23 November 2009
Napoleon
Kubrick started pre-production for a proposed epic Napoleon Bonaparte biopic in 1968, and his research included collecting over 300 Napoleonic books (all of which are listed in Castle's bibliography), a database of 17,000 images (of which Castle reproduces 6,000; the full database is online), and 25,000 biographical index cards (of which Castle reproduces 100). The project was ultimately cancelled, however, after the box-office failure of another Napoleon film, Waterloo.
Castle's book, published by Taschen, features full reprints of Kubrick's Napoleon treatment and screenplay, and two drafts of his production notes. Selections from his thousands of letters, notebooks, and costume photographs are also included. Lengthy conversations between Kubrick and historian Felix Markham are meticulously and comprehensively transcribed.
After Kubrick died, his archive materials were displayed in a temporary Stanley Kubrick exhibition, and the permanent Stanley Kubrick Archive was established. The exhibition catalogue, published in 2004, contains a chapter about Napoleon (The Best Movie (N)ever Made, by Eva-Maria Magel), and Alison Castle's 2005 book The Stanley Kubrick Archives also includes a Napoleon chapter (The Epic That Never Was, by Gene D Phillips).
18 November 2009
The September Issue
The film basically confirms our perceptions of Wintour (her instant dismissals of clothes, photos, or comments she doesn't like), though more surprising are the supporting cast of Vogue's editorial staff. The likable, hippyish, down-to-earth Grace Coddington clomps around the office, and has Wintour's fashion instincts plus humour and sensitivity. In contrast, Andre Leon Talley is almost a caricature; with his ridiculous capes and designer towels, he looks like a huge, spangly potato.
16 November 2009
Reincarnate
Thunska and Panuwat play Jenga, with the red, yellow, and blue blocks symbolising the various political groups in Thailand. (Supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra wear red shirts; their antagonists, who support the current government, wear blue shirts; anti-Thaksin monarchists wear yellow shirts.) Thunska’s film This Area Is Under Quarantine (บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน) was more overtly political, though it was consequently banned. (His earlier films were screened at a retrospective in 2008.)
Reincarnate is arguably Thunska’s most explicit film, with a brief sequence (featuring Tharapong Buasai) which is visually similar to, and even more graphic than, his short documentary Unseen Bangkok (มหัศจรรย์กรุงเทพ). In both films, the same camera angle is used, foregrounding a particular part of the anatomy, which the director can’t resist touching. Reincarnate was intended partly as a protest against the 2009 Thai cinema ratings system, which prohibits frontal nudity amongst many other taboos; unsurprisingly, the film has not been submitted to the national ratings board.
There are some beautiful images in the film, such as Panuwat, in silhouette, framed by an open window. The film’s ending, in which Panuwat describes giving birth to a daughter, who then entices his spirit to leave his body, is deliberately ambiguous, and tonally similar to the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who was a co-producer of Reincarnate.
15 November 2009
7th World Film Festival of Bangkok
A Letter To Uncle Boonmee (จดหมายถึงลุงบุญมี), part of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Primitive installation, was screened on 9th and 15th November. Unfortunately, This Area Is Under Quarantine (บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน), by Thunska Pansittivorakul, was not shown, after the Ministry of Culture refused to give it a rating. The documentary contains footage of the 2004 Tak Bai incident, taken from a VCD distributed by Same Sky (ฟ้าเดียวกัน) magazine.
11 November 2009
The Remaining Signs Of Past Centuries
(Jyllands-Posten published twelve Mohammed caricatures in 2005, inspiring numerous satirical Mohammed cartoons.) Mohammed, as depicted in The Remaining Signs Of Past Centuries, appears uncensored on the covers of two books published last year: Why We Left Islam: Former Muslims Speak Out (Susan Crimp and Joel Richardson) and a reprint of Mohammed: The Prophet Of Islam (HEE Hayes).
09 November 2009
Controverses
One of the most powerful photographs is a picture of a severed hand, from a victim of the World Trade Center terrorist attack. The image (2001), by Todd Maisel, was published by only a single newspaper (New York's Daily News), while other American papers made a collective decision to avoid printing photographs of the victims. (Similarly, during World War II there was an American government ban on publication of images of dead US soldiers, though Life magazine was finally permitted to print George Strock’s photograph of three dead soldiers on 20th September 1943.)
The two Iraq wars have produced similarly controversial images (not included in the book). A photo by Ken Jarecke of an Iraqi soldier's charred body was rejected by all newspapers except The Observer (which printed it on 10th March 1991), and "a gruesome image of a young child's head split open" was the subject of much debate in the UK media before finally being printed by The Guardian (on 28th March 2003).
Arguably the most shocking picture is Kevin Carter's photograph (1993) of a vulture following a starving Sudanese child. After taking the photograph, Carter shooed the potential scavenger away, though he was later criticised for not helping the child any further.
The book includes some famously provocative images, such as Oliviero Toscani's Benetton poster showing a nun kissing a priest (1992) and Andres Serrano's Piss Christ (1987). A Robert Mapplethorpe self-portrait (1978) is included, though it's one of Mapplethorpe's less graphic images.
Several controversial photographs of naked children are featured, including a sexualised portrait by Irina Ionesco (1970) of her daughter Eva, and notorious images by Graham Ovenden (1984) and Jock Sturges (1989). Annelies Strba's Sonja In Her Bath (1985) and a portrait of Brooke Shields by Gary Gross (1975), both of which have been removed by the police from UK galleries, are also included. Nan Goldin's "Klara and Adda Belly Dancing" [sic] is mentioned though not reproduced.
A paparazzo photo of Princess Diana taken by Jacques Langevin in the moments before her car crash (1997) is included. The infamous photo of Diana receiving first aid after the crash is mentioned in the text without being reproduced.
03 November 2009
Suicide Mind
02 November 2009
European Union Film Festival 2009
The 2007 festival also featured an outstanding Romanian film, Four Months, Three Weeks, & Two Days. Both of these films have also been screened at Chulalongkorn University's International Film Festival: Four Months, Three Weeks, & Two Days in 2008, and California Dreamin' at the 2008-2009 event.
01 November 2009
ภาพยนตร์ศรีศาลายา
Art & Words
31 October 2009
Screamfest
30 October 2009
Pop Life:
Art in a Material World
In a letter to the Tate, the Met confirmed that Spiritual America is “a level 1 indecent image of a child. The possession and distribution of which are criminal offences.” They also cautioned that the catalogue could not be legally sold uncensored: “if the book were to be distributed in its original form (i.e. with the picture of Brooke Shields in it) an offence would be committed under the Protection of Children Act 1978.”
This makes the catalogue one of the few commercially published books that are illegal to possess in the UK. Other titles on this list could conceivably include I last och lust: sexuella bilder förr och nu (‘in vice and lust: sexual images past and present’), by Swedish anti-pornography campaigner Hans Nestius; and William Powell’s The Anarchist Cookbook, which has been cited in several trials of terrorists and other extremists.
In his catalogue essay, Jack Bankowsky acknowledges that Shields was “decidedly underage” and that “Prince invites us to ogle Brooke Shields in her prepubescent nakedness”. To avoid prosecution, a sticker has now been placed over the offending photograph: “This image has been obscured on legal advice” (p. 123).
The catalogue itself, edited by Bankowsky, Alison M. Gingeras, and Catherine Wood, is an excellent exploration of artists, such as Andy Warhol, who “engaged with mass media and the market and cultivated artistic personas”. Scott Rothkopf’s essay on Jeff Koons’ Made in Heaven series is a particular highlight. There is also an extensive bibliography.
Artificial Intelligence —
From Stanley Kubrick to Steven Spielberg:
The Vision Behind the Film
AI was originally conceived by Kubrick, who worked with Brian Aldiss on a treatment and screenplay based on Super-Toys Last All Summer Long, a short story by Aldiss. Kubrick subsequently collaborated with Bob Shaw, Ian Watson, and Sara Maitland on revised versions of the script, and production was scheduled to start in 1999 after the completion of Eyes Wide Shut.
After Kubrick’s death during the post-production of Eyes Wide Shut, Spielberg was invited to take over the project, and wrote a new screenplay based on Kubrick's notes. The film, directed by Spielberg, was released in 2001.
The book features a foreword by Spielberg that gives a brief summary of his friendship with Kubrick. (Spielberg was more forthcoming in an interview for the Channel 5 documentary Steven and Stanley.) There is an account of AI’s pre-production by Struthers, who works with the Kubrick Archive, though it glosses over Kubrick’s creative differences with his various script collaborators. (Aldiss and Maitland gave their sides of the story in the Channel 4 documentary The Last Movie.)
29 October 2009
El Pais
28 October 2009
Drag Me To Hell
The plot, in which a curse is placed on a bank employee, provides plenty of gory set-pieces, though the tone is always tongue-in-cheek rather than truly horrific. (A director's cut, more violent than the theatrical version, has also been released.) All hell breaks loose for the final confrontation with the demon, and this scene includes a great moment in which a goat becomes possessed. The last-minute twist is actually revealed on the film's poster.
Broken Embraces
Broken Embraces is more consistently restrained than Almodovar's two previous films, Volver and Bad Education, neither of which take their dark themes completely seriously. Broken Embraces does have some comic relief, however: rushes from the film-within-the-film, the melodramatic Chicas & Maletas (which is modelled on Almodovar's frenetic comedy Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown).
Almodovar has described Broken Embraces as a film noir. It does feature typical noir themes, such as jealousy and betrayal, though Lena is no femme fatale, and Almodovar's sets and lighting are only slightly less bright than his usual style.
Penelope Cruz is outstanding as the writer/director's lover, and Blanca Portillo is also particularly effective as his agent. Cruz and Portillo both previously appeared in Volver.
It's hard to feel sorry for the central character, however; he is blind and in mourning, yet he lives in a beautiful apartment, has several assistants, and apparently seduces women on a regular basis. For me, Almodovar's greatest film is still Talk To Her, with its devastating narrative, sympathetic and morally ambiguous characters, and moments of outrageous comedy.
27 October 2009
Filthy English
Filthy English is useful for its contemporary examples, though it is slightly anecdotal in tone. Silverton has conducted substantial research [he cites my website as an "extensive source"], and he has also interviewed writers and performers about their attitudes to the words he discusses, though there are no footnotes.
20 October 2009
99 Classic Movies
For People In A Hurry
- The Karate Kid
- Dirty Dancing
- Star Wars IV: A New Hope
- Ghostbusters
- Back To The Future
- Raiders Of The Lost Ark
- Gone With The Wind
- Fatal Attraction
- Casablanca
- Radio Days
- The Terminator
- Alien
- Blade Runner
- Spartacus
- The Third Man
- Citizen Kane
- Easy Rider
- Taxi Driver
- Some Like It Hot
- Deliverance
- Bicycle Thieves
- Cinema Paradiso
- The Seventh Seal
- The Great Dictator
- Lawrence Of Arabia
- The Shining
- The Maltese Falcon
- King Kong
- The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
- Jaws
- Dawn Of The Dead
- The Creature From The Black Lagoon
- Showgirls
- The Mummy
- A Fish Called Wanda
- The Breakfast Club
- Mad Max
- Die Hard
- Delicatessen
- The Searchers
- Psycho
- Battleship Potemkin
- Un Chien Andalou
- The Misfits
- The Public Enemy
- Rocky
- The Blue Lagoon
- Wild At Heart
- Annie
- The Sound Of Music
- The African Queen
- Singin' In The Rain
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- Dr Zhivago
- A Clockwork Orange
- Bullitt
- The Sting
- Rebel Without A Cause
- Barbarella
- The Evil Dead
- Police Academy
- The Blues Brothers
- Yojimbo
- The Bridge On The River Kwai
- M. Hulot's Holiday
- The Guns Of Navarone
- Seven Samurai
- The Thing
- Escape From New York
- The Testament Of Dr Mabuse
- Metropolis
- Enter The Dragon
- Jailhouse Rock
- Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
- Schindler's List
- Brazil
- The Wizard Of Oz
- Bagdad Cafe
- The Big Blue
- Scarface
- The Godfather
- A Streetcar Named Desire
- Dr Strangelove
- Pulp Fiction
- ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
- Rosemary's Baby
- The Exorcist
- Breakfast At Tiffany's
- Forrest Gump
- The Shawshank Redemption
- GoodFellas
- Fight Club
- North By Northwest
- The Silence Of The Lambs
- Sunset Boulevard
- Apocalypse Now
- Platoon
- It's A Wonderful Life
- The Matrix
18 October 2009
Story Of The Scene
Other chapters have less focus, and simply summarise general trivia about each film. In some cases, though, the author has interviewed the directors involved, and this results in a few gems: Park Chan-Wook discussing the octopus-eating scene in Oldboy, and John Boorman describing Stanley Kubrick's fascination with the rape scene in Deliverance.
16 October 2009
The Tate Guide To Modern Art Terms
15 October 2009
Dance With The Devil
07 October 2009
Water In Milk Exists
04 October 2009
Akhbar Al Youm
01 October 2009
Spiritual America
The exhibition opened today in London, and will close on 17th January 2010, though the Shields photograph was removed yesterday following a visit from the Metropolitan Police. The exhibition catalogue has also been withdrawn from sale.
The photo, originally titled The Woman in the Child, was taken in 1975 by Gary Gross for his Little Women exhibition in New York. It was subsequently published in Sugar and Spice (1976), Photo magazine (1978), Index on Censorship magazine (May–June 1996), and American Photo magazine (September–October 2009). It was also part of the Controverses (‘controversies’) exhibition, which has been shown at the Musee de l’Elysee in Lausanne (2008), the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris (2009), and the Botanique in Brussels (2009).
In 1983, Richard Prince rephotographed the 1975 image, retitled it Spiritual America, and exhibited it again in New York. Spiritual America has been published in the Brazilian magazine Item-4 (1996) and in the book Stripped Bare: The Body Revealed in Contemporary Art (2004). It was included in the New Museum exhibition East Village USA in New York (2004), and was the centrepiece of a major Prince retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (2007–2008).
Two years ago, another UK gallery also removed a photograph of a naked child (Nan Goldin’s Klara and Edda Belly-Dancing) following police advice, though it was later cleared of obscenity. 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 on similar charges, though they were later acquitted.
30 September 2009
2009 Bangkok International Film Festival
The Festival also included Lars von Trier's provocative Antichrist (25th and 26th September), Giorgos Lanthimos's similarly explicit Dogtooth (26th and 29th September), Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces (28th and 29th September), and Pen-ek Ratanaruang's Nymph (the short version rather than the Cannes version; 27th and 29th September). (Pen-ek's Ploy was screened in 2007, and his Invisible Waves opened the Festival in 2006.) The Festival's poster (Beauty Eternal) has been designed by Wisit Sasanatieng, who also designed the 2008 poster.
24 September 2009
Celebration
The double-disc album track-list is: Hung Up, Music, Vogue, Four Minutes, Holiday, Everybody, Like A Virgin, Into The Groove, Like A Prayer, Ray Of Light, Sorry, Express Yourself, Open Your Heart, Borderline, Secret, Erotica, Justify My Love, Revolver, Dress You Up, Material Girl, La Isla Bonita, Papa Don't Preach, Lucky Star, Burning Up, Crazy For You, Who's That Girl, Frozen, Miles Away, Take A Bow, Live To Tell, Beautiful Stranger, Hollywood, Die Another Day, Don't Tell Me, Cherish, and Celebration. A single-disc version is also available, with fewer tracks. It's So Cool is available as a digital bonus track.
The video track-list is: Hung Up, Music, Vogue, Four Minutes, Holiday, Like A Virgin, Into The Groove, Like A Prayer, Ray Of Light, Sorry, Express Yourself, Open Your Heart, Borderline, Secret, Erotica, Justify My Love, Material Girl, La Isla Bonita, Papa Don't Preach, Lucky Star, Burning Up, Crazy For You, Who's That Girl, Frozen, Miles Away, Take A Bow, Beautiful Stranger, Hollywood, Die Another Day, Don't Tell Me, Cherish, Celebration, Deeper And Deeper, I'll Remember, Rain, Secret, Bedtime Stories, I Want You, You'll See, The Power Of Goodbye, American Pie, What It Feels Like For A Girl, Love Profusion, Get Together, Jump, Give It 2 Me, and True Blue.
Antichrist
The film is divided into a series of chapters, and also includes a prologue and epilogue. In the prologue, which is filmed in slow-motion and black-and-white, a man and woman have sex while their son falls to his death. The man, who is a psychotherapist, helps the woman overcome her grief (though his psychobabble is ineffective), and the couple take a trip to their cabin in the woods. The cabin is called Eden; the names of the protagonists are never revealed, though the Biblical reference is clear enough.
The woman is writing a thesis on gynocide (the systematic murder of women). 'Gynocide' was coined by the feminist writer Mary Daly in her excellent book Gyn/Ecology, though Antichrist is arguably an anti-feminist film. Like Eve, the woman becomes increasingly unsympathetic as a character, most obviously when she (unconvincingly) drills a hole through the man's leg. The film's ending suggests that, as in medieval witch trials, feminine evil must be destroyed.
Though most of the film is shot realistically with hand-held cameras and jump-cuts, there are some inexplicable fantasy sequences involving wild animals, notably a ludicrous talking fox who, in the director's voice, says "Chaos reigns!". There are also three close-up inserts which are included purely for shock value, featuring hardcore sex (as in The Idiots) and female circumcision.
22 September 2009
Sex No Go
The Lego picture actually shows two Israelites, and was created by The Brick Testament website; it was used as a Mohammed parody in 2006, one of many satirical Mohammed images produced following the controversy surrounding twelve Mohammed caricatures published by Jyllands-Posten.
Mohammed married Aisha when she was a child; their relationship has previously been portrayed in a Dutch cartoon and an American novel. Mohammed has also been depicted in other sexual situations: with Jesus, in a Canadian magazine; and with Jesus, Moses, and Buddha, in an Israeli magazine.
Bodyworlds
This year, two corpses posed in mid-coitus were added to the exhibition, though they had to be removed before the exhibition was shown in Cologne (Germany), Augsburg (Germany), and Zurich (Switzerland). (A Bodyworlds imitator, Our Body, was banned in France earlier this year.)
18 September 2009
The 100 Best Films
1. All About Eve
2. Double Indemnity
3. Singin' In The Rain
4. The Wild Bunch
5. The Lady Eve
6. The Battle Of Algiers
7. Great Expectations
8. Vertigo
9. The Conformist
10. Chinatown
11. Brief Encounter
12. Kind Hearts & Coronets
13. This Is Spinal Tap
14. The Night Of The Hunter
15. To Have & Have Not
16. The Godfather I-II
17. Notorious
18. Sweet Smell Of Success
19. A Man Escaped
20. Citizen Kane
21. The Big Sleep
22. Raging Bull
23. Sherlock Jr
24. The Third Man
25. The Rules Of The Game
26. Fear Eats The Soul
27. Casablanca
28. The Red Shoes
29. Alien
30. The Magnificent Ambersons
31. On The Waterfront
32. Groundhog Day
33. The Apartment
34. The Last Detail
35. Duck Soup
36. L'Enfant Sauvage
37. Manhattan
38. Once Upon A Time In America
39. Breathless
40. Blue Velvet
41. Taxi Driver
42. Oliver!
43. It Happened One Night
44. Nashville
45. L'Atalante
46. Touch Of Evil
47. Gone With The Wind
48. The Conversation
49. Sunset Boulevard
50. Meet Me In St Louis
51. Overlord
52. Ball Of Fire
53. Sullivan's Travels
54. There Will Be Blood
55. LA Confidential
56. His Girl Friday
57. The Chant Of Jimmie Blacksmith
58. The Fallen Idol
59. The Garden Of The Finzi-Continis
60. Psycho
61. The Life & Death Of Colonel Blimp
62. Toy Story
63. The Dark Mirror
64. Downfall
65. Tokyo Story
66. Rashomon
67. Wild Strawberries
68. Rebecca
69. Aguirre: The Wrath Of God
70. The Lost Weekend
71. Barry Lyndon
72. Smiles Of A Summer Night
73. In A Lonely Place
74. Rumble Fish
75. The Passion Of Joan Of Arc
76. The Deer Hunter
77. Rififi
78. The Lives Of Others
79. The Adventures Of Robin Hood
80. Duel
81. Mean Streets
82. The Lusty Men
83. The Searchers
84. The Reckless Moment
85. Ridicule
86. Diner
87. Peeping Tom
88. The Leopard
89. Trainspotting
90. La Kermesse Heroique
91. I Am Cuba
92. Nights Of Cabiria
93. Together
94. Picnic At Hanging Rock
95. Don't Look Now
96. Los Olividados
97. Election
98. Unforgiven
99. The Wages Of Fear
100. Army In The Shadows