Flesh For Frankenstein

Flesh For Frankenstein was filmed back-to-back with Blood For Dracula, and both were directed by Paul Morrissey, who made all of Andy Warhol's Factory films from Chelsea Girls onwards. Morrissey steadily increased the production values, narrative conventions, and cinematic techniques of the Factory films, gradually shedding the 'underground' aesthetic Warhol had initially established.

Warhol's Factory star Joe Dallesandro appears in Flesh For Frankenstein, and, although he is the film's most naturalistic performer (because he was one of the few native English speakers in the cast), he is also the most out of place. He has the attitude of a New York hustler, which, although perfect for his earlier roles in Morrissey's Lonesome Cowboys, Flesh, Trash, and Heat, seems incongruous in the European Gothic context of Frankenstein. The other cast-members, led by Udo Kier as Baron Frankenstein, speak with thick German accents, consequently appearing stilted and artificial.

The film was made in 3-D, so there are numerous shots of organs and implements thrust at the camera. I've seen only the 'flat' version, which loses the stereoscopic effects though adds more nudity from Dallesandro. There are decapitations and disembowelings aplenty, though the campy atmosphere removes any vestige of real horror. The tone is set by the film's most famous line, though it's been quoted so often in reviews that repeating it here is hardly necessary.

There is some dispute regarding directorial credit, as, in the film's Italian prints, Morrissey is listed only as a supervising director. It was filmed in Italy (using the same sets as Blood For Dracula), with uncredited second-unit direction by Italian horror director Antonio Margheriti, though rumour has it that Margheriti actually directed the whole film. This rumour has been convincingly denied by Morrissey and the leading actors, though the nature of Margheriti's contribution remains unclear.

we've reserved a condo!

Today we paid the deposit for a new apartment. We'll be able to move in sometime next month. Updates will surely follow soon.

monkeys!

For the Songkran holiday, we went back to Chao Samran, and, on the way, we stopped at Khao Wang, the palace of King Rama IV, in Petchaburi. The palace is at the top of a steep hill, and the hill is home to hundreds of wild monkeys.

Songkran

Songkran, the Thai new year holiday, gets longer and wilder every year. This year, it lasts from last Friday until next Tuesday. Songkran is essentially an excuse to soak people with water, and everyone is armed with water-pistols, buckets, and hoses. Ice and talcum powder are sometimes added, too, for good measure. Also, seemingly everyone leaves Bangkok to visit relatives in other provinces, making the city a haven of tranquility. Our car was powdered and soaked while we were driving through Petchaburi.

Free Thai Cinema Movement

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, one of the leading New Thai Cinema directors and one of the most original avant-garde film-makers in world cinema, has withdrawn his film Syndromes & A Century from distribution in Thailand.

Thai censors wanted to cut scenes of [shock!] a monk playing frisbee and guitar, and [gasp!] a doctor drinking liquor and his trousers bulging. Understandably fed up with this nonsense, Apichatpong refused to censor the film and consequently one of Thailand's most important and impressive films will not be shown here.

Apichatpong has launched the Free Thai Cinema Movement, with an online petition (petitiononline.com/nocut) calling for drastic changes in the Thai censorship system. T-shirts are available to promote the cause, by mail-order from Bioscope (bioscopemagazine.com).

Oliver Jufer pardoned

Oliver Jufer, the Swiss man jailed for ten years in Thailand after defacing posters of the King, has received a royal pardon. He will be released from prison and deported.

pantip.com politics forum unblocked

Rajdumnern, the pantip.com political forum blocked by MICT, has now been unblocked after the webmaster promised to remove any messages critical of the monarchy or damaging to national security.

#1 on google.com!

My website is currently the first result on google.com, when searching for a certain word. (My site features a definitive cultural history of the word.) I've been in Google's top-ten ever since I uploaded the original version in 2000, but recently wikipedia.org (which links to my page) had been beating me to the #1 spot.

Kubrick exhibition in Switzerland

The Kubrick exhibition, previously held in Germany, Australia, and Belgium, will open in Zurich, Switzerland, later this month. It now has a new official website, stanleykubrick.ch.

It will be on show at SihlCity's Kulturhaus Papiersaal centre, Zurich, from 26th April until 2nd September. It will then move to Italy in October.

Thai web forum blocked

It was announced today that Rajdumnern, the political forum of the popular pantip.com website (pantip.com/cafe/rajdumnern), has been blocked in Thailand by MICT, because it apparently compromises national security. Unfortunately, compromising national security is a convenient catch-all excuse which can be (and is) used to justify the blocking of any website the CNS doesn't like. Anti-monarchy posts are presumed to be the reason behind the blocking.

At the time of writing, the forum was still accessible, though some posts have been deleted. Older pages are archived at archive.org and google.com's cache. The website includes a message announcing the ICT block and apologising for any inconvenience:

"ด้วยมีคำสั่งจากกระทรวง ICT ให้มีการปิดห้องราชดำเนินเป็นการชั่วคราว เนื่องจากมีกระทู้ที่กระทบต่อความมั่นคงปรากฏอยู่เป็นจำนวนมาก ทางทีมงานจึงของดให้บริการห้องราชดำเนินตามคำสั่งดังกล่าว และร้องขอสมาชิกราชดำเนิน กรุณาอย่าเลี่ยงโดยการไปโพสในห้องอื่น เพราะมิฉะนั้นก็จะกลายเป็นต้องปิดเวปพันทิปทั้งเว็บ ซึ่งท่านสมาชิกคงไม่ต้องการให้เหตุการนั้นเกิดขึ้น ... ขออภัยในความไม่สะดวกมา ณ ที่นี้"

wizbangblog.com blocked in Thailand

A photograph of King Bhumibol defaced with a comical moustache has caused wizbangblog.com to be blocked in Thailand.

The Fountain

The Fountain is Darren Aronofsky's third film. His previous works, Pi and Requiem For A Dream, were both staggeringly original, hallucinogenic pieces of cinema.

The Fountain, starring Hugh Jackman and Aronofsky's partner Rachel Weisz, is an exploration of the eternal pursuit of love, death, and immortality, in the past, present, and future. But it's impossible to put all this into a film lasting barely ninety minutes, especially as the short running time includes numerous repetitions of key scenes.

It begins with a quote from Genesis, though its narrative is explicitly derived from Mayan creation mythology and its future sequences seem inspired by Buddhism. The result is a conventional tragic love story with added 2001-style cosmic exploration and narrative ambiguity.

The special effects, which were mostly non-CGI, are impressive, as is the cinematography. While it's too overtly sentimental to equal the raw impact of Pi or Requiem For A Dream, and its compressed narrative doesn't inspire the awe of 2001, it will perhaps reveal deeper levels of meaning with subsequent viewings.

100 Greatest Movies Of All Time

The current issue of Empire magazine's Australian edition has published the results of their reader survey of the 100 greatest films ever made:

1. Star Wars IV: A New Hope
2. Pulp Fiction
3. The Shawshank Redemption
4. Aliens
5. A Clockwork Orange
6. Donnie Darko
7. The Lord Of The Rings III: The Return Of The King
8. Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back
9. Amelie
10. GoodFellas
11. The Matrix
12. American Beauty
13. Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl
14. The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring
15. The Godfather
16. Grease
17. Braveheart
18. A Nightmare On Elm St.
19. Fight Club
20. Back To The Future
21. Alien
22. Apocalypse Now
23. Gone With The Wind
24. Titanic
25. Forrest Gump
26. Raiders of the Lost Ark
27. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
28. ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
29. The Rocky Horror Picture Show
30. Schindler's List
31. Kill Bill I
32. Scarface
33. The Princess Bride
34. Top Gun
35. Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery
36. Rocky
37. Casino Royale
38. An American Werewolf In London
39. The Wizard Of Oz
40. Casablanca
41. Zoolander
42. Gallipoli
43. The Lord Of The Rings II: The Two Towers
44. 2001: A Space Odyssey
45. Heat
46. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
47. Gladiator
48. Terminator II: Judgement Day
49. The Sound Of Music
50. Seven
51. Die Hard
52. Star Wars VI: Return Of The Jedi
53. Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan
54. The Usual Suspects
55. Jaws
56. Memento
57. The Godfather II
58. The Big Lebowski
59. Taxi Driver
60. The Shining
61. Stand By Me
62. Clerks
63. The Silence Of The Lambs
64. Spider-Man
65. The Lion King
66. Chopper
67. Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ
68. Ferris Bueller's Day Off
69. Superman
70. Picnic At Hanging Rock
71. Batman
72. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
73. Platoon
74. To Kill A Mockingbird
75. Blade Runner
76. Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
77. Mad Max
78. Brokeback Mountain
79. Chicago
80. Psycho
81. Moulin Rouge!
82. The Breakfast Club
83. Citizen Kane
84. Reservoir Dogs
85. The Crow
86. Mad Max II
87. Babel
88. Annie Hall
89. All About Eve
90. Animal House
91. Rear Window
92. Crocodile Dundee
93. The Seven Samurai
94. The Blues Brothers
95. Romeo & Juliet
96. Monty Python's Life Of Brian
97. Flying High
98. X-Men
99. The Terminator
100. It's A Wonderful Life

Empire UK published a similar poll (of 201 films) last year. Empire Australia's previous poll was in 2002.

A comparison between this new list and the 2002 results reveals that a handful of films are consistently occupying high positions: Star Wars IV (2007: #1, 2002: #1), Pulp Fiction (2007: #3, 2002: #2), Star Wars V (2007: #6, 2002: #8), The Shawshank Redeption (2007: #10, 2002: #3), American Beauty (2007: #12, 2002: #11), The Matrix (2007: #11, 2002: #4), The Godfather (2007: #15, 2002: #8), and Fight Club (2007: #19, 2002: #15).

Some people still need to realise that 'greatest film of all time' is not the same as 'movie you saw recently that you liked'; what other explanation can there be for Casino Royale and Borat on the new list? Also, Scarface is the Brian DePalma remake rather than the superior Howard Hawks original.

youtube.com blocked in Thailand

If you were looking for the perfect example of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, you've come to the right place. Thailand's MICT has now blocked all access to youtube.com, one of the world's most popular websites, due to a video mocking King Bhumibol.

The video, titled Bhumibol Adulyadej 2 and uploaded by a user nicknamed Paddidda, features photographs of the King defaced with computer-graphic caricatures.

MICT has also started blocking the various proxy servers, although most of them can't access video files anyway. However, before it was blocked many people did see it, as Paddidda's youtube.com page is full of vitriolic comments. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, just as youtube.com users are entitled to post crude or satirical videos. Watching a youtube.com video is an active choice: if we don't want to see it, we simply don't click on it. Adults should have both the freedom and the responsibility to make their own choices.

After Paddidda's initial video, several others have been produced in the same vein, most of which are even more directly disrespectful. The original video is unblocked at corriere.it [thank you to Filippo for this information], and several others are unblocked at video.google.com and ifilm.com.

Images from the videos on mashable.com, quomedia.diesis.it, and vleeptronz.blogspot.com have been blocked, though there are unblocked screengrabs at 20minutos.es, diregiovani.dol.it, excite.it, portalcolonense.com.ar, pub.tv2.no, volkskrantblog.nl, hirek.prem.hu, svt.se, rgsradio.com, zone-numerique.com, gseeker.com, and aftenbladet.se. (Search unblocked sites for "Bhumibol"; even the blocked images show up in images.google.com searches.)

Taxidermia

Taxidermia, directed by Gyorgy Palfi, is visually and thematically grotesque. It's full of startling, transgressive images. (Even the original poster had to be obscured, though the poster used for the Cannes Film Festival premiere is uncensored.)

There are three sections, about three generations of men from the same family. Vendel is a soldier during World War II, a compulsive voyeur and fantasist. Vendel's son Kalman, an obese professional speed-eater, is the subject of the next segment. Kalman's son Lajoska, the taxidermist of the film's title, is the final subject.

The initial segment, concerning Vendel, is sensational. The tone is dark and unsettling, and the concepts (Vendel's unique pyromania in the film's opening scene, his corruption of the Little Matchstick Girl, and his lust for a dead pig) are original and provocative. This segment also begins with a diatribe on the phonology and usage of my favourite word (or at least, its Hungarian equivalent), and contains the film's most transgressive images (real sex and death, and ingenious frontal nudity).

Unfortunately, the disturbingly surreal atmosphere of the opening section is not sustained. The story of Kalman relies too much on unimaginative abjection, with copious vomiting and mastication during eating competitions. In the final section, Kalman has become a man-mountain resembling Jabba the Hutt (Star Wars) or Mr Creosote (Life Of Brian). Like the other fat speed-eaters of the middle segment, Kalman is finally more comical than shocking. However, at the very end, in the film's most disturbing scene, Lajoska disembowels himself with surgical precision and constructs a machine that decapitates him.

The film is bookended by images that will not be easily forgotten (the opening candle scene, and the closing self-disembowelment), and this is enough to make it a midnight movie classic in the tradition of the similarly surreal Eraserhead and the equally transgressive/grotesque Pink Flamingos.