A History Of Advertising

A History Of Advertising, by Stephane Pincas and Marc Loiseau, presents a history of advertising from 1842 (the founding of the world's first advertising agency, in Philadelphia) to 2006. It was originally published by the advertising agency Publicis and titled Born In 1842.

The emphasis is on images, with each page containing several colour reproductions of posters and stills from TV commercials. This is in contrast to Mark Tungate's Adland, which contains almost no photographs at all. The text in A History Of Advertising amounts to little more than extended picture captions, however, and the advertisements included are all American, British, or (occasionally) European, so the scope is not really international. There is an impressive bibliography, though.

The 100 Best Films Of The World

The 100 Best Films Of The World: A Journey Through A Century Of Motion-Picture History, was edited by Manfred Leier. (Leier is not named on the cover or spine, and the introduction is signed simply "The Editor", with Leier identified only on the copyright page.)

The book consists of 100 films, arranged "according to the film director's country of origin". Thus, for example, Psycho (made in Hollywood) is listed in the Europe section, because Alfred Hitchcock was born in England. Oddly, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest appears in the North America list despite Milos Forman being Czech by birth. There are two pages devoted to each of the 100 films, each film represented by plot synopses and glossy stills. The detailed synopses are too spoiler-ridden for those who have not yet seen the films and redundant for those who already have.

North America

• Greed
  
• The General
  
• All Quiet On The Western Front
  
• Gone With The Wind
  
• The Grapes Of Wrath
  
• Citizen Kane
  
• Casablanca
  
• Sunset Boulevard
  
• High Noon
  
• From Here To Eternity
  
• On The Waterfront
  
• Rebel Without A Cause
  
• Some Like It Hot
  
• Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ
  
• Breakfast At Tiffany's
  
• Easy Rider
  
• The Godfather
  
• One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
  
• Star Wars IV: A New Hope
  
• Annie Hall
  
• Saturday Night Fever
  
• ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
  
• Blade Runner
  
• Out Of Africa
  
• Pretty Woman
  
• Pulp Fiction
  
• The Matrix
  
• Lost In Translation
  
• Titanic

Europe

• Belle De Jour
  
• All About My Mother
  
• The Rules Of The Game
  
• Children Of Paradise
  
• The Wages Of Fear
  
• M. Hulot's Holiday
  
• Black Orpheus
  
• Breathless
  
• Last Year At Marienbad
  
• Au Revoir Les Enfants
  
• Amelie
  
• La Strada
  
• La Dolce Vita
  
• Blow-Up
  
• Once Upon A Time In The West
  
• Death In Venice
  
• Last Tango In Paris
  
• Life Is Beautiful
  
• Zorba The Greek
  
• Yol
  
• All Night Long
  
• The Assault
  
• Character
  
• Metropolis
  
• The Blue Angel
  
• M
  
• Ninotchka
  
• The Tin Drum
  
• The Marriage Of Maria Braun
  
• Fitzcarraldo
  
• Wings Of Desire
  
• The Lacemaker
  
• Closely Observed Trains
  
• Kolya
  
• The Shop On Main Street
  
• Mephisto
  
• Time Of The Gypsies
  
• Ashes & Diamonds
  
• Dance Of The Vampires
  
• The Pianist
  
• Names In Marble
  
• Battleship Potemkin
  
• The Cranes Are Flying
  
• Andrei Rublev
  
• Lights In The Dust
  
• Wild Strawberries
  
• Autumn Sonata
  
• As It Is In Heaven
  
• Babette's Feast
  
• Breaking The Waves
  
• City Lights
  
• The Great Dictator
  
• The Third Man
  
• The Bridge On The River Kwai
  
• Psycho
  
• Lawrence Of Arabia
  
• Goldfinger
  
• A Hard Day's Night
  
• Dr Zhivago
  
• A Clockwork Orange
  
• Gandhi

Asia

• The Wind Will Carry Us
  
• Mother India
  
• Monsoon Wedding
  
• Rashomon
  
• Seven Samurai
  
• Raise The Red Lantern
  
• Farewell My Concubine

Australasia

• The Piano
  
• The Lord Of The Rings I-III

The list includes no examples of Neorealism or film noir, and no films by DW Griffith, Martin Scorsese, Howard Hawks, or Yasujiro Ozu. Note that Ben-Hur is the William Wyler remake and Titanic is the James Cameron version. Also, Some Like It Hot is the 1959 comic masterpiece, not the obscure 1939 comedy.

4th Project 6

Project 6, a film and photography exhibition, will be hosted by Gallery VER, Bangkok, next month. The event will include the short film Action! (premiered at the 5th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival) by Thunska Pansittivorakul, whose photographic exhibition, Life Show, is currently on display at VER. The 4th Project 6 will open on 15th August (the day Life Show closes), and will run until 30th August.

Gone Yet Still

An installation by Terence Koh, Gone Yet Still, may result in criminal charges against the Baltic art gallery. Koh's work, a statuette of a tumescent Jesus, was shown earlier this year, and, in a private prosecution, a member of the public has accused the gallery of outraging public decency. Baltic came under fire last year for a Nan Goldin photograph, though the image was eventually cleared of obscenity. In 2006, the student magazine The Insurgent published cartoons of Jesus with an erection.

Tumescent Christs have caused artistic controversies before, including a Belgian sculptor's prosecution for blasphemy in 1988. Danish artist Jens Jorgen Thorsen painted a tumescent Christ on the wall of a railway station in 1984. JAM Montoya's 1997 photograph El Ultimo Deseo depicts Christ with an erection. A series of three paintings (Man Of Sorrows, circa 1530) by Maaten van Heemskerck depict Christ in a similar state, as discussed in Leo Steinberg's book The Sexuality Of Christ In Renaissance Art & In Modern Oblivion.

Life Show

Life Show, an exhibition of photographs by Thunska Pansittivorakul, opened today at Gallery VER in Bangkok, and will run until 15th August. (The same venue hosted a retrospective of Thunska's films earlier this year.) The exhibition includes portraits, behind-the-scenes images, and some 'X'-rated shots. Life Show is also the title of one of Thunska's short films, in which an actor discusses his sex-life. Thunska's photos can also be seen, as a slideshow, in his film Endless Story.

News Of The World

Max Mosley, former head of Formula 1, has won a UK legal action against the News Of The World newspaper. Mosley sued the newspaper for breach of privacy after it printed clandestine photographs of him at a sex party. The newspaper also uploaded a short video of the party on its website.

The story was published on 30th March, with a front-page banner headline referring to Mosley's "SICK NAZI ORGY". Mosley accepted that he had participated in an orgy, but insisted that it was a private matter and that it had no Nazi overtones. The High Court judge agreed with him, and awarded him £60,000 in damages, though no injunction was issued.

Stanley Kubrick's Boxes

As part of a Kubrick Season on More4 this month, Jon Ronson presented (and directed) Stanley Kubrick's Boxes on 15th July, a True Stories documentary about Kubrick's archives. Ronson examined the boxes (designed to Kubrick's specifications) containing the director's notes, photographs, and props in situ at Childwickbury Manor, near St Albans, before they were transferred to the Stanley Kubrick Archive at the University of the Arts in London. The programme includes a short Lolita screen test featuring Sue Lyon, and footage filmed by Vivian Kubrick on the set of Full Metal Jacket.

Teeth

Teeth, directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein, is a blackly funny horror film about a teenager with a vagina dentata. Once she discovers her 'mutation', she uses it to castrate the various male chauvinists who seem to populate her life. Her brother is a ridiculously over-the-top stereotype, though the other characters are all believable. The central character herself is sympathetic throughout 99% of the film, though her femme fatale smile in the final shot is out of character.

The Art Of Time

Gaysorn, a shopping mall in downtown Bangkok, is hosting an exhibition titled The Art Of Time. The exhibition is designed to promote Gaysorn's range of expensive watches, though of primary interest are works by Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Matisse, Salvador Dali, and other marquee-name artists.

The centrepiece is a bronze sculpture by Dali, a 3D representation of his melting clock, a motif he first used in his 1931 painting The Persistence Of Memory. The sculpture, which is the only work with a direct link to the exhibition's title, was cast in 1980, in a limited edition of 500. (The over-rated Dali famously signed piles of reproductions, and even blank canvasses, each morning during breakfast, living up to the anagram 'avida dollars' coined by Andre Breton.)

Most of the other works on display are signed prints. The 1963 Picasso linocut, La Dame A La Collerette, for example, was produced in an edition of fifty. The Art Of Time opened yesterday, and will close on 20th July.

Adresseavisen

Adresseavisen, Denmark's oldest newspaper, caused considerable controversy after it published a cartoon of Mohammed last month. The cartoon, by Jan O Henriksen, shows a suicide bomber, with his genitals exposed, wearing a t-shirt proclaiming "I am Mohammed and no-one dares to publish me!".

After the image was published, on 3rd June, the editor and cartoonist attempted to deflect criticism by saying that it depicted merely an Islamic man claiming to act in the name of Mohammed. However, the caricature's t-shirt slogan is unambiguous, and the cartoon is one of the most gratuitously provocative Mohammed caricatures published in the mainstream media.

Another Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, caused international protests after it printed twelve Mohammed cartoons in 2005. This prompted many other European newspapers to publish additional Mohammed caricatures, in solidarity with the Danish cartoonists and in defence of free speech.

Subversion

Subversion, by Duncan Reekie, is the first book to explore not only avant-garde art cinema and filmmaking collectives but the entire history of underground films, from the 1920s onwards. The book is a strange combination of dry theoretical discussion and personal polemic.

Amos Vogel's Film As A Subversive Art, with its frame-enlargements from hundreds of obscure films, remains an essential study of underground cinema. Subversion does not quite live up to its subtitle (The Definitive History Of Underground Cinema), but it does provide an opportunity to consider underground films within their historical contexts.

Decorative Arts

Decorative Arts: Style & Design From Classical To Contemporary is an illustrated guide to glassware, metalware, ceramics, furniture, and textiles. The author, Judith Miller, has written numerous antiques price-guides, though Decorative Arts is intended as an historical introduction.

Like Miller's other guides, Decorative Arts is published by Dorling Kindersley. I'm not particularly a fan of DK, as I explained last year. However, I can't argue with the 3,000 glossy illustrations in Decorative Arts, nor with its wide historical scope (from pre-history to the present day). There are more detailed decorative arts dictionaries and encyclopedias available, though Miller's book provides a fascinating overview of the subject.

Flat Earth News

Flat Earth News, by Nick Davies, paints an unpleasant picture of contemporary journalism. It's subtitled An Award-Winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion, & Propaganda In The Global Media.

Davies criticises journalists for their reliance on wire stories and press-releases (what he calls 'churnalism'), and for never letting the facts get in the way of a good story. The Daily Mail, a reactionary UK tabloid, is one of the main targets: Davies criticises the racist scaremongering and distortion in the Mail's immigration coverage.

Newspaper sensationalism and distortion is nothing new, of course. Press baron William Randolph Hearst (the model for Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane) once reputedly told a photographer: "You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war" (a line which was paraphrased in Kane). Famously, in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a fictional newspaper editor explains: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend".

Davies was initially inspired by the news media's unquestioning acceptance of government spin regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. As a pretext for war, the UK and US governments both claimed that Saddam Hussain possessed WMDs and even nuclear weapons, warning that he could deploy them against the West at any time. The BBC reported that some of these claims were inserted at the request of UK spin doctors, and after the invasion of Iraq, the WMD threat was exposed as a gross exaggeration. (Alastair Campbell wrote about his involvement with this issue in his diary, published last year; Davies claims that Campbell's criticism of the errors in the BBC's coverage was a smokescreen to cover the errors in the government's dossiers.)

A World History Of Architecture

The second edition of A World History Of Architecture, by Michael Fazio, Marian Moffett, and Lawrence Wodehouse, has been published by Laurence King. (In America, it has been retitled Buildings Across Time: An Introduction To World Architecture.) The book presents a global history of architecture from Stonehenge to the early 21st century. Like Graphic Design: A New History, it's another in the publisher's impressive collection of historical surveys of various artistic fields.

The ultimate authority on architectural history is Banister Fletcher's A History Of Architecture, edited by Dan Cruickshank, currently in its twentieth edition. Fletcher's volume has an almost incredible 4,000 illustrations, while Fazio et al. provide a 'mere' 700. However, Fletcher's text is less accessible, and less affordable.

100 X France

As part of the 4th Month of Photography for this year's La Fete festival, the Queen's Gallery in Bangkok is hosting 100 X France, an exhibition of 100 images from the history of French photography. The exhibition opened yesterday, and runs until 8th July.

The exhibition includes some of the most famous photographs ever taken, and a roll-call of the greatest photographers: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray, et al. The exhibition's poster features Theophile Feau's famous images of the Eiffel Tower in mid-construction. (Edouard Durandelle took a series of similar images, which were published in 1900.)

The earliest extant photographic image, an 1827 'heliograph' by Joseph Niepce (discovered by photographic historian Helmut Gernsheim) begins the exhibition. There is also an example of Etienne-Jules Marey's Chronophotographie. Photographs by several artists from other mediums are also included, such as a book cover by Marcel Duchamp and a portrait by Agnes Varda.

Italian Film Festival 2008

Bangkok's Lido cinema will host the Italian Film Festival 2008 later this month, from 18th to 25th June. One of the highlights will be Martin Scorsese's documentary My Voyage To Italy (20th and 25th June). Scorsese's documentary (in the style of his earlier A Personal Journey Through American Movies) is a four-hour tribute to Italian cinema, from Cabiria to Federico Fellini. Scorsese's most passionate comments are reserved for Neorealist classics such as Rome: Open City and Bicycle Thieves.

The C Word

The C Word, rather cumbersomely subtitled How We Came To Swear By It, was broadcast by BBC3 in the UK on 30th July 2007. The programme, directed by Pete Woods, was an hour-long investigation into attitudes towards the c-word, making Channel 4's A Brief History Of The F-Word (2000) seem tame by comparison. It was a fascinating programme which managed to touch on all of the major debates surrounding the word.

The presenter, Will Smith, made the class aspect of the word a major focus, which is something I've always avoided because I feel that it's out-dated. Also, he interviewed the increasingly ridiculous Eve Ensler for far too long, presumably because others such as Germaine Greer had declined to appear. (Greer made a ten-minute segment about the c-word for BBC1's Balderdash & Piffle in 2006.) Smith told us that the word's first appearance in a newspaper was in The Independent in the 1980s; this 'fact' has been regularly repeated, though my own research has antedated the c-word's first newspaper appearance by over a decade.

[Full disclosure: I was invited to take part in this programme, but I couldn't fly back to the UK at a suitable time.]

Into Me/Out Of Me

Into Me/Out Of Me was an exhibition conceived by Susan Sontag and curated by Klaus Biesenbach. It brought together iconic works from the past forty years of body art, and was organised into three broad themes: metabolism, reproduction, and violence. Over 130 artists were represented, including Andres Serrano, Carolee Schneemann, Robert Mapplethorpe, Judy Chicago, Hermann Nitsch, and Damien Hirst. The result was an extraordinarily comprehensive retrospective, probably the widest survey of body art thus far.

The exhibition catalogue is arranged alphabetically by artist, rather than according to the three categories of the exhibition itself. It resembles The Artist's Body (from Phaidon's Themes & Movements series), though its images are more explicit and its introduction is more anecdotal.

Forbidden Art 2006

Yuri Samodurov, director of Moscow's Andrei Sakharov Museum, has been charged with inciting religious hatred. The charge relates to the exhibition Forbidden Art 2006, a survey of censored Russian art, including Alexander Kosolapov's This Is My Blood (2001), hosted by Samodurov's museum in 2007. Several of the exhibits are included in the book Blasphemy. The museum also hosted the controversial exhibition Caution: Religion! in 2003.

Indiana Jones IV

The fourth film in the Indiana Jones series, Indiana Jones & The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, is similar in tone to the three earlier films, with wit and serial-style adventure in equal measure. Again, it's directed by Steven Spielberg and based on a story by George Lucas.

Unfortunately, these days Lucas can't resist CGI. (His Star Wars prequels were almost entirely computer-generated.) In interviews, Spielberg stresses how traditional the action sequences and special effects are, in keeping with those of the earlier Indiana Jones films (and Spielberg is known for his love of analogue film technology), yet there are still too many CGI elements here. The CG aliens in the finale are excusable, but rendering monkeys, insects, and waterfalls with CGI is just lazy.

As the rather clunky title suggests, the plot is a little convoluted. It's something about aliens from another dimension bringing civilisation to the ancient Mayans, though it results in exposition overkill. After all that exposition, only the most cursory of explanations is given for the incomprehensible events at the end of the film. Anyway, shouldn't Spielberg be done with flying saucers by now? (The film's MacGuffin object is inspired by quartz skulls which, while rumoured to be pre-Columbian artefacts with paranormal powers, are more likely to be 300-year-old fakes.)

The film is set in 1957, so the bad guys this time are Communist Russians. (Since the end of the Cold War, Russians have been replaced as Hollywood movie antagonists by Europeans and Arabs.) The lead villain, played by Cate Blanchette, never poses a real threat; thus, while the chase sequences are exciting, they aren't especially suspenseful, because Blanchette is not particularly scary. The 1950s setting also allows for comments on US domestic nuclear testing (in an eerily realistic mock-suburban test site) and paranoid anti-Commie witch-hunts, though these themes are dropped pretty quickly.

Harrison Ford is on form as Indy, and it's possible to suspend your disbelief that a man his age can still be an action hero. This time around, Ford is joined by Shia LaBeouf, who makes his entrance on a motorcycle in an homage to Marlon Brando's character in The Wild One. In one of Hollywood's least surprising plot twists, LaBeouf's character is later revealed to be Indy's son.

In the first sequence, there's a glimpse of the Ark of the Covenant, a subtle nod to the first (and best) Indiana Jones film, Raiders Of The Lost Ark. But how many of the new film's audience-members will get the reference?

Maxim Goes To The Movies

This month's Maxim magazine is a special Maxim Goes To The Movies issue, and includes a list titled The 300 Movies You Must See Before You Die!, divided into genres and other (occasionally odd) categories. (Musicals have been deliberately excluded.)

There are actually slightly more than 300 films included, because original films and their sequels are counted as single entries. The Lord Of The Rings I, The Warriors, Fight Club, A History Of Violence, Star Wars V, and Terminator II all appear twice, each in two different categories.

Comedy

• The Big Lebowski
  
• Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy
  
• Kingpin
  
• Monty Python & The Holy Grail
  
• This Is Spinal Tap
  
• Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan
  
• Airplane!
  
• Animal House
  
• Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery
  
• American Pie
  
• Bachelor Party
  
• Bananas
  
• Beverly Hills Cop
  
• Blazing Saddles
  
• Caddyshack
  
• The Cannonball Run
  
• Clerks
  
• Dazed & Confused
  
• Duck Soup
  
• Dumb & Dumber
  
• Election
  
• The 40-Year-Old Virgin
  
• Ghostbusters
  
• Groundhog Day
  
• Happy Gilmore
  
• Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
  
• It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
  
• The Jerk
  
• Modern Times
  
• The Nutty Professor
  
• Office Space
  
• Old School
  
• The Pink Panther Strikes Again
  
• The Princess Bride
  
• Raising Arizona
  
• Sixteen Candles
  
• Some Like It Hot
  
• Trading Places
  
• Vacation
  
• Wedding Crashers
  
• Wet Hot American Summer
  
• Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory
  
• Young Frankenstein

The Master Class

• Breathless
  
• Citizen Kane
  
• La Dolce Vita
  
• Seven Samurai
  
• The 400 Blows
  
• The Seventh Seal
  
• Un Chien Andalou

War

• The Deer Hunter
  
• The Bridge On The River Kwai
  
• Dr Strangelove
  
• Apocalypse Now
  
• Black Hawk Down
  
• The Dirty Dozen
  
• Gallipoli
  
• The Great Escape
  
• M*A*S*H
  
• Platoon
  
• Saving Private Ryan

So Bad They're Good

• Glen Or Glenda?
  
• Showgirls
  
• Airport 1975
  
• Barbarella
  
• Battlefield Earth
  
• Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls
  
• Death Race 2000
  
• Phantom Of The Paradise
  
• Reefer Madness
  
• Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
  
• The Toxic Avenger

Sequels That Are Better Than The Original

• Bride Of Frankenstein
  
• Evil Dead II
  
• Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan
  
• Superman II
  
• Terminator II: Judgment Day
  
• Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back

Rebels

• Cool Hand Luke
  
• Taxi Driver
  
• Sid & Nancy
  
• Easy Rider
  
• Billy Jack
  
• Dirty Harry
  
• Dirty Mary Crazy Larry
  
• Ferris Bueller's Day Off
  
• The Graduate
  
• A History Of Violence
  
• The Hustler
  
• The King Of Comedy
  
• Network
  
• One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
  
• Raging Bull
  
• Risky Business
  
• Smokey & The Bandit
  
• Three Days Of The Condor
  
• Trainspotting

Classics

• Lawrence Of Arabia
  
• Kind Hearts & Coronets
  
• The Adventures Of Robin Hood
  
• Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ
  
• Casablanca
  
• Double Indemnity
  
• Metropolis
  
• The Night Of The Hunter
  
• On The Waterfront
  
• The Third Man
  
• Touch Of Evil
  
• Vertigo
  
• White Heat
  
• The Wizard Of Oz

Sci-Fi/Fantasy

• Starship Troopers
  
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
  
• Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back
  
• Alien I-II
  
• Back To The Future
  
• Blade Runner
  
• Children Of Men
  
• Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
  
• ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
  
• King Kong
  
• Planet Of The Apes
  
• Star Wars IV: A New Hope
  
• Terminator I-II

Horror

• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
  
• Night Of The Living Dead
  
• Dawn Of The Dead
  
• Carrie
  
• The Exorcist
  
• The Fly
  
• Halloween
  
• Jaws
  
• A Nightmare On Elm Street
  
• Psycho
  
• Rosemary's Baby
  
• The Shining
  
• 28 Days Later

Non-Boring Documentaries

• Brother's Keeper
  
• Don't Look Back
  
• Hoop Dreams
  
• Pumping Iron
  
• Richard Pryor: Live In Concert
  
• When We Were Kings

Conspicuously Gay Straight Movies (Beyond Top Gun)

• 300
  
• Fight Club
  
• Spartacus
  
• The Bear
  
• The Lord Of The Rings I: The Fellowship Of The Ring
  
• The Warriors
  
• X-Men

Westerns

• The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
  
• The Searchers
  
• Jeremiah Johnson
  
• Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
  
• High Noon
  
• High Plains Drifter
  
• Tombstone
  
• True Grit
  
• Unforgiven
  
• The Wild Bunch

Buddy Movies

• The Last Detail
  
• Top Gun
  
• Superbad
  
• Deliverance
  
• American Graffiti
  
• The Blues Brothers
  
• Breaking Away
  
• Glengarry Glen Ross
  
• The Goonies
  
• Lethal Weapon
  
• The Right Stuff
  
• Saturday Night Fever
  
• The Shawshank Redemption
  
• Stand By Me
  
• Stripes
  
• Swingers
  
• The Warriors

Conspicuously Gay [Patrick] Swayze Movies

• Next Of Kin
  
• Red Dawn
  
• Road House
  
• The Outsiders
  
• Youngblood

Action

• The Matrix
  
• Rocky I-IV
  
• The Road Warrior
  
• Batman
  
• Batman Begins
  
• Battle Royale
  
• The Bourne Identity/Supremacy/Ultimatum
  
• Braveheart
  
• Clash Of The Titans
  
• Die Hard
  
• Enter The Dragon
  
• Face/Off
  
• First Blood
  
• 48 Hours
  
• Gladiator
  
• The Incredibles
  
• Kill Bill I-II
  
• The Lord Of The Rings I-III
  
• Predator
  
• Raiders Of The Lost Ark
  
• Speed
  
• Spider-Man

Non-Gratuitous Nudity!

• Wild Things
  
• Fast Times At Ridgemont High
  
• Carnal Knowledge
  
• Angel Heart
  
• Body Heat
  
• Boogie Nights
  
• Coffy
  
• Jackass: The Movie
  
• McCabe & Mrs Miller
  
• Mulholland Drive
  
• Poison Ivy: The New Seduction
  
• Revenge Of The Nerds
  
• Ten

Essential James Bond Movies

• Casino Royale
  
• Goldfinger
  
• The Spy Who Loved Me
  
• Live & Let Die
  
• You Only Live Twice

Arthouse

• City Of God
  
• A Clockwork Orange
  
• Annie Hall
  
• Withnail & I
  
• Midnight Cowboy
  
• Badlands
  
• Bicycle Thieves
  
• The Conversation
  
• Do The Right Thing
  
• The Elephant Man
  
• The Last Picture Show
  
• Repo Man
  
• Rushmore
  
• Short Cuts
  
• There Will Be Blood

Mindbenders

• Akira
  
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show
  
• Beetlejuice
  
• Blue Velvet
  
• Brazil
  
• Donnie Darko
  
• Edward Scissorhands
  
• Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
  
• Fight Club
  
• Memento
  
• Pink Floyd: The Wall
  
• The Manchurian Candidate

Best Movies With Puppets

• Being John Malkovich
  
• Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
  
• Team America: World Police
  
• The Dark Crystal
  
• The Muppet Movie
  
• Weekend At Bernie's

Cops

• To Live & Die In LA
  
• Bullitt
  
• Hard-Boiled
  
• Bad Lieutenant
  
• Chinatown
  
• The Departed
  
• Donnie Brasco
  
• Fargo
  
• The French Connection
  
• RoboCop
  
• Seven
  
• Shaft
  
• The Silence Of The Lambs
  
• The Untouchables

Criminals

• The Godfather I-II
  
• No Country For Old Men
  
• Bonnie & Clyde
  
• Reservoir Dogs
  
• Atlantic City
  
• Bad Boys
  
• Bloody Mamma
  
• The Boys From Brazil
  
• Boyz 'N The Hood
  
• Carlito's Way
  
• Casino
  
• Crimes & Misdemeanors
  
• Dog Day Afternoon
  
• The Getaway
  
• Get Carter
  
• GoodFellas
  
• Heat
  
• A History Of Violence
  
• In Cold Blood
  
• The Long Good Friday
  
• Mean Streets
  
• Midnight Express
  
• Natural Born Killers
  
• Pulp Fiction
  
• River's Edge
  
• Scarface
  
• Sexy Beast
  
• Sin City
  
• Super Fly
  
• True Romance

Movies You Need To See Once But Are
So Traumatic You Never Need To See Again

• Leaving Las Vegas
  
• Million Dollar Baby
  
• Requiem For A Dream
  
• Schindler's List
  
• United 93

Some Like It Hot is the 1959 comic masterpiece, not the obscure 1939 comedy. Casino Royale is [presumably] the recent version rather than the 1960s spoof, Ben-Hur is the William Wyler version, and Scarface is the Brian de Palma version instead of the Howard Hawks original, but otherwise the list is refreshingly free of remakes. Note that Carrie is de Palma's 1976 horror film, not William Wyler's 1952 romantic drama.

Adaptation

Adaptation was directed by Spike Jonze, and stars Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep. It was written by Charlie Kaufman, one of the most fascinating contemporary screenwriters (who also wrote Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind).

Cage plays a character called Charlie Kaufman, a fictionalised version of Kaufman himself. [Subsequent references will be to the character, not the real writer.] Cage also plays Charlie's brother, Donald, who is credited as co-writer of the film, though Donald Kaufman is a purely fictitious character. Charlie is hired to adapt a book, The Orchid Thief, into a screenplay; he hopes to produce a profound, true-to-life script, though he spends months on frustrated false starts. Donald, meanwhile, writes a formulaic thriller screenplay which is immediately optioned. Unable to create a compelling narrative from The Orchid Thief, Charlie decides to follow the book's author, Susan Orlean; surprisingly, her secret (and totally fictionalised) double-life is a far more fascinating screenplay subject, providing the character arcs and suspense that Charlie had dismissed as unrealistic.

Adaptation is incredibly self-referential, recalling films about the frustrations of filmmaking such as 8½ and Stardust Memories, and the novel Tristram Shandy (and thus the film A Cock & Bull Story). The film is not only about Charlie's Orchid Thief adaptation, it is his adaptation, as all of his ideas have been incorporated. His voice-over in which he runs through several potential film openings echoes Woody Allen's opening monologue in Manhattan.

All About Eve

All About Eve, starring Anne Baxter and Bette Davis, was directed by Joseph L Mankiewicz. Baxter plays Eve Harrington, a seemingly devoted fan of the actress Margo Channing (played by Davis, who smokes throughout the entire film). Margo takes Eve under her wing, initially taken in by Eve's faux humility and innocence. It later transpires that Eve is calculating and ambitious, exploiting Margo's insecurities about impending middle-age.

Baxter has the title role, but the film is largely a study of Davis's Margo, who is far more realistic than Eve. Davis is sensational: alternately cynical, compassionate, warm, and bitter. By contrast, Baxter simply goes from too-good-to-be-true to scheming bitch. The greatest scene, showcasing Davis's impressively unglamorous performance, is the party sequence, in which a drunk Margo warns her guests: "Fasten your seatbelts; it's going to be a bumpy night!". The party also features a scene-stealing cameo from Marilyn Monroe, in the same year as her bit-part in The Asphalt Jungle.

The two leading men, especially Hugh Marlowe, are rather bland, though George Sanders, as an oily gossip columnist, is more interesting. The ending (in which the cycle begins again, with a young girl ready to do to Eve what Eve did to Margo) is disappointing, considering the otherwise sophisticated, witty script.

While the film is set on Broadway, the script includes regular industry in-jokes and barbs about Hollywood. Rather than a backstage theatre story, it might be more accurate to call it a behind-the-scenes film, and it's one of the very best of its kind.

The Top 100 Films Of All Time

On Saturday, The Times published a list of the Top 100 Films Of All Time, chosen by a selection of the newspaper's film critics led by James Christopher. The list is deliberately revisionist and provocative, hence its intentional omission of established classics like Citizen Kane. (Kane as the world's greatest film may be a cliche, but it's still an essential film by any standard.) There are actually 102 films on the list, as the entry for Pather Panchali also includes two subsequent films about the Apu character.

The Top 100 Films are as follows:

1. Casablanca
2. There Will Be Blood
3. ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
4. Chinatown
5. The Shining
6. Vertigo
7. Kes
8. Sunset Boulevard
9. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
10. The Godfather
11. The Sound Of Music
12. Alien
13. 2001: A Space Odyssey
14. The Jungle Book
15. Apocalypse Now
16. Metropolis
17. Annie Hall
18. Don't Look Now
19. The Exorcist
20. The Wizard Of Oz
21. The Towering Inferno
22. The Breakfast Club
23. Some Like It Hot
24. The Philadelphia Story
25. Picnic At Hanging Rock
26. GoodFellas
27. A Clockwork Orange
28. Gone With The Wind
29. Duck Soup
30. Rebel Without A Cause
31. His Girl Friday
32. Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back
33. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
34. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
35. Withnail & I
36. Jaws
37. Beau Travail
38. Rear Window
39. The Graduate
40. Monty Python's Life Of Brian
41. A Star Is Born
42. Blue Velvet
43. Terminator II: Judgment Day
44. A Streetcar Named Desire
45. The Life & Death Of Colonel Blimp
46. All About Eve
47. Fargo
48. Shoah
49. High Society
50. Blade Runner
51. Cabaret
52. La Dolce Vita
53. Mildred Pierce
54. Roman Holiday
55. The Matrix
56. Whisky Galore
57. Raging Bull
58. Dr Zhivago
59. Pulp Fiction
60. The Crying Game
61. Rashomon
62. Taxi Driver
63. On The Waterfront
64. Do The Right Thing
65. The Thin Blue Line
66. Toy Story
67. The Piano
68. The Maltese Falcon
69. Cache
70. The Conversation
71. This Is Spinal Tap
72. Days Of Heaven
73. Great Expectations
74. Rosemary's Baby
75. The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
76. From Here To Eternity
77. Pather Panchali/Aparajito/Apur Sansar
78. The Lady Eve
79. Deliverance
80. Tokyo Story
81. North By Northwest
82. Chungking Express
83. Spartacus
84. Festen
85. Dog Day Afternoon
86. Nosferatu
87. The Silence Of The Lambs
88. Wild Strawberries
89. Touch Of Evil
90. Trainspotting
91. Short Cuts
92. Breathless
93. Cool Hand Luke
94. La Haine
95. Grand Hotel
96. Lost In Translation
97. Point Break
98. My Fair Lady
99. La Belle & La Bete
100. Jurassic Park

Every film on this list is important in some way, but there should be more silents (there are only two) and more foreign-language films (there's nothing from Italy pre-La Dolce Vita, and nothing by Jean Renoir or Sergei Eisenstein). There Will Be Blood may be a modern classic, but is it really the second-greatest film ever made? (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 1959 comic masterpiece, not the obscure 1939 comedy.)

Blood For Dracula

Blood For Dracula was filmed by Paul Morrissey back-to-back with his Flesh For Frankenstein. (Antonio Margheriti is sometimes cited as a co-director with Morrissey, though the extent of his contribution is unclear.)

The two films are very similar: both star Udo Kier and a cast of other non-native English speakers concentrating on their lines so much that they forget to emote, both feature the incongruous Joe Dallesandro, and both are Gothic melodramas which culminate in campy violence. In both films, Dallesandro appears out of place not only because of his beefcake physique and American accent but also due to the attitudes of his characters. In Blood For Dracula, in contrast to the aristocratic lineage of every other main character, he plays a worker who hopes for a Communist revolution, adding the theme of class conflict to the traditional Dracula story.

Blood For Dracula is notable for the cameo roles played by two acclaimed directors. Roman Polanski (director of Chinatown) is great as a labourer playing cards in a tavern, though Vittorio de Sica (director of Bicycle Thieves) is almost incomprehensible as a down-on-his-luck aristocrat.

Hard Candy

Madonna's new album, Hard Candy, is out now. The cover photo and font look terrible, and it's certainly not one of Madonna's best albums.

The full track-listing is: Candy Shop, Four Minutes, Give It 2 Me, Heartbeat, Miles Away, She's Not Me, Incredible, Beat Goes On, Dance 2night, Spanish Lessons, Devil Wouldn't Recognize You, and Voices. An additional track, Ring My Bell, was included on the Japanese edition.

Inside Out, Outside In

Gallery VER, Bangkok, hosted a short season of indie films by Thunska Pansittivorakul and Panu Aree from 18th to 20th April. The event, Inside Out, Outside In, featured a complete retrospective of both directors.

Panu Aree's first film, Once Upon A Time, is a compilation of home movie footage of his family at an amusement park, and was edited by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. His other films are: Destiny, Postcards From Kaosan Road, In Between, The Magic Water, Stills, Parallel, The Lost Highway, and Silent Lights.

Thunska's excellent Middle-Earth originally screened at the 11th Thai Short Film & Video Festival, and his recent films Soak and Action! were screened at the 5th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival.

Thunska's early short films are:

Private Life
(Thunska's first film: he drives to the beach with his boyfriend, but they never make it and can't find the time or place to be alone with each other)

Lovesickness (aka Just A Life II)
(a man in his studio apartment, with only a goldfish for company; he treats it obsessively as a partner: feeding it rice, washing it with soap, and ejaculating into its water)

...For Shiw Ping 28/12/97
(faces filmed in negative, and footage of a rainstorm: Thunska's memories of his relationship with Ping in 1997)

Sigh
(two men have sex, with the images filtered by double-exposures, rapid editing, and low resolution)

Chemistry
(a man narrates his formative sexual experiences in voice-over)

Life Show
(a young actor is interviewed about his illicit sex-life, with nudity and smoking censored in the style of Thai TV)

After Shock
(a man masturbating in a boat; made for the Ministry of Culture in response to the 2004 tsunami)

Unseen Bangkok
(a split-screen film: a nude hustler discusses his clients, and a covert recording of a man taking a shower)

Endless Story
(a slideshow of Thunska's personal and graphic snapshots)

Vous Vous Souviens De Moi?
(a short story about a robot who cannot feel love, narrated over images of a nude man in an apartment)

Out Of Control
(a group of boys playing on a beach)

You Are Where I Belong To
(Thunska filming people he meets in Japan, as he tries to forget his ex-boyfriend)

Thunska's feature-length documentaries Voodoo Girls and Happy Berry (and the short sequel Happy Berry: Oops I Did It Again; all featuring frank discussions between groups of Thai youngsters), and his music video Blinded Spot (for Soundlanding) were also screened.

The Asphalt Jungle

The Asphalt Jungle, directed by John Huston, is a heist film starring Sterling Hayden. As in so many subsequent heist films, a gang of expert criminals is assembled to plan and execute the perfect robbery. Naturally, the execution doesn't quite go according to plan: a combination of coincidences and double-crossings ensure that crime does not pay (as dictated by the American film censors, of course).

While in later films it's often the chief of police who's revealed to be the most corrupt character, in The Asphalt Jungle it seems that every character except the chief is corrupt. In fact, the police commissioner makes an earnest speech about the necessity of law enforcement, which is out of place alongside the film's otherwise gritty dialogue.

This is Huston's third film noir, after The Maltese Falcon and Key Largo. Those two earlier films had noir plots, though they were both rather stagey (confined to unatmospheric interiors, with characters who are entertaining rather than menacing). The Asphalt Jungle, on the other hand, is more stylistically and emotionally a film noir. It's full of dark shadows, and the equally dark plot offers no redemption for any of the characters.

There's a notable pre-stardom cameo from Marilyn Monroe, though Sterling Hayden in the hardboiled lead role gives the film's greatest performance. He would later star in Kubrick's The Killing, a film whose plot owes a great deal to The Asphalt Jungle.

Syndromes and a Century:Thailand’s Edition

Following the Thai censorship of his film Syndromes and a Century (แสงศตวรรษ), Apichatpong Weerasethakul has agreed to present a censored version of the film (Thailand’s Edition) for Thai audiences. It will be screened at Paragon Cineplex in Bangkok, starting today (preceded by a panel discussion with Apichatpong at 6pm), for the next fortnight.

Silent leader footage will be projected in place of the censored scenes, to draw attention to the censorship of the film. Each ticket comes with a free Syndromes and a Century postcard, which features photographs of the censored scenes and links to YouTube where the censored footage can be seen, thus making a mockery of the censors’ decision.

Infamously, Ladda Tangsupachai, the director of the Ministry of Culture’s Cultural Surveillance Department, once said: “Nobody goes to see films by Apichatpong. Thai people want to see comedy. We like a laugh.”

12:08 East Of Bucharest

12:08 East Of Bucharest is a comedy directed by Corneliu Porumboiu, set in the small Romanian town of Vaslui. It is one of a handful of recent Romanian films to receive international critical acclaim, including Cristian Mungiu's Four Months, Three Weeks, & Two Days.

The film is divided into two distinct halves. First, we are introduced to the three central characters on a typical morning. There is a TV host, trying to book guests for his cheap talkshow; later, he pretentiously introduces the show with quotations from ancient philosophers. Then a henpecked history teacher, who drinks too much and owes everyone money. Finally, a lonely old man, who is busy buying a Father Christmas costume so he can entertain school-children. The teacher and pensioner will be the only guests on the TV host's talkshow.

The second half is taken up entirely with the talkshow, and is filmed by the TV studio's camera. The show's topic is: was there a revolution in Vaslui, or not? Anti-Communist demonstrations led to Romania's self-appointed leader Nicolae Ceausescu fleeing Bucharest by helicopter at 12:08 on 22nd December 1989. The talkshow takes place on the sixteenth anniversary of Ceausescu's downfall, and hinges on a debate about when the population of Vaslui began demonstrating.

The teacher maintains that he was part of a small group of people who shouted anti-Ceausescu slogans in the town square before 12:08, though all of the show's callers disagree with him. Defending himself against accusations that he is a liar, he repeatedly recounts what happened in the town square, adding extra information each time. The callers (including an ex-guard, with all the best lines, who exposes the show's inadequacies) all offer their own different versions of what took place. As in Rashomon, objective truth remains elusive.

Death Proof

Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof was originally part of Grindhouse, a double bill also featuring Planet Terror. After the lukewarm American reaction to Grindhouse, the concept was dropped for international markets, and instead the films have been released separately. The revised release pattern enabled Tarantino (who also did his own cinematography) to add almost thirty minutes to Death Proof, including much more dialogue and a lap-dancing scene which was completely cut from the Grindhouse version. After reviving other 1970s exploitation genres (Blaxploitation in Jackie Brown and 'chop socky' kung-fu in Kill Bill), Grindhouse is a natural progression, in which he uses jump-cuts and scratched prints to recreate the lurid experience of 1970s grindhouse films. Death Proof was shot entirely on location, which adds to the cheap, gritty grindhouse look.

The film has two halves, which are roughly parallel. In each segment, a quartet of women is observed at a distance by Stuntman Mike, a retired film stuntman. Mike is one of the few characters in cinema to get sexual pleasure from car crashes (the only other example that comes to mind is Crash, the JG Ballard novel and David Cronenberg film). The first half of Death Proof ends with Mike crashing into the girls' car at 200mph, killing all four of them. In the second half, after he chases the girls (in a stunningly tense though implausible sequence) they are eventually able to overtake him, leading to a (convincingly grindhouse-style) feminist revenge ending.

Death Proof (titled Thunder Bolt in a split-second jump-cut during the title sequence) is exactly what you'd expect a Tarantino car-chase film to be. It's full of witty, profane, trivial, naturalistic dialogue; it has moments of bloody, stylised violence; there are constant references to cult cinema, music, and television; there's a cool 1970s soundtrack; there's a low-angle point-of-view shot (from inside a car bonnet, rather than the usual car boot); it exists within the self-referential Tarantino universe, with name-checks for Big Kahuna Burger and Red Apple cigarettes (from Pulp Fiction) and recurring characters (from Kill Bill). There are even in-joke references to his other films: Tarantino (in a traditional cameo) repeats the "tasty beverage" line from Pulp Fiction, and Rosario Dawson's ringtone is a Bernard Herrmann composition used in Kill Bill.

War Of The Worlds

War Of The Worlds (a remake of the 1950s classic The War Of The Worlds) is a major disappointment. Its director (Steven Spielberg) and leading actor (Tom Cruise) are arguably the two most successful men in Hollywood, and their previous collaboration, Minority Report, was a sophisticated sci-fi thriller, though War Of The Worlds pales in comparison.

Tom Cruise gives his standard Cruise smirk and nothing more, so his character has no real development. Dakota Fanning, playing Cruise's daughter, spends the entire film screaming, in a hugely irritating performance. The plot, which is sometimes borderline illogical, sets up several possibilities that are later simply dropped. The feel-good ending is implausible.

The original version is one of the greatest science-fiction films of the 1950s, and one of only a handful of films featuring a full-scale alien invasion. (Others include Earth Vs The Flying Saucers, Independence Day, and the parodic Mars Attacks.) It is also, however, an overtly Christian film, with a quasi-Biblical narration.

Surprisingly, this religious aspect has been retained in Spielberg's remake. Spielberg's film, a blockbuster 'event movie', was released around the world, yet he still included references to "God's creatures" in the narration, turning American cultural imperialism into proselytism.

Tomyam Pladib

Tomyam Pladib, which opened on 19th March until 5th June, is an exhibition of Thai and Japanese art hosted by The Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok. The exhibition features Morakot, a video by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Morakot is the name of an abandoned Bangkok hotel, and Apichatpong's slow-moving camera films the hotel's deserted rooms filled with (digitally added) floating white feather-like objects. The effect is elegiac, evoking the memories of the hotel's long-departed guests.

Apichatpong discussed his various films and videos in a presentation this evening (Apichatpong On Video Works). He explained the origins of his multi-screen video installations (one of the more surprising sources being Thai melodramas), and played extracts from several of his films. He also screened a few short films in full:

Ghost Of Asia
(a man follows a child's instructions all day, with the action sped up for comic effect; part of the Tsunami Digital Short Film project),

0116643225059
(a telephone call between the director and his mother)

The Anthem
(a wonderful overture to cinema, first screened at the 11th Thai Short Film & Video Festival)

There was also a short Q&A session with the director.

5th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival

The 5th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival began yesterday, and runs until Sunday at Esplanade Cineplex. This year's event, organised by Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Project 304, has The More Things Change... as its central theme.

There will be two programmes commenting on post-Thaksin political instability (Learned Behaviour, 27th and 30th March; Track Changes, 26th and 30th March). Both of these programmes will include films from Spoken Silence at the 11th Thai Short Film & Video Festival, including Middle-Earth in Learned Behaviour. Another highlight is sure to be Thaiindie Buffet, featuring a selection of independent Thai films (Thaiindie Showcase, 29th March) and music videos (Experimental Music Videos, 27th March).

This evening, the Sompot+Thunska programme featured three works by Sompot Chidgasornpongse (Naoko Is Trying To Teach Me How To Make Tonkatsu In One Minute, 8,241.46 Miles Away From Home, and Landscape 101 01 1101 01...) and two new films by Thunska (Action! and Soak). There was also a Q&A session with Thunska.

Action! is a short compilation of out-takes from Zart Tanchareon's film God Man, featuring the actor Sitthipong Prempridi. Sitthipong died last year, and Action! is Thunska's tribute to him.

Soak stars Saifah Tanthana, who is filmed swimming in the sea (during which the soundtrack is dominated by the gurgling of the water) and riding a motorcycle, with the video camera representing Thunska's gaze. The film is an extended, improvised sequel to Thunska's first film, Private Life. It also recalls his film You Are Where I Belong To, which briefly features Thunska filming a man as they paddle in the sea.

Hajarat Muhammad

Rabindra Prasad Panda, author of the Odia-language book Hajarat Muhammad, has been arrested in Cuttack, India. The cover of his book features an image of Mohammed wielding a sword.

The Lord of the Rings:The Return of the King

The Return of the King is the final film in Peter Jackson’s trilogy The Lord of the Rings. The director’s cut is almost an hour longer than the theatrical version. This third film is more satisfying than the second, The Two Towers, perhaps because the battle of Gondor (in this film) has more narrative significance than the battle of Helm’s Deep (in the second film). In retrospect, the substantial time devoted to Helm’s Deep now seems more like an excuse for dramatic tension in the second film rather than an integral episode in the overall narrative.

The Lord of the Rings:The Two Towers

The Two Towers is the second film in Peter Jackson’s trilogy The Lord of the Rings, and the sequel to The Fellowship of the Ring. The director’s cut, which is substantially longer than the theatrical version, contains several unique sub-plots. It’s as impressive as The Fellowship, although slightly more conventional, as it intercuts between three plot strands. Andy Serkis is outstanding as the schizophrenic Gollum, physically ravaged and mentally unbalanced by his “precious” ring.