ทำลายจำนำข้าว แต่ฆ่าชาวนา

ทำลายจำนำข้าว แต่ฆ่าชาวนา, a defence of Pheu Thai's rice subsidy policy, was published on 1st May, though there have been several attempts to prevent its distribution. Police and military officers suspended a press conference announcing the book on 25th March, and a book launch scheduled for 29th April was cancelled. 190 copies of the book were seized from the home of one of its writers, Suchart Lainamngern, on 27th May. (The other authors are Yuttapong Charasathien, Niyom Changpinij, Surasarn Phasuk, and Somkid Chuakong.)

The rice subsidy scheme was implemented by former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra in 2011. Her government agreed to pay farmers up to 50% above the market rate for their rice, intending to withhold it from the world market and thus drive up the price. As a result, countries such as India and Vietnam increased their rice exports, and the government was left with vast stockpiles of rice that it could not sell.

In 2014, the national Anti-Corruption Commission brought charges against Yingluck for her role in the policy, and she was retroactively impeached by the National Legislative Assembly in 2015. After an investigation into the scheme, she was fined $1 billion last year.

Bad Taste Movie Night

Bad Taste Café, a new Bangkok bar with intentionally kitsch décor, will be screening the exploitation classic Pink Flamingos tomorrow. Directed by John Waters, Pink Flamingos is the ultimate example of transgressive cinema, and the perfect choice for the café’s inaugural Bad Taste Movie Night.

100 Greatest Movies

Empire has released the results of its 100 Greatest Movies online readers' poll. The list will be featured in the magazine's July issue, which will be published on 15th June with five different covers: The Godfather, The Lord Of The Rings III, Star Wars V, Pulp Fiction, and Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

This is Empire's eighth greatest-films poll. The previous ones are: 100 Favourite Films Of All Time (1996), Your 100 Greatest Films Ever! (1999), The 50 Best Films (2001), 100 Greatest Movies Of All Time (2004), 201 Greatest Movies Of All Time (2006), The 500 Greatest Movies Of All Time (2008), and The 301 Greatest Films Of All Time (2014).

The 100 Greatest Movies are as follows:

100. Stand By Me
99. Raging Bull
98. Amelia
97. Titanic
96. Good Will Hunting
95. Arrival
94. Lost In Translation
93. The Princess Bride
92. The Terminator
91. The Prestige
90. No Country For Old Men
89. Shaun Of The Dead
88. The Exorcist
87. Predator
86. Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade
85. Leon
84. Rocky
83. True Romance
82. Some Like It Hot
81. The Social Network
80. Spirited Away
79. Captain America: Civil War
78. Oldboy
77. Toy Story
76. A Clockwork Orange
75. Fargo
74. Mulholland Drive
73. Seven Samurai
72. Rear Window
71. Hot Fuzz
70. The Lion King
69. Singin' In The Rain
68. Ghostbusters
67. Memento
66. Star Wars VI: Return Of The Jedi
65. The Avengers
64. LA Confidential
63. Donnie Darko
62. La La Land
61. Forrest Gump
60. American Beauty
59. ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
58. Inglourious Basterds
57. Whiplash
56. Reservoir Dogs
55. Pan's Labyrinth
54. Vertigo
53. Psycho
52. Once Upon A Time In The West
51. It's A Wonderful Life
50. Lawrence Of Arabia
49. Trainspotting
48. The Silence Of The Lambs
47. Interstellar
46. Citizen Kane
45. Drive
44. Gladiator
43. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
42. There Will Be Blood
41. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
40. Twelve Angry Men
39. Saving Private Ryan
38. Mad Max: Fury Road
37. The Thing
36. The Departed
35. The Shining
34. Guardians Of The Galaxy
33. Schindler's List
32. The Usual Suspects
31. Taxi Driver
30. Seven
29. The Bog Lebowski
28. Casablanca
27. The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
26. Heat
25. Terminator II: Judgment Day
24. The Matrix
23. The Lord Of The Rings II: The Two Towers
22. Apocalypse Now
21. 2001: A Space Odyssey
20. Die Hard
19. Jurassic Park
18. Inception
17. Fight Club
16. The Lord Of The Rings III: The Return Of The King
15. Aliens
14. Alien
13. Blade Runner
12. The Godfather II
11. Back To The Future
10. The Lord Of The Rings I: The Fellowship Of The Ring
9. Star Wars IV: A New Hope
8. Jaws
7. Raiders Of The Lost Ark
6. GoodFellas
5. Pulp Fiction
4. The Shawshank Redemption
3. The Dark Knight
2. Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back
1. The Godfather

[Some entries in the list share the same titles as other films or remakes. Some Like It Hot is the Billy Wilder classic, Psycho is the original version, Titanic is the James Cameron version, and The Avengers is the Joss Whedon version.]

Bangkok Screening Room

Later this week, Citizen Kane and Stagecoach, currently showing at Bangkok Screening Room, will be joined by a third all-time classic. Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, one of the greatest films ever made about Hollywood, will be shown on 16th, 17th, 18th, 20th, 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 24th, 25th, and 28th June; and 1st, 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 8th July.

Tape Art

Tape Art: Materials, Techniques, Projects & Inspiration is the first book to survey the use of adhesive tape as an artistic medium. Written by Eva Hauck and the Klebebande tape artists collective, it was originally published in German (subtitled Kunst Mit Klebeband Ideen & Projekte), and begins with the Klebebande's motto, "tape is the new paint."

Photographs of contemporary tape art in situ are included (mostly from the past decade, with a handful of early examples from the 1990s). There is also a brief historical introduction by tape art pioneer Michael Townsend: "Tape art has no long history to boast of, but does have an extensive and ever expanding catalog of expressions: from protest and performance art, to the beautification and occupation of public space, to advertising."

Post-Truth

After the UK referendum on EU membership and Donald Trump's US presidential election victory, several books have discussed the so-called 'post-truth' era. In Post-Truth: The New War On Truth & How To Fight Back, Matthew d'Ancona credits Steve Tesich with coining the term in 1992 ("we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world"), though it was only after Brexit and Trump that post-truth became a buzzword: "2016 was the year that definitively launched the era of 'Post-Truth'."

Of course, d'Ancona highlights Vote Leave's campaign pledge ("the assertion - emblazoned on the side of the Leave battle bus - that Brexit would yield a £350 million weekly top-up for the cash-strapped NHS") and explains its mendacity: "To borrow a distinction often made by Trump's supporters, it was evidently a mistake to take the Leave campaign literally rather than seriously." He also itemises some of Trump's lies and exaggerations, which were labelled "truthful hyperbole" by Tony Schwartz (ghost writer of The Art Of The Deal) and defended as "alternative facts" by Kellyanne Conway.

Explaining the origins of post-truth, d'Ancona notes the commercial value in sensational falsehoods: "Post-Truth sells, too. Those whom the Columbia University professor Tim Wu has called the 'attention merchants' compete for our time - and market it as a hugely valuable product." He also cites the ideological fragmentation of media and audiences: "The consequence is that opinions tend to be reinforced and falsehoods unchallenged. We languish in the so-called 'filter bubble'."

The book also reminds us of pre-Trump, post-truth presidential soundbites, from "I am not a crook" (Richard Nixon) to "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" (Bill Clinton). This history, d'Ancona argues, has contributed to a public distrust of authority, a situation which was then exploited by partisan media: "If institutional failure has eroded the primacy of truth, so too has the multi-billion-dollar industry of misinformation," leading to the proliferation of 'fake news' online.

Apichatpong WeerasethakulSourcebook

Apichatpong Weerasethakul Sourcebook was published last year to coincide with the director's first museum retrospective, The Serenity Of Madness. Rather than a conventional exhibition catalogue, the book is a collection of documents from Apichatpong's personal archive, including diary entries, location photographs, and a 100-page essay by Jenjira Pongpas Widner, who has appeared in Cemetery Of Splendour, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, and several of his short films. It also features reprints of articles that have inspired some of Apichatpong's works (including a history of trepanation), alongside interviews with the director.

The Filter Bubble

The Filter Bubble, by Eli Pariser, was first published in 2011, though its central thesis has regained currency in the current debate surrounding fake news and political polarisation. Pariser describes how online personalisation algorithms "create a unique universe of information for each of us - what I've come to call a filter bubble - which fundamentally alters the way we encounter ideas and information."

He argues that the 'filter bubble' acts to reinforce our ideological positions by presenting us only with opinions with which we already agree, and that this process is invisible and involuntary: "When you turn on Fox News or read The Nation, you're making a decision about what kind of filter to use to make sense of the world. It's an active process, and like putting on a pair of tinted glasses, you can guess how the editors' leaning shapes your perception. You don't make the same kind of choice with personalized filters."

The 'filter bubble' is not a new concept, though it was popularised by Pariser's book. It's related to the notion of 'cyberbalkanization' coined twenty years ago, and Tim Berners-Lee has criticised the 'walled garden' effect of closed systems such as app stores that fragment the web.

The impact of the bubble can be seen in Thailand: red-shirts and yellow-shirts each have different sources of information (Voice TV and Manager, respectively). Similarly, CNN's Reliable Sources contrasted Democrat and Republican media (respectively, MSNBC and Fox News), calling it "Red News/Blue News".

The Filter Bubble is subtitled What The Internet Is Hiding From You. For the US paperback edition, the subtitle was changed to How The New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read & How We Think.

ห้องเช่าหมายเลข 112

ห้องเช่าหมายเลข 112, edited by Apirada Meedetch, profiles twenty-two people who have been charged with lèse-majesté in Thailand. The book does not present arguments for or against the royal defamation law itself; instead, it elicits sympathy for the offenders (including Somyot Prueksakasemsuk) and humanises them by describing their families and their personal circumstances. (Most of the subjects are identified only by their given names, some of which have been changed to protect their identities.)

Lèse-majesté is strictly enforced and broadly interpreted in Thailand. Bail is very rarely granted to suspects, and court cases are heard in camera. Since the coup, lèse-majesté cases have been tried in military courts. Consequently, self-censorship is routinely exercised by Thai writers, and very little commentary about the law is published, making this book both surprising and welcome. (The only full-length study of lèse-majesté - in either Thai or English - is Truth On Trial In Thailand, by David Streckfuss.)

Hit Makers

Hit Makers, by Derek Thompson, is a study of how blockbusters and bestsellers are born. (Its focus is squarely on the head of the sales curve, rather than the long tail.) There is, of course, no magic formula to explain commercial success, though Thompson identifies some of the key factors, such as the 'aesthetic aha' principle: "The best hit makers are gifted at creating moments of meaning by marrying new and old, anxiety and understanding. They are architects of familiar surprises."

The book's most significant contribution is its refutation of the myth that cultural memes 'go viral'. Drawing on a research paper from 2012 (The Structure Of Online Diffusion Networks), Thompson argues that viral hits rely on mass dissemination in addition to word-of-mouth: "For most so-called viral ideas or products to become massive hits, they almost always depend on several moments where they spread to many, many people from one source." Metaphorically, viral content is propagated via water pumps (broadcasting to a wide audience) rather than water coolers (conversations between individuals).

Hit Makers is subtitled The Science Of Popularity In An Age Of Distraction. In the UK, the subtitle was simplified to How Things Become Popular. Thompson's articles for The Atlantic magazine include early examinations of online clickbait, which he defines in Hit Makers: "An article is considered clickbait if the headline gets the reader to click on a story that doesn't live up to its promise."

News Writing & Reporting

News Writing & Reporting: The Complete Guide For Today's Journalist, by Chip Scanlan and Richard Craig, is a useful all-in-one textbook for journalism students, which covers not only writing but also interviewing, research, and ethics. The sidebars ("The Coaching Way", "Chip's Corner") are a bit gimmicky, though this is the most wide-ranging guide to news writing for print, online, and broadcasting. The only missing element is headline writing, which is covered in Anna McKane's News Writing.

News Writing

News Writing, by Anna McKane, is an excellent introduction to writing news stories, with practical advice that's ideal for journalism students. McKane covers the standard topics - news values, the inverted pyramid, and the five Ws (who, what, where, when, and why) - though she also discusses subjects overlooked by some other guides, such as headline writing and accurate reporting. Some minor criticisms: the focus on print journalism excludes broadcasting, and the material relating to grammar and punctuation would be more appropriate in a general English style guide.

'Pink slime'

A meat processing company, Beef Products, is suing ABC News for defamation and seeking $5.7 billion in damages. The suit was filed in 2012, and the trial began yesterday. Beef Products alleges that ABC News "engaged in a month-long vicious, concerted disinformation campaign" with its investigation into lean, finely textured beef (LFTB), which is added to some processed meat.

ABC World News Tonight first reported on LFTB on 7th March 2012, describing it as "'pink slime', beef trimmings that were once used only in dog food and cooking oil, now sprayed with ammonia to make them safe to eat and then added to most ground beef as a cheaper filling." (There is no neutral term to describe the product: LFTB is euphemistic, and 'pink slime' is dysphemistic.)

ABC News did not coin the term 'pink slime', though its series of World News Tonight reports popularised it and increased public awareness of the presence of LFTB in processed beef. As The New York Times reported on 31st December 2009, the phrase was first used internally by the US Department of Agriculture: "department microbiologist, Gerald Zirnstein, called the processed beef "pink slime" in a 2002 e-mail message to colleagues". Jamie Oliver also used the term, in a 12th April 2009 episode of Food Revolution: "a new world of food. It's called pink slime."

Risomania

Risomania: The New Spirit Of Printing - Risograph, Mimeograph & Other Stencil Duplicators, by John Z Komurki, is "the first book to document... the history, present and future of the Riso," examining the use of the Risograph printer in graphic design. It includes a portfolio of contemporary prints, an international directory of printing presses, and some fascinating vintage commercial illustrations.

The book begins with a history of stencil duplication: "To date there has been no comprehensive account published of it, although there are many books waiting to be written. Here, all we have the space to do is lay out the essentials of the development of this technology, and try to straighten out some of the misconceptions that bedevil the field." Duplicators such as the mimeograph, cyclograph, hectograph, papyrograph, and typograph are all discussed.

Risomania was first published in French translation (subtitled Risographe, Mimeographe & Autre Duplicopieurs). It's an interesting account of a technology that's missing from the standard histories of printing, Prints & Visual Communication (by William M Ivins) and the definitive The Art Of The Print (by Fritz Eichenberg).

Empire's 100 Greatest Movies

Empire has launched another 100 Greatest Movies online readers' survey, after previous polls in 2008 and 2014. The results will be published later this month, in the July issue of the magazine.

Cinema Explicito

Cinema Explicito: Representacoes Cinematograficas Do Sexo, by Rodrigo Gerace, is a study of the cinematic representation of sex, especially the depiction of unsimulated sex in experimental and arthouse films. It's a comprehensive treatment of the topic, with an attractive design, though it covers much the same ground as Screening Sex, by Linda Williams, which is the definitive book on the subject.

The Attention Merchants

In The Master Switch, Tim Wu highlighted the dangers of the oligopolisation of entertainment and communication. His new book, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble To Get Inside Our Heads, is similarly wide-ranging, analysing the symbiotic relationship between advertising and the media. Wu's title, The Attention Merchants, positions itself as a successor to The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard's early and influential critique of manipulative advertising.

Wu is as critical of advertising as Packard, emphasising its detrimental impact on the commercial media and entertainment it sustains, from the penny press to prime-time broadcasting and clickbait: "The attention merchant had always tried to reach as broad an audience as possible, bombarding them with as many ads as they'd stand before going into total revolt." (Mark Tungate's Adland is a more favourable history of the advertising industry.)

The 4th Silent Film Festival In Thailand

The 4th Silent Film Festival In Thailand will take place in Bangkok next month. As in previous years (2014, 2015, and 2016), the Festival will feature a week of screenings at the Lido and Scala cinemas. The highlight of this year's Festival is The Mark Of Zorro, which will be screened at Lido on 9th and 11th June, with live musical accompaniment by acclaimed composer Neil Brand.

The Mark Of Zorro was directed by Fred Niblo, who also made the silent version of Ben-Hur. Starring Douglas Fairbanks, Zorro was one of the first adventure films featuring a swashbuckling hero. Fairbanks would play several similar characters in subsequent films throughout the 1920s (including Robin Hood, The Three Musketeers, The Thief Of Bagdad, and The Black Pirate), influencing Errol Flynn's performances in adventure films of the 1930s (Captain Blood and The Adventures Of Robin Hood).

The Festival opens on 8th June and closes on 14th June. The will be a photographic exhibition at Scala, Light & Shadow: Films Of The Weimar Republic, for the duration of the Festival.

Bangkok Screening Room

Later this month, Bangkok Screening Room will be showing John Ford’s classic western, Stagecoach, the film that revived the Hollywood western and established many of the genre’s modern conventions. Orson Welles claimed that he watched Stagecoach every night for a month, while he was preparing to direct Citizen Kane, his first film. Citizen Kane, arguably the most influential film ever made, will be shown at Bangkok Screening Room next month.

Stagecoach will be shown on 30th and 31st May; and 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 14th, 15th, 17th, and 18th June. Citizen Kane will be screened on 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 20th, 21st, and 24th June.

Woman's Day

Actress Rebel Wilson has given evidence at the Supreme Court of Victoria in Australia, after she sued the publisher of Woman's Day magazine for defamation. In its 25th May 2015 issue (published on 18th May 2015), Woman's Day revealed Wilson's real name, and claimed that she had lied about her age.

The magazine quoted a high school classmate's description of Wilson: "Her name is – or was – Melanie Elizabeth Bownds, and she's 36 – she was born in 1979 and we left school in 1997." The article also included photographs of Wilson from her high school yearbook.

Wilson launched her lawsuit on 16th May last year, and the article was deleted from the Woman's Day website on the same day. In the magazine's print edition, the article was headlined "Just who is the REAL Rebel?"

(Un) Happy Birthday

The Democracy Restoration Group, a new pro-democracy group, held a seminar marking the third anniversary of the 2014 coup yesterday and today. (Un) Happy Birthday, at Thammasat University in Bangkok, was subject to several restrictions imposed by the military government.

Participants were not permitted to use the words 'coup' or 'dictator', and they were not allowed to refer to the junta by name. The poster for the event was censored to remove the Thai abbreviation for the NCPO ("คสช"). To circumvent the restrictions, several speakers held up placards containing the banned words during their speeches.

Similarly, when an army spokesman participated in a discussion at the FCCT in Bangkok shortly after the coup, he asked participants to refer to the coup euphemistically as an "intervention". After initially pledging to hold an election in 2015, the junta has repeatedly delayed its 'roadmap', and an election is not realistically expected until 2018 or later.

Thailand’s Political History:From the 13th Century to Recent Times

The second edition of Thailand’s Political History, by B.J. Terwiel, was published in 2011 with a new subtitle (From the 13th Century to Recent Times). This edition contains new chapters on Thailand’s political origins (the Sukhothai era) and contemporary events (the People’s Alliance for Democracy protests, the nullification of the 2006 election, the 2006 coup, the disqualification of Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, the dissolutions Thai Rak Thai and the People Power Party, the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship riots, the red-shirt protests, and the 2010 military massacre).

Terwiel, who has been writing about Thai history for forty years, takes a refreshingly skeptical view of the nationalistic accounts of early Thai history, which he calls “national myths.” For example, he compares six different accounts of King Naresuan’s elephant duel. While the objective truth remains lost in the mists of time, recognising that these events are open to multiple interpretations is significant in itself: “It is doubtful whether anyone will unravel the details of this battle in a decisive way. Suffice to say that The Royal Chronicle version, which has had a monopoly in Thai history writing, is only one version among many.”

The Nation

Myanmar Pongpipat, a Thai mining company, has filed a defamation lawsuit against The Nation and one of its journalists, Pratch Rujivanarom. The newspaper published an article by Pratch on 1st March (headlined “Thai mine ‘destroyed Myanmar water sources’”), quoting local residents who claim that the company’s Heinda tin mine has polluted the Myaung Pyo River in Myanmar.

The article appeared to endorse the claims, which it presented as facts rather than allegations: “Tailings from the mine have drained directly into the river for many years, clogging it with a large amount of sediment and contaminating the village’s water sources with heavy metals from the mine.” Also, it didn’t include a statement from the mining company, and there is no indication that the journalist even contacted the company before publication.

The Bangkok Post newspaper’s Spectrum supplement ran a cover story on the mine on 19th March. The Spectrum article also quoted residents complaining about the mine’s impact, though unlike The Nation it distanced itself from the claims, treating them as allegations rather than facts. Also in contrast to The Nation, Spectrum included a lengthy statement from the MPC managing director, who “rejected accusations that the company had caused the water contamination.”

The company’s lawsuit against Pratch and The Nation accuses them of defamation and violation of the Computer Crime Act, as the article was also published on the newspaper’s website. (Defamation, like lèse-majesté, is a criminal offence in Thailand.) Last year, the Tungkum mining company lost a defamation case against Thai PBS for reporting that a mine had caused water pollution in Loei, Thailand.

Alien: Covenant

Alien: Covenant is Ridley Scott's sequel to Prometheus, and both films are prequels to Scott's original classic, Alien. After a prologue featuring Guy Pearce minus his old-age Prometheus make-up, Covenant has more in common with the original Alien, to the extent that it feels like a retread of the earlier film. (It also has references to Scott's Blade Runner, including the line "That's the spirit!" used in similar circumstances, and alien POV shots inspired by It Came From Outer Space.)

Covenant's action takes place several years before Alien's storyline, though Alien really needs to be seen first, not for narrative reasons but to fully appreciate the original 'chestburster' sequence. In that respect, Prometheus and Covenant are similar to the (inferior) Star Wars prequels: they provide convoluted and largely unnecessary backstories, they depict 'older' worlds that paradoxically seem more advanced, and they disclose the plot twists in the earlier films.

Covenant's final revelation, involving Michael Fassbender's two characters, was far too predictable. (Revealing it to the audience sooner would have led to more Hitchcockian suspense.) Covenant benefits from Scott's typically superb production design and cinematography, though ultimately it's Alien without the tension or (Fassbender excluded) the depth of character.

Are We There Yet?

Sompot Chidgasornpongse's short film Diseases & A Hundred Year Period will be screened at Dam'n Cineclub in Bangkok, a new film venue co-founded by Nontawat Numbenchapol (director of Boundary) and Abichon Rattanabhayon. The event, titled Are We There Yet?, will be held tomorrow. Sompot's film was previously shown at the 12th Thai Short Film and Video Festival, โปรแกรมหนังสั้นไทยคัดสรร, and Six Degrees of Separation.

The Art Of The Hollywood Backdrop

The Art Of The Hollywood Backdrop, by Richard M Isackes and Karen L Maness, is a history of Hollywood studio backdrops (scenic trompe l'oeil backgrounds). There have been a few books on related aspects of filmmaking, such as matte paintings (The Invisible Art, by Mark Cotta Vaz and Craig Barron) and production design (Caligari's Cabinet & Other Grand Illusions, by Leon Barsacq; and Designs On Film, by Cathy Whitlock), though this "DEFINITIVE HISTORY" (as the back cover justifiably proclaims) is the first survey of film backdrops.

Whereas theatrical backdrops are often stylised, cinematic backings are (like matte paintings) designed to deceive the audience: to create a realistic 2D simulation of a 3D environment. As the authors explain, "backings created for the movies of Hollywood were rarely recognized for what they were - nor was that their purpose. These special effect backings, the largest paintings ever created, were breathtaking in their artistic and technical virtuosity."

Aside from double-page photographs of Georges Melies and Fritz Lang, The Art Of The Hollywood Backdrop is devoted entirely to films from the American studio system. A 100-page introduction traces the history of the Hollywood backdrop, and subsequent chapters profile individual backdrop artists. This is a substantial and comprehensive book, lavishly presented in a slipcase. It has 300 illustrations, many of which are stunning full-page photographs (though twenty-eight pages on Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events is perhaps excessive).

Puppetry: A World History

Puppetry: A World History, written by Eileen Blumenthal and published by Abrams, is the first comprehensive global survey of puppetry. It includes more than 300 photographs, and features puppetry as tribal ritual (African fertility dolls), children's entertainment (Punch and Judy; Kermit the Frog), and even political satire (Spitting Image). The book was published in the UK by Thames & Hudson, under the alternative title Puppetry & Puppets: An Illustrated World Survey. It includes an excellent annotated bibliography.

Blumenthal writes in her preface: "Puppetry: A World History encompasses all kinds of constructed actors and performing objects from all times and all places. Given this gigantic scope, the default methodology would have been to sort the material by genre, time, or place - particularly since no other existing study does that job." She argues, however, that the shared functions and aesthetics of puppetry around the world lend themselves to a thematic survey rather than a chronological history.

The Meaning Of Life

Irish police have announced that they are investigating a complaint of blasphemy in relation to comments made by Stephen Fry in a television interview. The interview, for an episode of The Meaning Of Life, was broadcast by RTE One on 1st February 2015.

In the programme, presenter Gay Byrne asked Fry what he would say to God if there was an afterlife. Fry, who has been a life-long atheist, didn't mince his words: “I’ll say, ‘Bone cancer in Children? What’s that about? How dare you! How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault. It’s not right, it’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?’”

Irish law states that anyone who intentionally “publishes or utters blasphemous matter” is guilty of criminal defamation. The 2009 Defamation Act defines “blasphemous matter” as “grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion,” though there are exemptions for content of “literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic value”.

“Delete the picture...”

A commemorative plaque has been removed from its position in Bangkok’s Royal Plaza. The brass plaque commemorated Thailand’s transition from absolute to constitutional monarchy in 1932, and was a symbol of the country’s democratic revolution. It has now been replaced by a new plaque with an inscription promoting prosperity and happiness.

The original plaque was installed in 1936, next to a statue of King Rama V. Apart from a hiatus from 1960 to 1963, it had remained in place until approximately one month ago, when it was removed by persons unknown. The plaque’s current whereabouts, and the reason for its replacement, have not been revealed. According to the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority, CCTV cameras in the area were not operational when the plaque was removed.

Early last month, the plaque’s removal generated plenty of critical comments on social media. However, that debate has since died down, as the military government has discouraged any commentary on the issue. A panel discussion on the subject, which had been due to take place at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand last night, was cancelled by the police.

Even a month after the replacement, a policeman still stands guard near the new plaque, to prevent photography. Today, the police officer was friendly, yet insistent: “You can delete? Delete. Delete. Delete! Delete the picture! OK, you delete.”

German Film Week 2017

The fifth annual German Film Week will take place from 23rd to 28th May at Paragon Cineplex. Organised by the Goethe Institut, it includes a screening of Fritz Lang's classic M, starring Peter Lorre, on 25th May. M will also be shown on 3rd June at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya, near Bangkok.

Veep

Veep, created by Armando Iannucci, stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus as US Vice-President (and subsequently President) Selina Meyer. The fifth season of the sitcom, released on DVD last month, includes an episode titled C**tgate, in which a White House staff-member causes a minor scandal by calling Meyer the c-word.

C**tgate (a pun on Watergate) was broadcast by HBO on 29th May 2016. It was co-written by Will Smith, who presented The C Word (2007), a documentary about the word 'cunt'. In the DVD audio commentary for the episode, director Brad Hall says: "I have a feeling this particular episode is going to set a record for the amount of times the word 'cunt' has been said in an audio commentary!"

The plot of the episode, with Meyer trying to identify the person who called her a cunt, is similar to an episode of 30 Rock (2007), in which the main character overheard one of her staff calling her the same word. Iannucci's UK series The Thick Of It (2005) also included a similar plot device in one episode, with an investigation into which staff-member called another a cunt in an email.

Polish Arts & Culture Week

Polish Arts & Culture Week, which began on 23rd April and finishes tomorrow, will include a screening of Francis Coppola's classic Apocalypse Now today at BACC. The film was inspired by Heart Of Darkness, a novella by Polish writer Joseph Conrad.

Czech New Wave Month II

Bangkok's Jam Cafe will host its second Czech New Wave season next month. The opening film, on 3rd May, will be Jiri Menzel's superb Closely Observed Trains (previously shown during the 5th World Film Festival of Bangkok, at a screening introduced by the director himself). Czech New Wave Month II concludes on 31st May with Milos Forman's The Firemen's Ball.

Jam's first Czech New Wave Month took place in November 2016. Jam's previous seasons have included Derek Jarman Month, Seduction Month, Dreams Month, Forking Paths Month, Resizing Month, Banned Month, Doppelganger Month, American Independent Month, Anime Month, 'So Bad It's Good' Month, Philip Seymour Hoffman Month, and Noir Month.

Tears of the Black Tiger

Next month, Bangkok Screening Room will be showing Wisit Sasanatieng’s debut film, Tears of the Black Tiger (ฟ้าทะลายโจร). A combination of Italian ‘spaghetti western’ and Thai lakorn melodrama, it has become a cult classic due to its uniquely over-saturated colour palette. It was also one of the first films of the Thai New Wave of the 1990s. It will be playing at Bangkok Screening Room on 10th, 11th, 13th, 14th, 16th, 18th, 20th, 21st, and 24th May.

"Here's why they go ape at Ross"

Kelvin MacKenzie, columnist for The Sun newspaper, has been suspended following complaints about his description of Everton footballer Ross Barkley. The article has been deleted from The Sun's website. In the column, published on 14th April (and headlined "Here's why they go ape at Ross"), MacKenzie compared Barkley to a gorilla: "There is something about the lack of reflection in his eyes which makes me certain not only are the lights not on, there is definitely nobody at home. I get a similar feeling when seeing a gorilla at the zoo. The physique is magnificent but it's the eyes that tell the story."

The Mayor of Liverpool has accused MacKenzie of racism, a charge now being investigated by Merseyside police. MacKenzie is a notorious controversialist, and his deliberately provocative comments often generate criticism. MacKenzie was editor of The Sun throughout the 1980s, during which time it published numerous homophobic and xenophobic editorials. MacKenzie and The Sun have particularly low reputations in Liverpool, as he was the newspaper's editor when it blamed Liverpool FC fans for the Hillsborough stadium disaster in 1989.

“We apologise to Mrs Trump...”

The Daily Mail newspaper has paid damages to Melania Trump, the US First Lady, in settlement of a lawsuit she filed last year. The damages are undisclosed, though the total settlement paid by the Mail is rumoured to be $3 million—a large sum by UK libel standards, though less than the $150 million originally sought by Trump’s lawyer, Charles Harder (who had previously sued the gossip website Gawker into bankruptcy).

Trump sued the Mail over an article it published on 20th August last year, headlined “Racy photos and troubling questions about his wife’s past that could derail Trump”. The article, written by Natalie Clarke, discussed allegations that Melania Trump’s former modelling agency had provided escort services, and suggested that she had worked as an escort. The Mail quoted the owner of the modelling agency denying the story, though this was overshadowed by the insinuations in the headline.

After Trump filed her lawsuit, the Mail went to unusual lengths to remove all traces of the article online, including having it deleted from Google’s cache and the PressReader digital archive. The Mail also printed a lengthy response to the lawsuit on 2nd September last year, though this repeated the claims in the process of retracting them: “To the extent that anything in our article was interpreted as stating or suggesting that Mrs Trump worked as an ‘escort’ or in the ‘sex business’... it is hereby retracted, and we regret any such misinterpretation.”

Following the settlement of the case yesterday, the Mail printed an apology on p. 9 of today’s paper. This time, it did not repeat the claims, instead referring euphemistically to “allegations that she provided services beyond simply modelling.” The statement also included an unequivocal retraction and apology: “We accept that these allegations about Mrs Trump are not true and we retract and withdraw them. We apologise to Mrs Trump for any distress that our publication caused her.”

The settlement paid to Melania Trump is one of the largest in any UK defamation case. Previous record-breaking pay-outs all date from the 1980s. Sonia Sutcliffe, wife of the serial killer known as the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’, won £600,000 in damages after Private Eye accused her of profiting from her husband’s notoriety. (On 30th January 1981, the magazine alleged that she “made a deal with the Mail worth £250,000”; after losing the case, editor Ian Hislop said: “If that’s justice, I’m a banana.”) On 1st November 1986, the Daily Star claimed that Jeffrey Archer had been a client of prostitute Monica Coughlan. Archer was awarded £500,000 in damages, though he paid it back, plus costs, after he was convicted of perjury in 2002. On 25th February 1987, The Sun claimed that ““Elton John is at the center of a shocking drugs and vice scandal involving teen-age ‘rent boys’,”, the first of a strong of defamatory articles about him. John filed seventeen libel writs, and the newspaper settled out of court for £1 million. Toby Low was awarded £1.5 million in damages in 1989 after suing author Nikolai Tolstoi over allegations in the book The Minister and the Massacres.

500 Must-See Movies

Total Film magazine has published a new film list it describes as "the essential selection every film fan should watch". 500 Must-See Movies is divided into five genres: comedies, thrillers, action, horror, and sci-fi. Three of the individual genre lists have been published previously as Total Film magazine supplements: science-fiction and fantasy (Summer 2016, issue 247), thrillers (August 2016, issue 248), and comedies (September 2016, issue 249).

Only five genres are represented, though films from excluded genres such as musicals, westerns, and animation have not been omitted. Instead, they have been reclassified: Singin' In The Rain appears in the comedies section, Snow White becomes science-fiction, The Searchers is designated an action movie, and Citizen Kane is apparently a thriller.

Other lists of 500 films include Empire magazine's The 500 Greatest Movies Of All Time (2008) and The Telegraph newspaper's 500 Must-See Films (2013). (I've also compiled my own list of 500 Classic Films.) Total Film's previous film lists are: The 100 Greatest Movies Of All Time (2005), The Top 100 Movies Of All Time (2006), The 67 Most Influential Films Ever Made (2009), and 100 Greatest Movies (2010).

Broken Vows

UK politician Nick Brown is suing author Tom Bower over a sentence in Bower's biography of former Prime Minister Tony Blair. Bower's book, Broken Vows (2016), includes a reference to Brown's relationship with another man: "Nick Brown, the new minister of agriculture, was accused by the News of the World of paying £100 to rent boys in order to be kicked around a room, and admitted his sexuality."

Bower's description of Brown being "kicked around a room" was presumably based on Alastair Campbell's book Power & The People (2011), the second volume of his political diary. Campbell wrote that the News Of The World newspaper gave him advance notice of the story it was planning to run on Brown's private life: "They said they had the confession of a self-confessed rent boy who had been paid £100 a time to beat up Nick and kick him around a room." Campbell's diary includes denials from Brown about the beating, kicking, and payment, making clear that they are untrue.

In its article (published in 1998), the News Of The World also included Brown's denials, and made no reference to the unsubstantiated beating or kicking claim. However, Bower's book does not include any denials; it also distorts the facts (using the plural "rent boys") and implies Brown's guilt (noting that he "admitted" his sexuality). Bower misrepresents the issue by reducing it to a single sentence, and an earlier edition of Campbell's diary, The Blair Years (2007), was similarly misleading: "The News of the World had apparently trapped Nick Brown with rent boys".

Orbit Festival

A nightclub manager has been arrested in Tunisia after a DJ included a sample of the Islamic call to prayer as part of his set at the Orbit Festival. The nightclub, El Guitoune in the town of Hammamet, has been closed down by the local authorities.

Dax J, a techno DJ based in Berlin, was one of the headliners on 31st March, the opening night of the two-day event. The call to prayer, which begins with the expression "Allahu akbar" ("God is great"), was also featured on the single Metal Hammer (1990) by And One.

[Quotations from the Koran have previously caused controversy when they have appeared out of context in non-Islamic songs. Tapha Niang by Toumani Diabate; Arab Money by Busta Rhymes; Maya by Joey Boy; Ana Yousef, Ya Abi by Marcel Khalife; and Noor-Un-Ala by MF Hussain all feature extracts from the Koran.]

Wood

Wood, by William Hall, is an international survey of wooden architecture, published by Phaidon. Like his previous books - Concrete and Brick - it has an embossed dust jacket, full-page photographs with extended captions, and chapters themed according to concepts such as form, light, and scale.

The book includes buildings dating from the Middle Ages, though the emphasis is on modern and contemporary architecture. Most of the 170 examples are wooden structures, though there are a few exceptions, including some bamboo buildings and wooden facades.

Architecture In Wood is more comprehensive than Wood, though its photographs were all taken by its author, Will Pryce. Hall's book, on the other hand, features images from various sources. Wood: The World Of Woodwork & Carving, by Bryan Sentance, is a guide to wood as a medium for art, craft, and design.