Bangkok Design Festival 2007

This year's Bangkok Design Festival runs from 10th-21st October. Among the many events are Creativities Unfold 2007 at TCDC and From Message To Media at Bangkok University Gallery.

Siam Center

The Siam Center mall in Bangkok has redesigned its interior, and now features several large wall displays seemingly inspired by the artists Gilbert and George.

Quote of the day...

“Nobody goes to see films by Apichatpong... Thai people want to see comedy. We like a laugh.”
— Ladda Tangsupachai

Welcome to an occasional new Dateline Bangkok feature: ‘quote of the day’, a series of I-can’t-believe-they-said-that quotes from Thailand. The inaugural example is from Ministry of Culture official Ladda Tangsupachai, who was interviewed by Simon Montlake in Time magazine’s Asian edition. (The magazine is dated 22nd October, though the article was published online today.)

Ladda (who justified the banning of Bangkok Inside Out last year) dismissed the work of Thailand’s most acclaimed filmmaker, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, in a single stroke. She also described Thai filmgoers as “Uneducated”, adding for good measure: “They’re not intellectuals—that’s why we need ratings”.

On Kubrick

James Naremore's On Kubrick is a substantial new study of the director's feature films. Each film (excluding Spartacus, omitted on the grounds that it is not an auteurist work) is given approximately twenty pages of analysis, within six rather broad chapters.

Naremore strikes a largely successful balance between production history, synopsis, criticism, and theory. He does include un-necessarily long dialogue extracts, though there is minimal exposition, and his analysis is always fascinating and often original. (Many books on Kubrick, unlike Naremore's, are either overly theoretical [Michel Chion, Thomas Allen Nelson, Mario Falsetto] or overly descriptive [Norman Kagan, Gene D Phillips].)

Do we really need another guide to Kubrick's films? There have been a plethora either written or revised since his death in 1999 [Alison Castle, Paul Duncan, James Howard, Alexander Walker, David Hughes, etc.], though Naremore's is justified because of his archival research. He quotes from screenplay drafts and correspondence, uncovering new information regarding Kubrick's dealings with studios and censors.

The book's photographs are apparently screen-grabs rather than production stills, and are consequently rather murky. There is even a fuzzy screen-grab from a bootleg copy of Fear & Desire, even though a clearer production still of the same shot exists. Ironically, given the book's title, there are no images of Kubrick himself.

Spartacus is omitted from Naremore's consideration, though AI is included. While Kubrick planned AI for much of the early 1990s, arguably little of his original vision remains in the final Steven Spielberg film, so why Naremore includes it yet excludes Spartacus (begun by Anthony Mann, though taken over by Kubrick) is a mystery.

Naremore incorrectly states that A Clockwork Orange was banned by the BBFC; in fact, they passed it uncut for adult audiences. Also, his discussion of Eyes Wide Shut is marred slightly by his misunderstanding of the film's post-production: he wrongly claims that it was Kubrick himself, not the studio, who removed the Bhagavad Gita from the soundtrack and digitally censored the orgy sequence.

Cosmopolitan

Mexican singer Paulina Rubio is facing charges of flag-desecration, due to a photograph published in this month's issue of the Spanish edition of Cosmopolitan magazine. The photo shows Rubio, apparently naked, wrapped in the Mexican flag (perhaps in a reference to Madonna's Rock The Vote video from 1990).

ค่อนศตวรรษ ประชาธิปไตยไทย

A book by Sulak Sivaraksa, ค่อนศตวรรษ ประชาธิปไตยไทย, has been banned by Thai police citing national security grounds. The book is an account of the challenges faced by democracy in Thai politics in recent history. Sulak, publisher of Seeds Of Peace, was interviewed in 2005 by Same Sky magazine. He attempted to flee the country in 1984, after copies of his book ลอกคราบสังคมไทย were seized by police.

Thanksgiving

Staff at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (UK) have alerted local police to a potentially obscene image of a child, and they are currently assessing its legality. The picture was to have been included in a retrospective exhibition by photographer Nan Goldin, titled Thanksgiving. The exhibition is currently on show at Baltic, though this single image is missing.

The photograph (Klara & Edda Belly-Dancing, 1998) shows two young girls, one clothed and the other naked, both of whom have their legs spread open. It has previously been seen in several international exhibitions: Thanksgiving (White Cube, London, 2000), I Am A Camera (Saatchi Gallery, London, 2001), Le Feu Follet (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2001), The Devil's Playground (Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 2002; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, 2002; Castello di Rivoli, Rome, 2002-2003; Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, 2003), and Still On Earth (Fundacao de Serralves, Porto, 2002). There's a full-page reproduction of the original image in Goldin's monograph The Devil's Playground (2002).

Photographs of children by Robert Mapplethorpe, Graham Ovenden, Ron Oliver, Will McBride, David Hamilton, Tierney Gearon, and Annelies Strba have previously been investigated by UK police as potentially obscene. In America, the FBI investigated photographers Jacqueline Livingston and Jock Sturges, though ultimately no charges were brought.

Cute

Thai police have seized copies of the August issue of Cute magazine, branding its glamour photographs 'obscene'. The magazine specialises in erotic photography, though it is careful to avoid frontal nudity. The police ban doesn't appear to have been very successful, though, because the magazine is still available at Media Network (Robinson Ratchada) and Squeeze (Siam Paragon) in Bangkok.

Graphic Design

Graphic Design: A New History, by Stephen J Eskilson, is perhaps the only serious rival to Philip Meggs's A History Of Graphic Design. Eskilson is the only author, apart from Meggs, to produce a comprehensive history of graphic design from the earliest printing presses to the present day. The book's publisher, Laurence King, has previously published a number of definitive histories of various artistic fields: A History Of Interior Design, Photography: A Cultural History, History Of Modern Design, A World History Of Architecture, and A World History Of Art.

Eskilson's scope is slightly narrower than Meggs's, though arguably this is to Eskilson's advantage, as he is able to discuss case-studies in more detail. For instance, he devotes several pages to the tactics utilised by recruitment posters during World War I, including the classic Herbert Kitchener poster by Alfred Leete, and Savile Lumley's "most famous picture of emasculation ever made... Lumley's poster, especially the shamefaced visage of the emasculated patriarch, is a masterpiece of bullying propaganda".

Meggs is less engaging than Eskilson, though his bibliography is more extensive. Both books are lavishly illustrated, though Eskilson's photographs benefit from their larger reproductions.

Aalpin

Arifur Rahman, a Bangladeshi cartoonist, has been jailed following publication of a cartoon in which a boy calls his cat "Mohammed cat". Rahman's cartoon appeared yesterday in Aalpin, a supplement of the newspaper Prothom Alo.

Hunden I Konsten

Lars Vilks has portrayed Mohammed as a 'rondellhund' ('roundabout dog', a stylised canine sculpture which appears on Swedish roundabouts) in a series of drawings. They were removed from the Hunden I Konsten exhibition in Tallberg, Sweden, on the opening day. The reason given was that the drawings, like the Danish cartoon caricatures of Mohammed, were too provocative.

Thaksin, Where Are You?

Sunisa Lertpakawat's book Thaksin, Where Are You? has been an instant best-seller in Thailand, and demonstrates how popular Thaksin remains following last year's coup. Sunisa apparently travelled to London (where Thaksin is currently living) of her own volition, without knowing where Thaksin was or how to contact him. Then, while riding on a London bus, she saw Thaksin's son Panthongtae on the street, and he took her to their house.

If that seems like too much of a coincidence, it probably is. It's more likely that Thaksin organised Sunisa's trip and granted her a pre-arranged interview. The book itself is essentially a Thaksin fanzine, and doesn't add anything to the post-coup political discussion.

Lady Diana:L’ênquete criminelle

Lady Diana: L’ênquete criminelle, by Jean-Michel Caradec’h, is an analysis of the French police investigation into the death of Princess Diana. What has made the book infamous is its twenty-page insert, featuring photocopies of the police dossier itself. The insert includes a photograph of Diana receiving first aid at the scene of the crash.

The photo has also been published by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera (on 12th July 2006), the German newspaper Bild (15th July 2006), the Spanish magazine Interviu, and, most famously, the Italian magazine Chi (19th July 2006). The image was first seen by the public on 21st April 2004, when it was included in a 48 Hours CBS documentary (Diana’s Secrets) on American television. It was then reprinted by Ici Paris magazine on 27th May 2004.

On 31st August this year, the UK satellite TV channel Sky News broadcast a report about the crash taken from CBS News, which included the crash photograph. The CBS report, titled Could Diana Have Been Saved?, was originally broadcast on 30th August. The Sky broadcast represents the only uncensored availability of the image in the UK.

When Chi printed the photograph, it was heavily criticised on the front page of The Sun, though the tabloid made no comment when Sky News broadcast the image last month. (The Sun and Sky are both part of News International, owned by Rupert Murdoch.)

The Blair Years

Alastair Campbell was Tony Blair's press secretary when Blair was leader of the opposition. When Blair became UK Prime Minister in 1997, Campbell became his official spokesman. When Blair won a second term in 2001, Campbell was given the unique role of Director of Communications & Strategy. He resigned in 2003, and Blair stepped down earlier this year. Campbell, who was one of the key architects of New Labour, kept a daily diary which ran to over 2,000,000 words, and a single-volume concise edition has been published now that Blair is no longer Prime Minister.

Campbell freely admits that there is much material missing from The Blair Years. (Or The TB Years, as it should be called: everyone is referred to by their initials, and the shorthand prose style is not easy to read in long stretches.) The most obvious omission is Gordon Brown: there are occasional references to his uncommunicative grumpiness, but not to the repeated blazing rows we know he had with Blair. Presumably Campbell wants to spare Brown any embarrassment, now that Brown himself is Prime Minister.

Andrew Rawnsley's excellent Servants Of The People, by contrast, offers much more on the Blair/Brown conflict, though his sources are mostly off-the-record and he only covers the first three years of Blair's premiership. Nevertheless, it's probably the most authoritative account of the Blair government yet published. Famously, it includes the anonymous observation that Brown is "psychologically flawed", a statement widely attributed to Campbell. I hope he's planning an updated edition.

Alastair Campbell was Blair's 'spin doctor', though he was often in the headlines himself. His diaries cannot be a definitive record of the period, because it's impossible for someone who was simultaneously managing and making the news to be impartial. They are also incomplete: not only has Brown been toned down, but Blair and the Cabinet Office were permitted to delete especially sensitive passages.

Notably, much of Blair's swearing has been removed, including his four-letter description of veteran Labour MP Roy Hattersley. Plenty of profanities remain, however, most of them Campbell's own comments on other people. In this respect, The Blair Years shares the frankness of Alan Clark's Diaries. Conservative MP Clark's account of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's downfall was astonishingly candid, and, indeed, Clark and Campbell were friends, with Clark making occasional appearances in The Blair Years.

The Blair Years offers a behind-the-scenes look at all the major UK political stories of the past decade, with anecdotal details of Blair's private feelings and actions. Arguably the most fascinating section, though, is that devoted to Campbell's conflict with the BBC over shortcomings in government dossiers published before the Iraq war.

The government commissioned a dossier on Iraq's military capabilities, which was written by the Joint Intelligence Committee in 2002. The dossier claimed that Iraq possessed an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, which were capable of being deployed within forty-five minutes at any time. In 2003, another dossier was also published, this time prepared within the government, though it was later revealed that much of it had been plagiarised from existing online sources.

On BBC Radio 4's Today programme in 2003, correspondent Andrew Gilligan alleged that the 2002 dossier had been "sexed up" with more forceful language: an un-named source told him that the JIC's language had been altered after suggestions from within the government. Specifically, Gilligan claimed that the "forty-five minutes" detail was added at the request of the government. In a subsequent newspaper article, again quoting his un-named source, Gilligan identified Campbell as the person who added the "forty-five minutes" detail to the dossier.

Campbell denied sexing up the dossier, but the BBC refused to retract the allegation. Gilligan's source, WMD expert David Kelly, committed suicide after his name was made public. It was suspected that Campbell had learned of Kelly's identity and leaked it himself. A public enquiry into Kelly's death by Brian Hutton exonerated Campbell and the government while criticising the BBC's editorial judgements. Consequently, the BBC's Chairman and Director-General both resigned.

In The Blair Years, Campbell denies leaking Kelly's name and suggesting "forty-five minutes". He writes extensively about his bitter confrontations with the BBC in the immediate aftermath of Gilligan's allegations, and his submission of evidence to the Hutton enquiry. It is this information which makes Campbell's diaries so valuable, rather than its interesting though hardly earth-shattering day-to-day Blair anecdotes.

Makkal Osai

Publication of a Malaysian newspaper, Makkal Osai, has been suspended for one month after it printed a drawing of Jesus holding a can of beer and a cigarette. The image, sourced from the internet, was printed on 21st August; it also appeared in another newspaper, Tamil Nesan, on the following day.

11th Thai Short Film and Video Festival

The 11th Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้นครั้งที่ 11) opened on 17th August with The Anthem by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and closed today. Screenings took place at the EGV Grand Discovery cinema in Bangkok. The highlight was yesterday’s Spoken Silence, a themed evening of films about the repressive social and cultural environment following last year’s coup, followed by a Q&A with the directors. There were twelve films in the Spoken Silence programme:

• Bangkok Tanks (a transcript of a superficial Windows Live chat, accompanied by off-air coup footage from CNN; directed by Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit)
• Silence in D Minor (filmed through a green tarpaulin which acted as a filter, ending with a CNS announcement inviting youth participation; directed by Chalida Uabumrungjit)
• The Duck Empire Strike Back [sic] (Thaksin’s ousting through the metaphor of a rubber duck; directed by Nutthorn Kangwanklai)
• Letter from the Silence (shots of a letter about a taxi driver who crashed his cab into a tank; directed by Prap Boonpan)
• The Love Culprit (a story told in voice-over followed by a melodramatic karaoke video featuring tribal dancers; directed by Sanchai Chotirosseranee)
• 3-0 (intercutting between a woman trying to cross the road, another woman exercising, and a boy's physiotherapy, and ending with a peaceful anti-coup demonstration; directed by Anocha Suwichakornpong)
• Fake World (actors filming TV commercials, featuring the over-acting and ridiculous sound effects common to Thai TV; directed by Tanwarin Sukhapisit)
• งานเฝ้าระวังความฝันของบุคคลที่น่าเชื่อว่าฝักใฝ่การทำลายศีลธรรมอันดีของประชาชน (‘the dream of a person believed to be intent on destroying the morality of the people’, static shots continually going in and out of focus; directed by Manutsak Dokmai)
• When The Movie Listens (a man sitting and looking into the camera, as if waiting for someone to speak; directed by Tulapop Saenjaroen)
• Man with a Video Camera (a montage of scenes from daily life, including a pro-Thaksin rally, inspired by Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera; directed by Jakrawal Nilthamrong)
• หนีนรกโพธิ์พระยา 2526 (‘fleeing hell in Pho Phraya’, a young girl answering unheard questions, and boys playing with toy guns; directed by Paisit Punpruksachart)
• Middle-Earth (a male couple sleeping next to each other, naked; directed by Thunska Pansittivorakul)

28 Days

House Rama cinema (RCA, Bangkok) is currently in the middle of its 28 Days festival, screening over 200 films throughout August. The festival includes 28+1, a daily screening introduced by a Thai filmmaker. The highlights are: Wisit Sasanatieng introducing Pan's Labyrinth on 21st August, Pen-ek Ratanaruang introducing Paradise Now on 24th August, and Nonzee Nimibutr introducing Audition on 25th August.

The Simpsons Movie

I've seen every episode of The Simpsons, and was eagerly awaiting The Simpsons Movie (directed by David Silverman). In pre-production for over a decade, they kept telling us; the script tweaked right up to the last minute, to make absolutely every line as funny as possible; a creative team composed of the very best writer-producers from the show's entire history.

OK, so we should know better than to believe all the publicity, but the build-up The Simpsons Movie had led us to expect a comedy masterpiece on a par with the greatest Simspons TV episodes. Well, it's entertaining and funny, but not quite laugh-out-loud funny. There are a few great jokes, such as the Fox ticker and Bart's "doodle", but overall the result is average rather than awesome.

Zelig

Woody Allen's Zelig is one of his most technically accomplished films. It's structured as a 'mockumentary', purporting to examine the case of Leonard Zelig, whose personality disorder is so severe that he automatically assumes the physical characteristics of those around him in order to fit in. This provides opportunities for commentary on individualism, social acceptance, and self-expression.

Allen recreates 1930s film footage with impressive accuracy. His 'documentary' clips are convincingly grainy, scratched, and age-worn. The costumes and acting styles are also authentic-looking, making this one of the most successful fake documentary attempts since the March Of Time sequence in Citizen Kane. Only occasionally was real period footage utilised, for example when Zelig is inserted into the background during an Adolf Hitler speech; this technique predates Forrest Gump.

Zelig is, above all, a great comedy. The advanced college course, the disagreement with Freud, and the $600 Hebrew lessons are all classic Allen jokes.

Festival Of Classic Movies

Over the next few days, the Lido cinema in Siam Square, Bangkok, will present a Festival Of Classic Movies, to coincide with this year's Bangkok International Film Festival. Here are the highlights: Casablanca (Sunday); North By Northwest (Monday); Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ (Monday); The Maltese Falcon (Tuesday); Gone With The Wind (Tuesday); The Adventures Of Robin Hood (Wednesday); and The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly (Wednesday).

Love & Money

TCDC's new exhibition, Love & Money (20th July to 16th September) features twenty examples of modern and contemporary British design, including the Berliner redesign of The Guardian and Channel 4 TV's new corporate identity.

"VOTE NO"

There is to be a referendum in Thailand on 19th August, in which the public will have the opportunity to vote for or against a new constitution. The proposed constitution has been drafted by committees appointed by the Council for National Security, after they abrogated the previous 1997 constitution.

A 'yes' majority would lead to the adoption of the new constitution, though what would happen in the eventuality of a 'no' vote has not been made clear. There have been hints that, if the new constitution were rejected, the 1997 version would be reinstated, but Sonthi Boonyaratglin refuses to confirm exactly which previous constitution would be resurrected if the new one were rejected.

A 'yes' vote is also being promoted by the Constitution Drafting Assembly as a vote for a quick election. However, Sonthi promised to hold elections this year anyway, regardless of the referendum result. While the CDA is distributing propaganda, "VOTE NO" campaign posters (with illustrations by Pracha Suveeranont) have been seized and taxi drivers are being fined ฿1,000 for displaying anti-constitution stickers.

The proposed new constitution includes an amnesty for the coup leaders. This alone is reason enough to reject it.

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

Introverted Joel (Jim Carrey) and his kooky girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) break up, and she impulsively visits Lacuna Inc., a memory-removal company. All her memories of Joel are deleted, so that, when they next meet, she has no idea who he is and he is puzzled at her ignoring him. Feeling rejected, Joel also visits Lacuna, to remove his memories of Clementine. However, during the process, he realises how important memories are, and mentally resists the erasure procedure.

Much of the film takes place inside Joel's head, as he fights to preserve the memory of Clementine before Lacuna can wipe it. The script, by Charlie Kaufman is, in this respect, similar to Kaufman's script for Being John Malkovich, which takes place largely inside Malkovich's head. Memory deletion is a science-fiction concept, though Eternal Sunshine could not really be described as a sci-fi film. The concept was used to disturbing effect at the end of OldBoy, though it was pioneered by novelist Philip K Dick.

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (directed by Michel Gondry) is one of a small group of films (alongside Memento, Fight Club, and others) singled out by David Bordwell for their narrative complexity. It shares with Pulp Fiction a non-linear narrative structure in which the time-frame jumps back-and-forth and key sequences are repeated. (Babel and The Fountain also employ these devices, though less successfully.)

Although Joel and Clementine both delete their memories of each other, they cannot control fate, so they are destined to meet each other again and fall back in love. Kaufman originally intended the film's ending to imply that the characters were locked in a cycle of meeting, separating, erasing, and meeting again. To me, though, it feels more optimistic, because although they recognise each other's faults (listening to Lacuna session tapes, recalling 'the list' in Friends), they are meant to be together.

2007 Bangkok International Film Festival

This year’s Bangkok International Film Festival finishes today. (It opened on 19th July at CentralWorld’s SF World cinema.) Today’s screenings include the graphic Shortbus (which would surely be cut if it was shown outside the festival) and Luis Buñuel’s scandalous Un chien andalou (showing as part of a Buñuel’s retrospective).

The festival was originally scheduled for February, and then postponed. The entire management team has been replaced, following extensive criticism of last year’s expensive follies (star guests who left as quickly as they arrived; corporate events that were abandoned after the first day), though it is still organised by the Tourism Authority, which is not an ideal situation. The only serious mistake this year was to withdraw the proposed opening film, Persepolis, after pressure from the Iranian government. The highlight was an uncut screening of Ploy (a cut version of which went on general release in Thailand earlier this year).

El Jueves

Yesterday's issue of El Jueves, the satirical Spanish magazine, featured a cartoon of Prince Felipe and his wife having sex, with Felipe telling her: "if you get pregnant this will be the closest thing I've done to work in my whole life". The magazine has consequently been banned by the Spanish High Court.

Zoolander

Zoolander is the first Frat Pack comedy that I really laughed at. The film's main strength is the presence of Ben Stiller as actor, co-writer, and director. Stiller is arguably the most talented of the Frat Pack group. His co-star, Luke Wilson, is one of the rare Frat Packers capable of emotional performances rather than simply broad comedy. (Stiller and Wilson also appeared in Meet The Parents, a quasi-Frat film.) Yes, Will Ferrell has a large role in Zoolander, and I'm not the world's biggest Will Ferrell fan, but at least his Zoolander role is so exaggerated that Ferrell's inability to play realistic characters goes un-noticed.

There is an extended homage to Kubrick's 2001, with Stiller's dim-witted search for files accompanied by Also Sprach Zarathrustra. Also, the list of cameo appearances is very impressive: David Bowie, Lenny Kravitz, Donald Trump, Claudia Schiffer...

Live Earth

Madonna performed yesterday at Wembley Stadium, London, as part of Al Gore's consciousness-raising Live Earth concert. She sang La Isla Bonita, Ray Of Light, Hung Up, and a new song, Hey You.

Babel

Babel, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, is a cross-cultural account of miscommunication, with a quartet of loosely inter-related narratives set in Morocco, Japan, and Mexico. Its structure, in which each strand revolves around a single event, is similar to Inarritu's earlier film Amores Perros.

It was Jean-Luc Godard who said that a film should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, though not necessarily in that order. Kubrick demonstrated the concept with The Killing, and Quentin Tarantino copied it from Kubrick with Reservoir Dogs and from Godard with Pulp Fiction. While the narrative fragmentation of Amores Perros was masterful, the technique doesn't quite work in Babel, as it effectively removes any suspense or surprise. When scenes are replayed from different perspectives, the technique is little more than a gimmick (in contrast to Tarantino's use of the technique in Pulp Fiction or Jackie Brown, in which each replay reveals new meanings).

Also, it's hard to feel much sympathy for the majority of Babel's characters. Rinko Kikuchi's mixed-up, deaf-mute Japanese teenager is perhaps the only truly sympathetic character, while the others (a frustrated American tourist, a Mexican maid staggering around the desert in high heels, and two amoral Moroccan children) deserve all they get. The naturalistic Gael Garcia Bernal is wasted in a small role, his character simply disappearing and never returning.

Finally, the exposition is extremely distracting. Characters mention things like virginity, cot-death, and suicide in un-natural ways, filling us in on their back-stories. This happens in many films, but in Babel it seems so frequent and unrealistic as to distance us from the characters and events.

1,000 Films To See Before You Die

From Monday to Friday last week, The Guardian printed an alphabetical list of 1,000 essential films chosen by a "panel of experts". Being 1,000 titles, there aren't a great number of important omissions, though as with many such lists some very recent films (such as Borat and Pan's Labyrinth) are included already, before they've had time to mature. Also, there are a few frankly bizarre choices, like Pumping Iron. But, of course, watching most of these 1,000 films would be time well spent.

Ketel One

An advert by Ketel One, the vodka company, features an alphabetical list of "the 50 best films of all time", as follows:

• 2001: A Space Odyssey
  
• A Clockwork Orange
  
• American Graffiti
  
• Annie Hall
  
• Apocalypse Now
  
• Battleship Potemkin
  
• Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ
  
• The Bridge On The River Kwai
  
• Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
  
• Casablanca
  
• Chinatown
  
• Citizen Kane
  
• Dances With Wolves
  
• The Deer Hunter
  
• Dr Zhivago
  
• Dr Strangelove
  
• ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
  
• Easy Rider
  
• The French Connection
  
• Giant
  
• The Godfather II
  
• Gone With The Wind
  
• GoodFellas
  
• The Graduate
  
• High Noon
  
• It's A Wonderful Life
  
• Jaws
  
• Lawrence Of Arabia
  
• Midnight Cowboy
  
• My Fair Lady
  
• On The Waterfront
  
• One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
  
• Platoon
  
• Psycho
  
• Pulp Fiction
  
• Raging Bull
  
• Raiders Of The Lost Ark
  
• Rocky
  
• Schindler's List
  
• The Searchers
  
• The Silence Of The Lambs
  
• Singin' In The Rain
  
• Some Like It Hot
  
• Star Wars IV: A New Hope
  
• The Sound Of Music
  
• Taxi Driver
  
• To Kill A Mockingbird
  
• Vertigo
  
• West Side Story
  
• The Wizard Of Oz

It's populist and weighted towards Hollywood classics, so a few more foreign-language films would be nice (The Seventh Seal and Seven Samurai, at least), but otherwise this is quite a decent list. Note that Ben-Hur is the William Wyler remake rather than the Fred Niblo version. Also, Some Like It Hot is the 1959 comic masterpiece, not the obscure 1939 comedy.

Coincidence

Coincidence is a small exhibition of observational photographs by Thai director Pen-ek Rattanarueng, taken while he was filming on location in various countries. Many of the images capture incongruous advertising images, such as a poster for the film Mr Bean's Holiday. The exhibition is running from 16th May until 17th June at Siam Paragon.

The Hollywood Studio System

Douglas Gomery's book The Hollywood Studio System was first published over twenty years ago, and has been republished in an expanded version. The first edition dealt only with the golden age of the Hollywood studio system (the 1930s and 1940s), though Gomery has now supplemented this with sections on the system's origins (1915-1930) and its death and rebirth (1950 onwards).

The Genius Of The System, by Thomas Schatz, also presents a studio-by-studio history of Hollywood. Gomery's book is drier than Schatz's, though; reading all the economic and corporate detail, you sometimes forget that the studios produced entertainment and art. Gomery takes the 'show' out of 'show business', though Schatz strikes a better balance. However, Schatz discusses only the major studios whereas Gomery finds room for them all.

“Not a genuine party...”

The Constitutional Tribunal, a body established after the coup as a substitute for the Constitutional Court, has ruled that Thaksin Shinawatra’s Thai Rak Thai party must be dissolved. TRT executives were found to have paid smaller parties to contest last year’s general election, and to falsify the party registration forms of some party candidates. (If a party campaigns unopposed, a higher threshold of votes is required to win, and candidates must have been party members for at least ninety days before they can stand for parliament. TRT colluded to ensure that minor parties had enough candidates to stand against them, paradoxically making it easier for TRT to win.)

111 TRT executives, including Thaksin, have been banned from active politics for the next five years, and no candidates can contest any future election under the TRT banner. The Democrats, on the other hand, have been acquitted of all charges. The judges’ verdict reads: “The Thai Rak Thai Party acted to advance the personal fortune of its leader and tampered with the electoral process in order to grab and cling to power—this not a genuine party with any ideology”.

The Way Hollywood Tells It

The Way Hollywood Tells It, by David Bordwell, analyses the continuation of the narrative and stylistic trends established by classical Hollywood. It rejects the notion of a post-classical cinema, arguing that the new distribution techniques of blockbuster films (Star Wars, etc.) do not affect the classical construction of the films themselves, that post-modern self-referentiality (in Toy Story, etc.) has precedents from the studio era, and that narrative experimentation (Memento, etc.) is accompanied by classical principles to avoid alienating the audience.

Bordwell, one of the most respected American film writers (whose Film Art is perhaps the most popular film studies textbook), has written this as a sequel to The Classical Hollywood Cinema, his groundbreaking analysis of Hollywood modes of production from 1917-1960. Contemporary American Cinema, the only other book devoted to post-1960 American cinema, goes into more depth than Bordwell's, though its analysis is less impressive.

What Is Design?

Thailand Creative & Design Center's permanent exhibition, What Is Design?, features a VW Beetle and other modern icons, a great opportunity to see 20th century industrial design in Bangkok. It's only a small exhibition, though it's the kind of permanent showcase for design classics that's missing from London's Design Museum.

"The memo is explosive..."

Two men were jailed today for leaking a classified memo detailing a conversation between UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W Bush that took place on 16th April 2004. Civil servant David Keogh, who copied the memo, was sentenced to six months in jail. Keogh had given the memo to Leo O'Connor, who received a three-month sentence for passing it on to MP Anthony Clarke. Keogh and O'Connor were arrested in 2004, when Clarke called the police after finding the memo in his office.

Details of the memo were first revealed by the Daily Mirror on 22nd November 2005, under the front-page headline "BUSH PLOT TO BOMB HIS ARAB ALLY". The report began: "Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station al-Jazeera in friendly Qatar, a "Top Secret" No 10 memo reveals. But he was talked out of it at a White House summit by Tony Blair, who said it would provoke a worldwide backlash." The newspaper quoted a source saying: "The memo is explosive and hugely damaging to Bush."

After the story was published, the Attorney General threatened the UK media with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act if any further details of the memo were revealed. This marked the first and only time that the Act - rather than a conventional injunction - had been used to censor the media. Also, Keogh and O'Connor's trial was held in camera, and the judge ruled that it would be a contempt of court to report Keogh's three-word response when he was asked about his initial reaction to the memo.

Due to the reporting ban, and the closed trial, there has been some confusion surrounding the charges against Keogh and O'Connor. Their arrest was not reported until they were formally charged on 17th November 2005, more than a year after the event. The case was originally linked to another leaked memo, titled Iraq: The Medium Term, published by The Sunday Times on 23rd May 2004, though subsequent media reports have linked the case only to the "BUSH PLOT" memo.