fair Lady, #55 in the old edition, has been replaced by Slumdog Millionaire; also, The Bank Dick, the old edition's #84, has been changed to The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King. The new edition still lists 102 films, because The Godfather and The Godfather II appear as a single entry at #1.

The 101 Greatest Movies are as follows:

1. The Godfather I-II
2. Citizen Kane
3. Casablanca
4. Sunset Boulevard
5. Lawrence Of Arabia
6. North By Northwest
7. The Wizard Of Oz
8. Annie Hall
9. Chinatown
10. Singin' In The Rain
11. Nashville
12. Some Like It Hot
13. All About Eve
14. Psycho
15. Taxi Driver
16. Apocalypse Now
17. On The Waterfront
18. Gone With The Wind
19. To Kill A Mockingbird
20. The Searchers
21. La Dolce Vita
22. Double Indemnity
23. Pan's Labyrinth
24. Vertigo
25. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
26. GoodFellas
27. Jules & Jim
28. Funny Face
29. A Streetcar Named Desire
30. Saving Private Ryan
31. Strangers On A Train
32. It Happened One Night
33. The Graduate
34. It's A Wonderful Life
35. Raging Bull
36. The Best Years Of Our Lives
37. The African Queen
38. Dr Strangelove
39. Blade Runner
40. The Conformist
41. Schindler's List
42. The Lives Of Others
43. Diner
44. City Lights
45. The Deer Hunter
46. 8½
47. Top Hat
48. La Regle Du Jeu
49. 2001: A Space Odyssey
50. Bonnie & Clyde
51. King Kong
52. Star Wars IV: A New Hope
53. The 400 Blows
54. A Night At The Opera
55. Slumdog Millionaire
56. The Night Of The Hunter
57. The Third Man
58. Dr Zhivago
59. ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
60. Invasion Of The Body-Snatchers
61. Pinocchio
62. Shadow Of A Doubt
63. Fargo
64. Blue Velvet
65. Jaws
66. The Grapes Of Wrath
67. Do The Right Thing
68. Wild Strawberries
69. Bicycle Thieves
70. Bringing Up Baby
71. Paths Of Glory
72. The Maltese Falcon
73. Pather Panchali
74. The Lady Eve
75. The Last Picture Show
76. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
77. Rosemary's Baby
78. Midnight Cowboy
79. M*A*S*H
80. American Graffiti
81. The Producers
82. Rashomon
83. Cabaret
84. The Lord Of The Rings III: The Return Of The King
85. A Place In The Sun
86. Red River
87. The Conversation
88. Grand Illusion
89. LA Confidential
90. Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
91. Imitation Of Life
92. Raiders Of The Lost Ark
93. Spartacus
94. The Manchurian Candidate
95. Seven Samurai
96. A Hard Day's Night
97. Atlantic City
98. American Beauty
99. Pulp Fiction
100. The Shawshank Redemption
101. Groundhog Day

Note that The Maltese Falcon is the John Huston version, which is actually a remake of an earlier Roy Del Ruth film. Also, Some Like It Hot is the Billy Wilder classic, not the 1939 film of the same name; and Psycho is the original version.

The 100 Best Movies Ever Made...Mostly Suck

The 100 Best Movies Ever Made... Mostly Suck, written pseudonymously by Nick S, is a self-published rant against the classics of world cinema. There are actually 101 films on the list, because he also includes Day For Night as an extra entry.

The films were selected from various other published lists, and the reviews (written in the same 'style' as the late Chas Balun) are taken from the author's website. (Online, he uses a different pseudonym: Mr Satanism.)

I'm not sure exactly how serious Nick Satanism (?) is. If he genuinely hated classic films, why would he bother to watch so many of them? And if he actually liked classic films, why would he review them so negatively?

His comments often border on self-parody, so maybe the book is intended to be ironic? If it is, then he has no sense of humour; if it isn't, then he has no taste.

The 100 Best Movies Ever Made are as follows:

1. Citizen Kane
2. Singin' In The Rain
3. Schindler's List
4. On The Waterfront
5. Casablanca
6. The Godfather
7. Gone With The Wind
8. Lawrence Of Arabia
9. 2001: A Space Odyssey
10. All About Eve
11. The Bridge On The River Kwai
12. Annie Hall
13. Star Wars IV: A New Hope
14. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
15. The Best Years Of Our Lives
16. Raging Bull
17. ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
18. The Wizard Of Oz
19. West Side Story
20. The Graduate
21. Vertigo
22. The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre
23. It's A Wonderful Life
24. The Godfather II
25. Some Like It Hot
26. High Noon
27. It Happened One Night
28. The African Queen
29. Midnight Cowboy
30. Amadeus
31. The Gold Rush
32. Psycho
33. Chinatown
34. City Lights
35. The Maltese Falcon
36. Dr Strangelove
37. Taxi Driver
38. Bonnie & Clyde
39. The Rules Of The Game
40. Mr Smith Goes To Washington
41. 8½
42. From Here To Eternity
43. Battleship Potemkin
44. Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ
45. The Searchers
46. L'Avventura
47. M*A*S*H
48. Double Indemnity
49. Bicycle Thieves
50. Greed
51. The Deer Hunter
52. North By Northwest
53. The Passion Of Joan Of Arc
54. Rear Window
55. The Magnificent Ambersons
56. King Kong
57. Intolerance
58. L'Atalante
59. The Birth Of A Nation
60. Persona
61. The Silence Of The Lambs
62. A Streetcar Named Desire
63. A Clockwork Orange
64. Ugetsu Monogatari
65. An American In Paris
66. Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs
67. Sunset Boulevard
68. The Apartment
69. The General
70. GoodFellas
71. The Grapes Of Wrath
72. Pulp Fiction
73. Seven Samurai
74. Tokyo Story
75. All Quiet On The Western Front
76. Unforgiven
77. Apocalypse Now
78. Louisiana Story
79. Rocky
80. The Sound Of Music
81. Pather Panchali
82. Fantasia
83. Le jour se leve
84. To Kill A Mockingbird
85. Rebel Without A Cause
86. Dr Zhivago
87. Tootsie
88. La Terra Trema
89. Network
90. Brief Encounter
91. Le Million
92. My Fair Lady
93. Wild Strawberries
94. Jaws
95. Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
96. The Philadelphia Story
97. The Third Man
98. Raiders Of The Lost Ark
99. Stagecoach
100. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
101. Day For Night

Note that Some Like It Hot is the 1959 comic masterpiece, not the obscure 1939 comedy. Also, The Maltese Falcon is the John Huston version and Ben-Hur is the William Wyler version.