Goldin photo not obscene

Nan Goldin's photograph Klara & Edda Belly-Dancing, investigated by UK police last month, has been cleared of obscenity. The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed yesterday that the image is not indecent.

European Union Film Festival 2007

This year's European Union Film Festival is afiliated with the World Film Festival of Bangkok, at Esplanade Cineplex.

Four Months Three Weeks & Two Days, the Romanian 'new wave' film which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes earlier this year, is screening on 3rd and 4th November. The film, by Cristian Mungiu, stars Anamaria Marinca as Otilia, a student who helps her friend Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) obtain an illegal abortion shortly before the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Mungiu films most interior scenes with a stationary camera, contrasted by shaky hand-held shots for corridors and exteriors. The two leading characters provide a further contrast: Gabita's (frankly annoying, though realistic) self-deluding naivety is offset by Otilia's determination and resilience. Back-street abortion is hardly a new topic, though the film also reveals the everyday hardships of life in a Communist state - black-market cigarettes, daily power-cuts, and Trabants.

5th World Film Festival of Bangkok

The 5th World Film Festival of Bangkok opened on 25th October and will close on 4th November. Most screenings take place at Esplanade Cineplex.

Highlights include a rare screening of Ingmar Bergman's The Devil's Eye on 3rd November, as a tribute to the director who died earlier this year. Jiri Menzel, one of the leading directors of 1960s Czech cinema, will introduce his new film I Served The King Of England on 31st October (and he will also speak about his classic Closely Observed Trains, at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand, on 1st November).

Taiwanese drama Help Me Eros, directed by and starring Lee Kang-Sheng, is screening on 31st October and 2nd November. Kang-Sheng has acted in several films by Tsai Ming-Liang, and Help Me Eros is clearly influenced by him. Many scenes are filmed with diagonal compositions from a static camera, with the action contained within a corner of the frame, as befitting the film's lonely, uncommunicative characters. There are two clips from a fictional TV cookery show, in which a carp is filleted alive and an unhatched ostrich is fried.

This evening, the great-grand-daughter of Georges Melies introduced a selection of his films at Alliance Francais, in an event titled Georges Melies: Le Cinemagicien. (It will take place again tomorrow.) Melies was one of the pioneers of cinematic special effects, and although his films have a quaint Victorian charm their technical genius still impresses even now.

Melies's films were accompanied by narration and a piano recital, both performed live, to recreate their original theatrical presentations. The recreation only went so far, however: the mostly expositional narration also included some (slightly incongruous) historical information about Melies, and the films were (very disappointingly) screened on DVD rather than the advertised 16mm.

Some of Melies's most famous films were included, such as L'Homme A La Tete En Caoutchouc (in which his head is seen to inflate, deflate, and explode in a puff of smoke) and A Trip To The Moon (one of the first attempts at a sustained cinematic narrative, a series of tableaux in which Victorian astronomers are attacked by spear-wielding natives on the moon). [There are many inaccuracies in the published lists advertising the films to be shown at this event.] Eruption Volcanique A La Martinique was introduced as the 'world premiere' of a rediscovered Melies film; we were not the first to see it, however, as it was in fact shown earlier this month at a festival in Italy and on youtube.com.

monk painting withdrawn

A painting by Withit Sembutr titled Doo Phra, depicting a group of Buddhist monks crowding around an amulet-seller, has been withdrawn from an exhibition in Bangkok.

Withit, an art student, entered the painting in the Young Thai Artist 2007 competition, and the winning entries are currently on show at the Esplanade mall. There is, however, a blank space where Withit's painting should be.

It was withdrawn due to controversy surrounding a painting by another artist, Anupong Chantorn, which is currently being exhibited at Silpakorn University in Bangkok (at the 53rd National Exhibition, until 30th October). Anupong's painting, Perceptless, shows monks with beaks, presenting them as bird-like scavengers. There have been demonstrations against the painting by Thai monks, though it has not been removed.

Bloody Cartoons

The twelve Jyllands-Posten Mohammed caricatures have finally been broadcast by the BBC in the UK. BBC2's Why Democracy? series posed the question Is God Democratic? in a Storyville documentary titled Bloody Cartoons on Monday evening. The programme opened with a new version of the most famous cartoon (Mohammed's turban as a bomb).

Eyewitness Companions: Film

Film, by Ronald Bergan, is a single-volume introduction to cinema history, as part of Dorling Kindersley's Eyewitness Companions series. Within its 500 pages, it includes a decade-by-decade history of the cinema, an explanation of the film production process, chapters on each film genre, film production in each major country, profiles of 200 key directors, and reviews of 100 significant films.

Each of its five sections (history, production, genres, countries, directors, and films) really deserves its own book, and indeed such books exist. Strangely, however, Bergan provides no bibliography or further reading guide at all, which is disappointing because, although his book is a perfect introduction to film for young people, as their interest develops they will be inspired and grounded by Bergan yet will naturally want to seek out more specialist material.

Reductivism is inevitable in any book with this ratio of size to scope, but each section does adequately summarise the key points, providing a broad overview for novice film fans. The section on film production is useful as it provides a more practical approach than most introductory film guides. The section on genre surprisingly finds space for categories which are often overlooked in other genre summaries. The world cinema section is less all-encompassing, with some countries (including Thailand) reduced to brief paragraphs in a general introduction instead of receiving their own individual chapters.

There is almost no cross-referencing, which is a pity, and the photo captions are often overly literal or redundant. There is a detailed index, though it has some omissions. There are also a few mistakes: at one point, for instance, Bergan refers to "Pierre and Auguste Lumiere" (Auguste's brother was called Louis). I would also quibble with some of Bergan's opinions: he describes Salvador Dali's contributions to Luis Bunuel's early films as "invaluable", which seems to massively over-rate Dali's cinematic work, and he claims that the remake of The Mummy "benefits from" (rather than suffers from) the use of CGI. Three times, Bergan describes Kubrick as "anti-militarist", which ignores Kubrick's fascination with war. In an appendix, Bergan oddly (and incorrectly) lists Our Daily Bread as joint 10th in a reprint of Sight & Sound's 2002 critics' poll, even though it received only a single vote.

I've never been quite certain who DK's books are aimed at. They state that they publish educational, illustrated reference books for both adults and children, but to me all of their books seem more suited to younger people. Their educational tone, large fonts, glossy paper, and copious photographs (as distinct from figures or plates) give the impression of children's textbooks. For instance, DK's The Look Of The Century, by Michael Tambini, was one of the very first books on visual culture that I ever bought, and I still have it today; but, although I bought it when I was a teenager, I couldn't imagine buying it now, at twenty-nine.

The book that Film most resembles is The Virgin Encyclopedia Of The Movies, by Derek Winnert, which was published at the height of cinema's centenary celebrations but which is now out of print. That book was an excellent introduction to cinema for any young person who is starting to develop a serious interest in film, and Bergan's book serves a similar purpose.

Bergan concludes with a chronological list of Top 100 Movies, limited to one film per director. (Although there are technically 104 films because Three Colours and The Lord Of The Rings are both trilogies, and this also violates the one-film-per-director rule.) Who exactly selected the 100 films is unclear: Bergan is the book's credited author, though he introduces the Top 100 Movies as "the films we have chosen".

The Top 100 Movies are as follows:

• The Birth Of A Nation
  
• The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari
  
• Nosferatu
  
• Nanook Of The North
  
• Battleship Potemkin
  
• Metropolis
  
• Napoleon
  
• Un Chien Andalou
  
• The Passion Of Joan Of Arc
  
• All Quiet On The Western Front
  
• The Blue Angel
  
• City Lights
  
• 42nd Street
  
• Duck Soup
  
• King Kong
  
• L'Atalante
  
• Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs
  
• Olympia
  
• The Rules Of The Game
  
• Gone With The Wind
  
• The Philadelphia Story
  
• His Girl Friday
  
• The Grapes Of Wrath
  
• Citizen Kane
  
• The Maltese Falcon
  
• The Little Foxes
  
• To Be Or Not To Be
  
• In Which We Serve
  
• Casablanca
  
• Ossessione
  
• Children Of Paradise
  
• A Matter Of Life & Death
  
• It's A Wonderful Life
  
• Bicycle Thieves
  
• Letter From An Unknown Woman
  
• Passport To Pimlico
  
• The Third Man
  
• Orphee
  
• Rashomon
  
• Singin' In The Rain
  
• Tokyo Story
  
• On The Waterfront
  
• All That Heaven Allows
  
• Rebel Without A Cause
  
• Pather Panchali
  
• The Night Of The Hunter
  
• The Seventh Seal
  
• Vertigo
  
• Ashes & Diamonds
  
• The 400 Blows
  
• Some Like It Hot
  
• Breathless
  
• La Dolce Vita
  
• Saturday Night & Sunday Morning
  
• L'Avventura
  
• Last Year At Marienbad
  
• Lawrence Of Arabia
  
• Dr Strangelove
  
• The Battle Of Algiers
  
• The Sound Of Music
  
• Andrei Rublev
  
• The Chelsea Girls
  
• Bonnie & Clyde
  
• The Wild Bunch
  
• Easy Rider
  
• The Conformist
  
• The Godfather
  
• Aguirre: The Wrath Of God
  
• Nashville
  
• In The Realm Of The Senses
  
• Taxi Driver
  
• Annie Hall
  
• Star Wars IV: A New Hope
  
• The Marriage Of Maria Braun
  
• The Deer Hunter
  
• ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
  
• Blade Runner
  
• Paris Texas
  
• Heimat
  
• Come & See
  
• Blue Velvet
  
• Shoah
  
• A Room With A View
  
• Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown
  
• Cinema Paradiso
  
• Do The Right Thing
  
• Raise The Red Lantern
  
• Unforgiven
  
• Reservoir Dogs
  
• Three Colours I-III
  
• Through The Olive Trees
  
• Four Weddings & A Funeral
  
• Toy Story
  
• Fargo
  
• Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
  
• In The Mood For Love
  
• Traffic
  
• The Lord Of The Rings I-III
  
• City Of God
  
• Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

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

Creativities Unfold

Creativities Unfold 2007 at TCDC (10th-14th October; creativitiesunfold.com) featured a series of design workshops, seminars, and symposia, and was part of the Bangkok Design Festival. We went to the final day's event, the Genius Loci & Design symposium, to see Pen-Ek Ratanaruang and Stefan Sagmeister.

Pen-Ek, one of the leading directors of the Thai New Wave, explained that the uncommercial, depressing nature of his films reflects his personal interests in grief, death, and funerals. Alongside clips from his own films, he included sequences from Manhattan, and revealed that he is a fan of Woody Allen. (Unsurprising, as Allen appears to have a similar personality.)

Austrian graphic design superstar Sagmeister showed examples of his previous work, concentrating on the written mottoes (similar to Jenny Holzer's Truisms series) which have appeared in a wide range of typographical styles (as a digital spider's web, written in sugar, a microscopic image, and others). He was candid about the problems some of his commissions have created, such as when the full-page message "Money does not make me happy" was mistakenly printed as "Money does does make me happy", instantly reversing the intended meaning. Unfortunately, though, he didn't mention his most famous project, which involved carving the text of a poster into his bare flesh in 1999.

Bangkok Design Festival 2007

This year's Bangkok Design Festival (bangkokdesignfestival.com) runs from 10th-21st October. Among the many events are Creativities Unfold 2007 at TCDC and From Message To Media at Bangkok University Gallery.

Siam Center homage to Gilbert+George

The Siam Center mall has redesigned its interior and now features several large wall displays seemingly inspired by the artists Gilbert+George.

anti-Communist book banned

The Thai translation of Nine Commentaries On The Communist Party, a book published by anti-Communist newspaper The Epoch Times, has been banned in Thailand.

The book's writer, Zheng Peichun, has been jailed by the Chinese government. The book was first published in 2005, and features a collection of Epoch Times editorials from the previous year. It is available in an English edition from amazon.com and broadbook.com; the Thai translation is currently stocked by se-ed.com.

Algerian TV stations not guilty

Managers and journalists from two Algerian television stations (Canal Algerie and Algeria 3) were facing up to five years in jail after they broadcast the Jyllands-Posten Mohammed cartoons, though they have now been cleared by an Algerian court which ruled that the broadcasters did not intentionally offend Muslims. The cartoons have also been broadcast on Malaysian television, and reprinted in numerous newspapers and magazines.

On Kubrick

James Naremore's On Kubrick is a substantial new study of the director's feature films. Each film (excluding Spartacus, omitted on the [quite specious] grounds that it is not an auteurist work) is given approximately twenty pages of analysis, within six rather broad chapters.

Naremore strikes a largely successful balance between production history, narrative description, criticism, and theory. He does include un-necessarily long dialogue extracts; however, for the most part, there is minimal exposition, and his analysis is always fascinating and often original. (Many books on Kubrick, unlike Naremore's, are either overly theoretical [Michel Chion, Thomas Allen Nelson, Mario Falsetto] or overly descriptive [Norman Kagan, Gene D Phillips].)

Do we really need another guide to Kubrick's films? There have been a plethora either written or revised since his death in 1999 [Alison Castle, Paul Duncan, James Howard, David Hughes, etc.], though Naremore's is justified because of his archival research. He quotes from screenplay drafts and correspondence, uncovering new information regarding Kubrick's dealings with studios and censors.

The book's photographs are apparently screen-grabs rather than production stills, and are consequently rather murky. There is even a fuzzy screen-grab from a bootleg copy of Fear & Desire, even though a clearer production still of the same shot exists. Ironically, given the book's title, there are no images of Kubrick himself. But why would a BFI book be unable to obtain official Kubrick/film photographs from Warner?

Spartacus is omitted from Naremore's consideration, though AI is included. While Kubrick planned AI for much of the early 1990s, arguably little of his original vision remains in the final Steven Spielberg film, so why Naremore includes it yet excludes Spartacus [begun by Anthony Mann, though taken over by Kubrick] is a mystery. Naremore incorrectly states that A Clockwork Orange was banned by the BBFC; in fact, they passed it uncut for adult audiences. Also, his discussion of Eyes Wide Shut is marred slightly by his misunderstanding of the film's post-production: he wrongly claims that it was Kubrick himself, not the studio, who removed the Bhagavad Gita from the soundtrack and digitally censored the orgy sequence.

Paris Je T'Aime

Paris Je T'Aime is an anthology in which eighteen Paris arrondissements are each represented by a different eponymous short film. The films are linked by postcard-style footage of Paris, and the entire anthology is, of course, a love letter to the city. The opening, with fireworks over the city's skyline, closely resembles that of Manhattan.

Montmartre (directed by Bruno Podalydes) and Quais De Seine (by Gurinder Chadha) both involve a man coming to the aid of a woman who falls over, leading to possible relationships between them. The two films don't really benefit from their juxtaposition. Le Marais (Gus VanSant) also features a chance encounter with romantic potential (this time between two men who speak different languages), though, like the earlier segments, the outcome is not revealed.

Tuileries (Joel and Ethan Coen), set entirely in a Metro station, stars the great Steve Buscemi as a tourist who looks in the wrong direction and suffers the consequences. Hilariously, the precise insults shouted at him are listed in his otherwise cliched guidebook.

Loin De 16eme (Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas) and Porte De Choisy (Christopher Doyle) seem less coherent. The former concerns a woman taking care of a baby. The latter, clearly influenced by Doyle's experiences as a cinematographer for Wong Kar-Wai, features a salesman assigned to a bizarre Asian hair salon.

Bastille (Isobel Coixet), in which a man abandons his plan to break up with his wife (played by Miranda Richardson) after she tells him that she has a terminal illness, is (like Quais De Seine) simple yet sweet.

Place Des Victoires (Nobuhiro Suwa) stars Juliette Binoche as a mother grieving the death of her young son, though the fantasy in which a cowboy on horseback leads her to the child's ghost is (like the ending of AI), too unrealistic to be emotionally involving. The slapstick antics of the mimes in Tour Eiffel (Sylvain Chomet) also leave me cold.

Parc Monceau (Alfonso Cuaron), filmed in a single take, is much more credible, with a father and daughter bonding as they walk the streets of the district. Quartier Des Enfants Rouges (Olivier Assayas) is an equally observational story in which an actress begins to fall for her drug-dealer.

The tender and sad Place Des Fetes (Oliver Schmitz) is one of the highlights, exploring the rapport between a dying man and his paramedic. Why it's followed by the ridiculous Pigalle (Richard LaGravenese), featuring a middle-aged man role-playing in a brothel, is anyone's guess.

Quartier De La Madeleine (Vincenzo Natali), a vampire love story, seems out of place. In contrast, Pere-Lachaise (Wes Craven) is one of the few films to fully exploit the features of its chosen location, with two lovers who argue beside Oscar Wilde's grave.

Faubourg Saint-Denis (Tom Tykwer) is another standout film, featuring a blind young man who, after being dumped by his girlfriend, recalls the highs and lows of their relationship.

Quartier Latin (Gerard Depardieu and Frederic Auburtin), with a late-middle-aged couple divorcing and each finding younger partners, is not especially ambitious, though the actors are convincing.

The final segment, 14th Arrondissement (Alexander Payne) is one of the greatest: a totally believable, naturalistic portrait of a lonely tourist who, in the film's final line, feels happy and sad at the same time.

Sulak Sivaraksa book banned

A book by Sulak Sivaraksa, ค่อนศตวรรษ ประชาธิปไตยไทย ที่เต็มไปด้วยขวากหนาม, has been banned by Thai police citing national security grounds. The book is an account of the challenges faced by democracy in Thai politics in recent history. [Copies are still available from se-ed.com, and from Thammasat University Bookstore.]

Sonthi retires from the army

Sonthi, who masterminded the Thai coup last year, has retired as army chief and CNS leader.

For the past few months, there has been constant media speculation about Sonthi's future plans, speculation which he has never denied. It is widely believed that he wants to enter politics, possibly by standing as a candidate in the forthcoming Thai election. (Please, Sonthi, don't do it!)

Indeed, the rumours about him have recently been changing day-by-day: first, it was suggested that he might postpone his army retirement by six months, then he hinted very broadly that he would be interested in a cabinet position. 'Prime Minister' Surayud apparently considered making him Defence Minister, but presumably this wasn't quite what Sonthi had in mind because that rumour was soon replaced by a theory that he would become Deputy Prime Minister. Then, when the Interior Minister resigned, another rumour had it that Sonthi would take both positions. Surayud then announced that a cabinet reshuffle would not be necessary, and that he could take charge of the Interior position himself. Naturally, this didn't last long, as Surayud then announced that he would be reshuffling the cabinet after all, amid rumours that he was about to resign (thus enabling Sonthi to take over). The latest position is that Surayud has no plans to resign, that Sonthi has no plans to be Prime Minister, and that he will be in fact be appointed Deputy Prime Minister. Sonthi had always maintained that he would remain CNS leader after he resigned from the army, though he has now resigned from the CNS as well.

Kubrick on DVD

Two Kubrick films, Lolita and Barry Lyndon, are being released on DVD by Warner. They are released concurrently with the Directors Series Kubrick box set. Quite why they have been reissued is unclear, though, because their specifications are exactly the same as the versions released in 2001. (The only difference is in the packaging: the new versions have lost the "STANLEY KUBRICK COLLECTION" branding.)

Warner Directors Series: Kubrick

A Kubrick DVD box set is being released by Warner, featuring Eyes Wide Shut, Full Metal Jacket, The Shining, A Clockwork Orange, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the documentary A Life In Pictures.

This set is part of the Warner Directors Series, and features double-disc editions of each Kubrick film, with extras such as commentaries and documentaries. Previously, Warner released a Kubrick Collection DVD set in 1999 (with Dr Strangelove, Lolita, and Barry Lyndon, but without Eyes Wide Shut or A Life In Pictures). They then remastered the Kubrick Collection set (and added Eyes Wide Shut and A Life In Pictures) in 2001, again on DVD.

The films in this new Directors Series Kubrick set are also being released on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. These releases mark the first availability of Eyes Wide Shut and The Shining in widescreen on any video format, though unfortunately their aspect ratio is 1.78:1 rather than the theatrical ratio 1.85:1. Also, the original mono soundtracks of Full Metal Jacket, The Shining, and A Clockwork Orange are not included.

Kubrick in high-definition

Five of Kubrick's films are being released in high-definition on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray by Warner.

Eyes Wide Shut, The Shining, A Clockwork Orange, and 2001: A Space Odyssey make their HD-DVD/Blu-Ray debuts, and the Full Metal Jacket HD-DVD/Blu-Ray discs replace those released last year. (Spartacus was released on HD-DVD earlier this year.) All discs feature new bonus material, including commentaries and documentaries.

Unfortunately, every film is presented in 5.1 surround sound, which means that the original mono soundtracks of The Shining, A Clockwork Orange, and Full Metal Jacket are not included. (The mono versions were released on DVD in 1999; 2001 was originally released in six-track stereo, and Eyes Wide Shut was originally released in 5.1 surround sound.) These releases, and the concurrent DVD versions, mark the first availability of Eyes Wide Shut and The Shining in widescreen on any video format, though unfortunately their aspect ratio is 1.78:1 rather than the original 1.85:1.