Zgoda editor released

Aleksandr Sdvizhkov, editor of the Belarus newspaper Zgoda, has been released from jail. He had been sentenced to three years in prison, after his newspaper reprinted the Jyllands-Posten Mohammed cartoons.

Tunisian comedian jailed

Hei Ouled Baballah, a Tunisian comedian, has been jailed following a performance in which he impersonated Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, the country's President. An audio recording of the performance has been circulating unofficially in Tunisia, where political satire is not tolerated.

Thaksin returns

Thaksin Shinawatra, the former Thai Prime Minister who was deposed by the 2006 coup, has returned to Thailand. (Since the coup, he had been in self-imposed exile, spending most of his time in England in his capacity as owner of Manchester City Football Club.) He faces two corruption charges, and was granted bail on the condition that he doesn't leave the country without permission.

Thousands of his supporters came to the airport to witness his arrival yesterday morning. He won three landslide elections in Thailand and, while the middle-classes in Bangkok regard him as corrupt, he maintains substantial support in rural provinces; the PPP, which rose from the ashes of Thaksin's TRT, won the 2007 election. As he emerged from the plane, Thaksin kissed the ground, like the Pope: he is an expert at PR and presentation, the very opposite of Samak.

Thaksin has insisted repeatedly that he has no intention of returning to active politics, though many are sceptical of this. Personally, I believe him (and actually quite like him - yes, I know, that's not a popular opinion in Bangkok). But while I doubt that he will return to parliament, he will surely continue behind-the-scenes as the main PPP sponsor and puppet-master. We have seen already how little real power Samak has within the PPP: the cabinet was essentially selected by Thaksin, against Samak's wishes, and Samak has been (unconvincingly) asserting to the media that there's no-one pulling his strings. Future backstage tension between Thaksin and Samak is a distinct possibility.

Yongyuth guilty

Yongyuth Tiyaphairat, a former PPP deputy leader, has been found guilty of vote-buying by the Election Commission. (The EC had initially endorsed him, in a rush to approve sufficient MPs to enable the parliamentary session to begin.) The implications of the guilty verdict are potentially massive. If it's found that Yongyuth acted as a PPP executive, rather than in a personal capacity, the entire PPP could be dissolved (just like TRT in 2007), leading either to another general election or a Democrat coalition government. But that's a big 'if'.

Film Quarterly

The Observer newspaper has launched a new magazine supplement, Film Quarterly. Worryingly, the entire project is sponsored by Volkswagen; this means that there is no advertising, except for VW ads at the front and back, but the downside is that the magazine is written according to "a brief agreed with Volkswagen".

The lead feature in the premiere issue is an entertaining, extended interview with Jack Nicholson, though this is the only truly substantial piece in the magazine. Besides this, there's a long extract from a forthcoming book, and plenty of short filler articles.

The Observer's other themed magazine supplements (Woman, Food Monthly, Music Monthly, and Sport Monthly) are all monthly publications, whereas Film Quarterly will be published every four months. The first issue, at fifty-two pages, seems quite slim for a quarterly magazine.

L'Erotisme

L'Erotisme is a DVD featuring eleven underground films, inspired by Georges Bataille's excellent book Eroticism, a study of sex and death as cultural taboos:

Ritualis
(a Black Mass ritual set to Heavy Metal music; directed by Pat Tremblay)

Maldoror: A Pact With Prostitution
(a man meets a prostitute in a cemetery, and kills a grotesque glow-worm [!] with a rock; directed by Nate Archer and Micki Pellerano)

Ass
(as a woman fingers herself, the red-tinted film intercuts rapidly between her face and her buttocks; directed by Usama Alshaibi)

KI
(partially obscured glimpses of a man receiving fellatio; directed by Karl Lemieux)

La Fin De Notre Amour
(an artist and an unidentified woman cut themselves with razors and surgical instruments; directed by Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani)

Extase De Chair Brisee
(a rape-revenge story: a woman kills two masked men with a drill, after they molest her in a park; directed by Pierre-Luc Vaillancourt and Frederick Maheaux)

Baby Doll
(a doll is tied up and fondled, in a bondage fantasy; directed by Serge DeCotret)

The Loneliest Little Boy In The World
(a pig's head is licked and worshipped by a nude woman; directed by Mike Dereniewski)

Paranoid
(a woman films herself with a camcorder as she inserts a dildo; directed by Anna Hanavan)

D'Yeux
(a slide-show of erotic photomontages featuring body parts and meat; directed by Monk Boucher)

Imperatrix Cornicula
(a woman rubbing herself with feathers, and birds gathering in the sky; directed by Jerome Bertrand)

Almost all of these short films are silent, except for Ritualis (which features slowed-down incantations as dialogue, though would be more effective as a silent film). Maldoror even adds mock-Victorian inter-titles, to add to the silent film aesthetic.

Maldoror's occult symbols evoke Kenneth Anger's treatment of magick, and the film's decaying, abject glow-worm could be a refugee from David Lynch's Eraserhead. It's one of the best films on the DVD.

Another highlight is KI, the only film to cross the borderline into hardcore imagery. Its intentionally degraded and washed-out images resemble Peggy Ahwesh's The Color Of Love, another porn/sex scene rendered semi-abstract by degraded film-stock, though KI is less confrontational than Ahwesh's uncomfortable film.

I also like La Fin De Notre Amour very much. It's filmed as a series of static images (like La Jetee), and, though it's perhaps a bit too stylised (tinted red and blue), it is certainly disturbing.

In my opinion, the weakest films are Ritualis (cliched, verging on self-parody) and, especially, Extase De Chair Brisee. This latter film is like a cross between I Spit On Your Grave and The Driller Killer - in other words, it's an exercise in gratuitous exploitation. The unconvincing acting, costumes, and make-up remove any sense of empathy or engagement, and the camerawork is frequently out of focus.

complaint against Levant dropped

Syed Soharwardy has dropped his complaint against Canadian publisher Ezra Levant. Levant's magazine, Western Standard, printed the Jyllands-Posten Mohammed cartoons on 13th February 2006.

100 Best Films

Today, The Sunday Telegraph newspaper, in its magazine supplement Seven, has published a 100 Best Films list. The list was compiled by Catherine Shoard, Jenny McCartney, Alan Stanbrook, and Mike McCahill. It is divided into ten categories: drama, thriller/action, comedy, animation, horror, romance, kids, musicals, documentary, and world cinema. Each category has ten films, arranged preferentially.

Drama

1. The Conversation
2. Strangers On A Train
3. There Will Be Blood
4. Winter Light
5. Dogville
6. Raging Bull
7. The Godfather I-II
8. Double Indemnity
9. Apocalypse Now
10. Chinatown

Thriller/Action

1. North By Northwest
2. Raiders Of The Lost Ark
3. Manhattan Murder Mystery
4. Heat
5. The 39 Steps
6. Terminator II: Judgment Day
7. Once Upon A Time In The West
8. The Ladykillers
9. The Silence Of The Lambs
10. Die Hard

Comedy

1. Some Like It Hot
2. Annie Hall
3. Meet The Parents
4. Withnail & I
5. His Girl Friday
6. The Odd Couple
7. Zoolander
8. Stir Crazy
9. Gregory's Girl
10. Tootsie

Animation

1. Dimensions Of Dialogue
2. The Jungle Book
3. Spirited Away
4. Toy Story
5. Composition In Blue
6. Grave Of The Fireflies
7. The Secret Adventures Of Tom Thumb
8. Finding Nemo
9. Perfect Blue
10. Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs

Horror

1. Psycho
2. Frankenstein
3. The Exorcist
4. Night Of The Living Dead
5. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
6. Dead Of Night
7. The Wicker Man
8. The Blair Witch Project
9. Vampyr
10. The Kingdom I-II

Romance

1. Before Sunset
2. Head-On
3. I Know Where I'm Going!
4. Brief Encounter
5. The Lady Vanishes
6. The Quiet American
7. Hannah & Her Sisters
8. Bringing Up Baby
9. Days Of Heaven
10. Casablanca

Kids

1. Back To The Future
2. ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
3. Babe: Pig In The City
4. Freaky Friday
5. Addams Family Values
6. Mean Girls
7. Anne Of Green Gables
8. Clueless
9. Enchanted
10. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit

Musicals

1. West Side Story
2. The Sound Of Music
3. Cabaret
4. Top Hat
5. Chicago
6. Mary Poppins
7. Singin' In The Rain
8. Nashville
9. Woodstock
10. My Fair Lady

Documentary

1. American Splendor
2. The Sorrow & The Pity
3. American Movie
4. Touching The Void
5. Capturing The Friedmans
6. Spellbound
7. To Be & To Have
8. Hearts & Minds
9. My Kid Could Paint That
10. Neil Young: Heart Of Gold

World Cinema

1. Battleship Potemkin
2. The Passion Of Joan Of Arc
3. The Rules Of The Game
4. Tokyo Story
5. The Seven Samurai
6. Pather Panchali
7. Smiles Of A Sumer Night
8. A Man Escaped
9. Andrei Rublev
10. The Colour Of Pomegranates

The animation section is surprisingly diverse and even avant-garde, but that's the exception rather than the rule because, in general, this list is terrible.

Dividing the 100 titles into ten rigid categories is asking for trouble. Manhattan Murder Mystery, for example, is listed as a thriller/action film (the third greatest thriller/action film, no less), but it's actually a comedy. Why it's listed at all is a mystery, because it's a pale imitation of Annie Hall. Bringing Up Baby appears in the romance list, even though it's one of the most famous comedies ever made.

The inclusion of so many very recent films is bizarre. Is Enchanted (released last year) really one of the greatest children's films ever made? Is There Will Be Blood (released this year) really one of the best dramas of all time? Is it really necessary for seven of the ten documentaries to be films made after 2001? Emphatically no, in all cases.

Why is world cinema relegated to only ten films, as if it were a genre? Are 90% of the 100 'best films' really English-language? No. The world cinema category whitewashes whole chapters of film history: no German Expressionism, no French New Wave, and no Italian Neo-Realism.

Oh, and the compilers seem to have forgotten about science-fiction and westerns altogether. D'oh! So there's no place for Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey (no Kubrick films at all, in fact), Metropolis, Stagecoach, The Searchers, or High Noon.

Finally, what about Citizen Kane? I'd like to think that the compilers were making a revisionist statement by omitting it, but I'm more inclined to believe that they simply forgot about it because it doesn't fit into one of their ten categories.

Finally, note that Frankenstein is the James Whale sound version, not the Thomas Edison silent film.

Jane [bleep] Fonda

On Thursday, Jane Fonda made an appearance on Today, a morning TV show in America. She was with Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues. Fonda explained her own involvement with the Monologues, and used the c-word on live television. That doesn't happen very often in the UK, and it hardly ever happens in the US. The host didn't even seem to notice, and continued with the interview, though she did apologise a few minutes later after she realised what had happened.

This is almost an exact replay of a situation on UK TV in 2002, when Caprice appeared on This Morning, also to discuss her performance of The Vagina Monologues. Caprice used the same word, and the presenters didn't notice, so the live interview continued.

photo for Samak

Samak stated in a CNN interview that "just one died [...] only one guy died" during the 6th October 1976 massacre of students at Thammasat University in Bangkok. He said the same thing in an interview with Al Jazeera: "Only one guy died at Sanam Luang [...] nobody died at Thammasat University". Yesterday, Chirmsak Pinthong was forced to resign from his radio show after he contradicted Samak's account of the 1976 death toll.

The photograph above shows the bodies of some of the students who were killed on 6th October 1976. If Samak counted the corpses in this picture, he might learn something. He must think we are all stupid: how can he have the nerve to claim that only one person died, when it is a matter of historical record that at least forty-six were killed?

Mohammed cartoon reprinted

The most controversial of the twelve Mohammed caricatures published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005 has been reprinted today by various European newspapers. Kurt Westergaard's cartoon, of Mohammed wearing a bomb instead of a turban, came to symbolise the entire controversy. (He was filmed by the BBC drawing a new version of the image last year.)

Danish police have arrested three people who were allegedly plotting to murder Westergaard. To show solidarity with the cartoonist, and to defend free speech, his cartoon has been reprinted today by as many as seventeen Danish newspapers (including Politiken, Berlingske Tidende, and Ekstra Bladet, as well as Jyllands-Posten) and by newspapers in Spain, Holland, and Sweden. (All twelve of the original cartoons were reprinted extensively in 2006.) Politiken has printed a partially-drawn version of the Westergaard image on its front page.

Samak denies 1976 massacre

Prime Minister Samak has given an interview to CNN's Dan Rivers (whose interview with ex-PM Thaksin was blocked from Thai TV last year). He was asked about his involvement in inciting the lynching of students demonstrating against dictatorship in 1976. Samak refused to condemn the violence, and insisted that only one person died.

In fact, even the official figures put the death toll at forty-six, and it is widely believed that the real total is substantially higher. (The horror of the event is captured by Horror In Pink, a series of photographs which were exhibited at From Message To Media last year.)

Turkish cartoonists on trial

Two Turkish cartoonists, Musa Kart and Zafer Temocin, are on trial for defamation, after the Cumhuriyet newspaper published their caricatures of Turkish President Abdullah Gul. Kart's cartoon, depicting Gul as a scarecrow, was published on 28th November 2007. Temocin's caricature, of Gul in an envelope, appeared the next day. If they are found guilty, they face four years in jail.

Fast Food Nation

Richard Linklater's film Fast Food Nation is a drama inspired by the superb investigative book of the same name by Eric Schlosser. It follows two recent documentaries on the secretive and unhealthy nature of McDonald's and its products, McLibel and Super-Size Me.

The exploitation of the American fast food industry is illustrated by the experiences of Mexican immigrants working at a meat-packing factory, a student activist who has a McJob at Mickey's (the fictional company created for the film), and a Mickey's executive who investigates claims of contaminated beef. Though the characters are fictitious, the film concludes with genuine Blood Of The Beasts-style slaughterhouse footage.

The narrative intercuts between a series of concurrent stories, though characters from separate stories never meet (except for one shot in which vehicles from two different segments unknowingly stop beside each other at a traffic light). The structure doesn't quite work, though, because it's too episodic. Characters are introduced, they have one or two major scenes, then they are never seen again, leaving numerous plot points unresolved. This pattern is repeated throughout the film, which has an impressive ensemble cast but no strong central plot line to link everything together.

The Seven Year Itch

The Seven Year Itch is a comedy directed by Billy Wilder, starring Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell. Like all 20th Century Fox productions of the period (the mid-1950s), it was filmed in CinemaScope. Wilder would later direct Monroe in his fantastic Some Like It Hot.

Ewell plays Richard Sherman, a New York publisher whose wife and son go on holiday for the summer. Monroe's un-named character sub-let's the apartment above Sherman's, and he fantasises about seducing her while his wife is away. In the earlier play of the same name, they do have an affair, though in the toned-down film version he is only unfaithful in his imagination. (Some of the fantasy sequences are parodies of popular films, such as From Here To Eternity.)

At the start, the premise is laboured a bit too much, with repeated emphasis on Sherman's regular office job and normal marriage, and several references to the New York wives who apparently all go on summer vacations without their husbands. It seems a bit strained, as if it were attempting to normalise an unrealistic scenario.

There's a bit too much of Ewell, who narrates the story and appears in every scene, though when Monroe appears she is sensational. She has some great lines, such as recognising classical music because "there's no vocal". This film also contains Monroe's most famous scene: standing over a subway grating, her skirt billowing above her waist (iconically represented in a Sam Shaw photograph).

A nude photograph of Monroe had been published by Playboy the year before the film was released, and in an interesting parallel, Monroe's character had also previously posed for a cheesecake photo. In an even more blatant in-joke, Sherman, discussing Monroe's character, says "Maybe it's Marilyn Monroe"!