Mohammed cartoons reprinted

The twelve original caricatures of Mohammed, published by Jyllands-Posten in 2005, have caused riots, protests, and even murders around the world.

While most major news organisations have not reproduced them, several new Mohammed cartoons have been published in expressions of solidatory with Jyllands-Posten, in (amongst others): Weekendavisen, France Soir, The Guardian, Le Monde, Het Nieuwsblad, Charlie Hebdo, The Daily Tar Heel, Akron Beacon Journal, The Strand, Nana, Gorodskiye Vesti, Misselijke Grappen, and Harper's. Mohammed even appeared in (but was censored from) South Park.

Many publications have reprinted some or all of the original twelve images, and wikipedia.org has researched an exhaustive list of Mohammed caricature publications. (Some also appear in the book Blasphemy: Art That Offends.)

The consequences of publishing Mohammed images can be severe. In Algeria, Errisala and Iqraa were closed down, and their editors were arrested. In Canada, The Cadre had its Mohammed issue withdrawn. In France, the managing director of France Soir was sacked. In Jordan, the editor of Al Shihan was arrested and the Mohammed issue was withdrawn. In Italy, politician Roberto Calderoli was forced to resign after he wore the caricatures on a t-shirt. In Malaysia, Guang Ming was temporarily closed down (although the country's TV3 television station, which broadcast the cartoons, escaped censure). In Russia, Nash Region and Gorodskiye Vesti were closed down. In Saudi Arabia, Shams was shut down. In America, the editor of Daily Illini was fired. In Yemen, three newspapers were temporarily closed down - Al Hurriya, Yemen Observer, and Al Rai Al Aam - and their editors were arrested. In Wales, the student newspaper Gair Rhydd had its Mohammed issue withdrawn, as did the newsletter Y Llan.

Deia photomontage of Juan Carlos

Two days ago, the satirical Spanish magazine Deia published a photomontage of Spain's King Juan Carlos, showing him drooling victoriously after shooting a bear which had been subdued with a barrel of vodka. The image is a reference to an alleged hunting incident in which the King apparently killed a drunken bear. Legal proceedings have been instigated against the magazine, and it may face charges of lese majeste. A similar case is also pending against El Jueves, for its cartoon of Prince Filipe earlier this year.

holiday in UK & Belgium

I'm going on holiday to visit my parents and sister in the UK (from 1st to 11th November), as I haven't seen them since they came to Bangkok in April. On 2nd-3rd November, I'll be on an excursion to Belgium at the Kubrick exhibition.

Siam Ocean World

Today is Dech's birthday, so we went to Siam Ocean World, the aquarium at Siam Paragon. (Paragon, which opened last year, was - briefly - the largest shopping centre in Bangkok. That title has now been taken by Central World, which expanded this year.)

The sharks, weird fish, and other live creatures at Ocean World were fascinating, though the same can't be said for the much-publicised Polar Festival (polarfestival.com). Adverts for the event promise real animals, though the 'Festival' is a room with polar bears and huskies - all entirely artificial! They should call it the Plastic Festival. Even the igloos are plastic.

Also, Ocean World is screening Pirates, a 3-D film by Keith Melton. The film is advertised as 4-D, because its auditorium provides an additional level of sensory interaction. For instance, when a character in the film falls down, our seats tilt. When someone is dragged along the ground, the seats vibrate. We are sprayed with mist when actors are drenched with water. Rubber flaps tickle our ankles when we seen bats flying. In traditional terms of script and performance, the film was nothing special (Eric Idle, script-writer and co-star, must have been having an off-day), though the 4-D effects were entertaining. If 4-D was utilised for a genuinely exciting film, instead of this rather lame comedy, it would have great potential.

I was most interested in the aquarium's jellyfish tank, which was positioned in front of a large cinema screen. Abstract animations were projected onto the screen, viewable through the clear water in the tank with the jellyfish in the foreground. The effect was stunning.

Blasphemy

Blasphemy, by S Brent Plate, is the first-ever full-length study of blasphemous art.

It begins with a lengthy, though generalised, account of the Mohammed cartoons controversy, and is profusely illustrated (including small reproductions of a few of the Mohammed caricatures, though none of the subsequent cartoons inspired by them).

Most of the illustrations, though, are not really blasphemous. Several, such as works by Jakes and Dinos Chapman, Marcus Harvey, and others, have no relation to blasphemy at all. A chapter on flag desecration seems extraneous (and the subject, along with modern American examples of artistic blasphemy, was discussed in Steven C Dubin's excellent book Arresting Images).

Potentially blasphemous art representing Jesus as sexually active (such as The Last Temptation Of Christ) or tumescent (such as Terence Koh) are glossed over or excluded. The author explains that he has concentrated solely on visual art, though I'm still surprised that he didn't find room to even briefly mention the novel The Satanic Verses or the poem The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name, which are perhaps the most famous examples of blasphemous art in the UK.

lawsuit against Jllyands-Posten fails

A lawsuit against Jyllands-Posten, filed by a Danish Muslim group in March, has been dismissed by a court in Aarhus. Jyllands-Posten published a dozen Mohammed caricatures last year, and the Muslim group accused the newspaper of intentionally offending Islamic people.

Horror

Horror: The Definitive Guide To The Cinema Of Fear is a new book about horror cinema. Not just any book, mind you, but the Definitive Guide (or so it proclaims). Any book with the word definitive in its title is asking for trouble, because the author's idea of definitive may not be the same as the reader's.

In this case, the authors are James Marriott and Kim Newman. Or rather, Marriott is editor and principal contributor, Newman wrote introductory essays to each chapter, and six others wrote reviews and shorter essays. It's rather misleading that Marriott and Newman are the only names on the cover, especially because they are not credited as editors - the cover implies that they are co-authors, which is not strictly true.

Newman is, I think, one of the very best writers on horror cinema, and his essays in this new book (overviews of the genre in each decade) are excellent. (He wrote Nightmare Movies, a comprehensive study of the modern film, and was also a contributor to Contemporary American Cinema.) It's a shame, therefore, that he didn't write any of the chronological film reviews which make up the bulk of the book.

Besides Newman's decade-by-decade overviews and the corpus of reviews, there are also short essays on various horror themes (vampires, zombies, cannibalism, ghosts) and styles (gialli, slashers, and urban paranoia which they call "Urbanoia"). These featurettes are an improvement on the capsule articles in the encyclopedic though superficial BFI Companion To Horror (edited by Newman).

Fittingly for a guide to horror cinema, the book is vampiric: it drains the blood of others though has no shadow. Specifically, its format is very clearly modelled on Horror: The Aurum Film Encyclopedia, edited by Phil Hardy. Hardy's book also concentrated on film reviews in chronological order, punctuated by overview essays introducing each decade. Marriott and Newman don't acknowledge their debt to Hardy (even though, or perhaps because, Newman contributed many reviews to Hardy's 2nd edition). Indeed, they have no bibliography at all. It is customary for books on genre cinema to list sources of further reading, though no such suggestions appear here.

The Hardy volume is the real Definitive Guide to horror cinema, taking an internationalist perspective more than ten years before the excellent Immoral Tales, Mondo Macabro, and Fear Without Frontiers. Also, Hardy's book reviewed 2,000 films whereas Marriott and Newman's manages only 300. True, the reviews in the new book are longer than Hardy's, though only slightly. Hardy's second edition covers horror cinema up to 1992, so this new book is at least more up-to-date, offering reviews of films up to and including the recent Land Of The Dead.

History

History is a track recorded during Madonna's Confessions On A Dance Floor sessions, though omitted from the album. It is included as an extra track on her new single, Jump, reportedly the final single from the Confessions album (the previous ones being Hung Up, Sorry, and Get Together).

The Top 100 Movies Of All Time

Readers of Total Film magazine have voted for The Top 100 Movies Of All Time, as follows:

1. Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back
2. Fight Club
3. Pulp Fiction
4. The Lord Of The Rings III: The Return Of The King
5. The Shawshank Redemption
6. GoodFellas
7. The Godfather
8. The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring
9. Jaws
10. Donnie Darko
11. Star Wars IV: A New Hope
12. The Usual Suspects
13. The Matrix
14. Raiders Of The Lost Ark
15. Seven
16. The Godfather II
17. Gladiator
18. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
19. Aliens
20. Sin City
21. The Lord Of The Rings II: The Two Towers
22. LA Confidential
23. Taxi Driver
24. Die Hard
25. Batman Begins
26. Back To The Future
27. Schindler’s List
28. Spider-Man II
29. The Big Lebowski
30. Heat
31. Reservoir Dogs
32. Blade Runner
33. Terminator II: Judgment Day
34. Alien
35. X-Men II
36. Annie Hall
37. Leon
38. Casablanca
39. Apocalypse Now
40. Memento
41. Jurassic Park
42. It’s A Wonderful Life
43. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
44. Monty Python And The Holy Grail
45. The Third Man
46. The Good The Bad & The Ugly
47. Toy Story II
48. A Clockwork Orange
49. Moulin Rouge!
50. The Apartment
51. The Wild Bunch
52. ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
53. Trainspotting
54. Raging Bull
55. City Of God
56. Stand By Me
57. The Thing
58. Scarface
59. Airplane!
60. The Silence Of The Lambs
61. Blue Velvet
62. The Seven Samurai
63. Citizen Kane
64. 2001: A Space Odyssey
65. Shaun Of The Dead
66. Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl
67. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
68. Lawrence Of Arabia
69. Halloween
70. The Searchers
71. Rocky
72. Once Upon A Time In The West
73. Platoon
74. Kill Bill I
75. Magnolia
76. The Deer Hunter
77. The Shining
78. American Beauty
79. Fargo
80. Chinatown
81. Saving Private Ryan
82. Vertigo
83. King Kong
84. Goldfinger
85. The Wizard Of Oz
86. Dawn Of The Dead
87. Requiem For A Dream
88. The Terminator
89. Psycho
90. Brokeback Mountain
91. Dr. Strangelove
92. The Bourne Supremacy
93. The Incredibles
94. Some Like It Hot
95. Spirited Away
96. Rear Window
97. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
98. This Is Spinal Tap
99. Forrest Gump
100. The Exorcist

This list follows the magazine's previous list of 2005, the difference being that the earlier selection was chosen by the magazine's writers whereas the new list was voted for by the magazine's readers.

There are more sequels and remakes in this new list, and fewer world cinema titles. It's depressing that King Kong is the Peter Jackson remake, not the original. Similarly, Scarface is unfortunately the remake instead of the original.

Cars

Cars is the latest computer-animated film from Pixar, the studio who pioneered feature-length computer-animation with Toy Story. John Lasseter, who directed Toy Story, also directed Cars.

There is some extremely realistic animation, especially the Route 66 background landscapes and the gleaming car chassis. The plot is entertaining enough, though it's nothing more than the traditional Disney morality tale of a self-centered character (in this case, a racing car named Lightning McQueen) who must learn the value of friendship and community.

Shaun Of The Dead

Shaun Of The Dead has defined a new film sub-genre: rom-zom-com (romantic zombie comedy). It's directed by Edgar Wright, who previously worked on UK TV sitcoms such as Spaced. The lead actor (and co-writer) is Simon Pegg, who was also a Spaced cast-member.

Pegg plays Shaun, whose dull life is interrupted by a plague of slow-moving zombies (a la Dawn Of The Dead). However, because he's so used to seeing drunks and beggars on the streets, he doesn't realise that they are actually zombies. Several scenes show people going about their daily lives in a state of somnambulistic catatonia - are the undead zombies really any different from these mindless commuters?

Although the film is very funny, the final scene did make me a little bit homesick. Shaun and his girlfriend wake up on a Sunday morning and plan their day: buy the Sunday papers, go down the local for a drink, watch a bit of TV, and go to bed. Here, on the other hand, the Sunday papers are wafer-thin. But if all I miss is the newspapers, things can't be too bad, eh?

100 Landmark Films

For its annual film guide, Radio Times magazine has produced a list of 100 Landmark Films, as follows (in chronological order):

• A Trip To The Moon
• Life Of An American Fireman
• The Birth Of A Nation
• Intolerance
• The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari
• Nanook Of The North
• Nosferatu
• Battleship Potemkin
• The Gold Rush
• Metropolis
• The General
• It
• The Jazz Singer
• Napoleon
• Un Chien Andalou
• Man With A Movie Camera
• Frankenstein
• M
• Scarface
• Ecstasy
• 42nd St.
• King Kong
• The Private Life Of Henry VIII
• L'Atalante
• Becky Sharp
• Triumph Of The Will
• The Story Of A Cheat
• Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs
• Bringing Up Baby
• Gone With The Wind
• The Rules Of The Game
• Stagecoach
• Fantasia
• Citizen Kane
• The Maltese Falcon
• Cat People
• Rome: Open City
• It's A Wonderful Life
• Song Of The South
• Bicycle Thieves
• Rashomon
• M Hulot's Holiday
• The Robe
• Les Diaboliques
• On The Waterfront
• Rebel Without A Cause
• The Court Jester
• Vertigo
• Breathless
• The 400 Blows
• Psycho
• Victim
• Dr No
• A Fistful Of Dollars
• A Hard Day's Night
• Blow-Up
• Persona
• Bonnie & Clyde
• The Chelsea Girls
• In The Heat Of The Night
• The Graduate
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
• Easy Rider
• A Clockwork Orange
• Get Carter
• Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
• Deep Throat
• Pink Flamingos
• The Poseidon Adventure
• The Exorcist
• Mean Streets
• The Godfather II
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
• Jaws
• Nashville
• Picnic At Hanging Rock
• Rocky
• Annie Hall
• Star Wars IV: A New Hope
• Halloween
• National Lampoon's Animal House
• Superman
• Alien
• Blade Runner
• ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
• Tron
• This Is Spinal Tap
• Blue Velvet
• Withnail & I
• Do The Right Thing
• Jurassic Park
• Pulp Fiction
• Toy Story
• Ring
• The Celebration
• The Blair Witch Project
• The Matrix
• Shrek
• Brokeback Mountain

Note that The Maltese Falcon is the John Huston version, which is actually a remake of an earlier (and inferior) Roy Del Ruth film.

Terence Koh installation withdrawn

An installation by artist Terence Koh, titled Medusa, has been withdrawn before the opening of a Saatchi Gallery exhibition in London. Medusa was due to be part of the group show, USA Today, though Charles Saatchi has announced that, due to limitations of space, it will not be included.

Saatchi is not usually afraid of controversy, and Koh's work has attracted extensive publicity for the new show, though it does seem that Saatchi is concerned about the potential consequences of showing Koh's work. The installation features statuettes of Jesus and Mary, each with enormous, erect phalli, posed next to a urinal.

Koh also included a statuette of a tumescent Jesus in his installation Gone Yet Still last year. Equally provocative images appeared in The Insurgent magazine earlier this year.

Thai 'Prime Minister' appointed

Sonthi has appointed a 'Prime Minister', Surayud Chulanont. He replaces the democratically-elected Prime Minister, Thaksin.