Thai police chief demoted

Breaking news: Thai police chief Phatcharawat Wongsuwan has been transferred to an inactive post, following the continued delay in police action against the PAD. Yesterday's state of emergency declaration gave the police the authority to forcibly remove the PAD from Suvarnabhumi and Don Mueang airports, though so far the police have not done so.

The demotion of Phatcharawat further weakens the government's position, with the police seemingly joining the army in refusing to restore order. PM Somchai remains in Chiang Mai, fearing the possibility of an army coup if he returned to Bangkok, though staying hundreds of miles from the capital prevents him from asserting his authority.

airports become emergency zones

Last night, Somchai declared a state of emergency, limited to two zones in Bangkok: the new international airport (Suvarnabhumi) and the old airport (Don Mueang). This will enable him to authorise the removal of the PAD protesters. He announced that the police, air force, and navy (though not the army) will be deployed to disperse the PAD. Clearly, Anupong's recent 'suggestions' that Somchai should resign and dissolve parliament make it impossible for the government to depend on co-operation from the army. (During the Bangkok-wide state of emergency in September, Anupong refused to break up the PAD's occupation of Government House; yesterday, there were rumours of an imminent coup, after Anupong met Prem and apparently gave Somchai an ultimatum.)

With Suvarnabhumi airport, the government's temporary offices at Don Mueang, and Government House all still under siege, and Anupong's open defiance, Somchai and his cabinet were forced to meet yesterday in Chiang Mai. Somchai still refuses to use force against the PAD, following the violence in October, though if he continues to do nothing he will lose what little authority he still has left. Anupong surely deserves dismissal for insubordination, though sacking him would provoke other army generals to launch a coup.

Anupong calls for dissolution

Army chief Anupong today called for the government to dissolve parliament, and for the PAD protests to cease. (Last month, he suggested that PM Somchai should resign.)

Dissolving parliament and calling a general election would not, however, end the cycle of protests which has plagued the country for the past three years. Thaksin's TRT, and the ruling PPP, have won every general election since 2001, though there have been protests against Thaksin and his successors since 2005. The PAD will not be satisfied until its undemocratic 'New Politics' system is implemented, and the PAD's leaders refuse to enter democratic politics because they know that they would stand no chance of being elected. Yet, they still claim a (totally non-existent) mandate to continue their violent and illegal demonstrations.

Thaksin was elected in 2001, and won a second term in 2005. Then, in 2006, he dissolved parliament following protests against his tax-free sale of Shin Corp. to Singapore. He won a third election, though the poll was later invalidated due to Election Commission corruption. Following the 2006 coup, an election was finally held in December 2007, which was won by the PPP (formed after the dissolution of Thaksin's TRT, though also facing dissolution themselves). The PAD initially called for Thaksin's resignation, though when Thaksin personally selected Samak Sundaravej as PPP leader the PAD's demonstrations resumed. Then, after Samak's disqualification, he was replaced by Thaksin's brother-in-law, Somchai Wongsawat, and the PAD protested yet again. So, even if Somchai resigned, or a new election was called, the PPP (or an incarnation of it) would comfortably win any election in the near future and would be led by someone close to Thaksin, and the cycle of demonstrations would begin all over again.

PAD's never-ending "final battle"

Suvarnabhumi international airport was closed today, after it was besieged by PAD protesters who were trying to prevent Prime Minister Somchai's plane from landing there.

Yesterday, in what they risibly called a "final battle", the PAD prevented MPs from entering parliament, then stormed into the cabinet's temporary offices at Don Mueang airport. (The cabinet were only meeting at Don Mueang, of course, because Government House has been seized by the PAD for the past three months.)

The PAD's core leaders have done as much as they can to provoke the army into staging yet another coup, though army chief Anupong admirably refuses to take the bait. There were two deaths when police used tear gas last month, apparently because of dangerous Chinese gas. But how much longer can the PAD be allowed to hold the country to ransom?

PAD guards are carrying, and using, lethal weapons. PAD protesters are ransacking state buildings, trespassing, and looting. PAD leaders are inciting anarchy and mob rule. PM Somchai must surely do something to stop them?

Oleg Kulik photographs seized in Paris

Police have removed photographs by the Russian performance artist Oleg Kulik from an exhibition in Paris. The images, part of a retrospective exhibition titled New Sermon, were confiscated on 28th October after police visited the exhibition at the FIAC art fair.

another anti-PAD attack

A PAD guard has been killed by a grenade. The grenade was thrown early this morning, two days after a PAD protester was killed by a grenade inside Government House. The PAD plans to demonstrate outside parliament tomorrow; when they did so last month, two people died.

Astonishment & Power

The ArtGorillas gallery (next to the Lido cinema, Bangkok) is currently showing Astonishment & Power, an exhibition of paintings and photographs by Bogomir Krajnc.

The exhibition includes abstract collages (painted over newspapers and old prints), and photographs of dead animals (including a bird's head, used as the exhibition's poster image). There is even a painting with an animal skull stuck onto it. Astonishment & Power opened on 10th November, and runs until the end of the month.

wordpress.com blog deleted

A blog has been deleted by its host, wordpress.com, following a complaint from the government of Indonesia. The blog, lapotuak.wordpress.com, featured two explicit Mohammed comic strips, and the Indonesian government threatened to block the entire wordpress.com site if the 'offensive' blog was not deleted. (Infamously, Mohammed caricatures were published in Denmark in 2005, inspiring more satirical Mohammed cartoons.)

grenade kills PAD protester

A PAD protester was killed by a grenade early this morning. The grenade exploded in front of the PAD's main stage at Government House, where the PAD's illegal occupation continues.

The government's latest (and strangest) plan to end the stalemate is to give military assassin Pallop Pinmanee the authority to disperse the PAD. Pallop was previously a friend of PAD co-founder Chamlong Srimuang and he probably organised a bomb plot against Thaksin in 2006, but apparently Thaksin now wants him to return to the Internal Security Operations Command.

Hilarious quote from Tuesday's Bangkok Post: "[Pallop] is a holder of many sensitive "secrets". [He] knows who is the real mastermind behind the assassination attempt and the Sept 19, 2006 coup - information which Thaksin needs as badly as his enemies want to keep it from him". Pallop knows who was behind the assassination attempt, because it was him. And everyone knows who was behind the coup: it was Prem. But (sssh!) don't tell anyone, it's a secret.

100 Films Pour Une Cinematheque Ideale

Cahiers Du Cinema, the highly respected French film magazine, has published a book listing 100 films necessary for a perfect cinema programme. The book, by Claude-Jean Philippe, is titled 100 Films Pour Une Cinematheque Ideale. A Parisian cinema, the Reflet Medicis, will indeed be screening the 100 films, in a season called Les 100 Plus Beaux Films De L'Histoire Du Cinema, running from yesterday until 6th July 2009.

The 100 films were chosen by a panel of seventy-eight film critics. The list is ranked according to the proportion of votes each film received, as follows:

48/78 (61%)

• Citizen Kane
  

47/78 (60%)

• The Night Of The Hunter
  
• The Rules Of The Game

46/78 (59%)

• Sunrise

43/78 (55%)

• L'Atalante

40/78 (51%)

• M

39/78 (50%)

• Singin' In The Rain

35/78 (45%)

• Vertigo

34/78 (44%)

• Les Enfants Du Paradis
  
• The Searchers
  
• Greed

33/78 (42%)

• Rio Bravo
  
• To Be Or Not To Be

29/78 (37%)

• Tokyo Story

28/78 (36%)

• Le Mepris

27/78 (35%)

• Ugetsu Monogatari
  
• City Lights
  
• The General
  
• Nosferatu
  
• The Music Room

26/78 (33%)

• Freaks
  
• Johnny Guitar
  
• La Maman & La Putain

25/78 (32%)

• The Great Dictator
  
• The Leopard
  
• Hiroshima Mon Amour
  
• Pandora's Box
  
• North By Northwest
  
• Pickpocket

24/78 (31%)

• Casque D'Or
  
• The Barefoot Contessa
  
• Mme De...
  
• Le Plaisir
  
• The Deer Hunter

23/78 (29%)

• L'Avventura
  
• Battleship Potemkin
  
• Notorious
  
• Ivan The Terrible I-II
  
• The Godfather
  
• Touch Of Evil
  
• The Wind

22/78 (28%)

• 2001: A Space Odyssey
  
• Fanny & Alexander

21/78 (27%)

• The Crowd
  
• 8-&-A-Half
  
• La Jetee
  
• Pierrot Le Fou
  
• Confessions Of A Cheat

20/78 (26%)

• Amarcord
  
• La Belle & La Bete
  
• Some Like It Hot
  
• Some Came Running
  
• Gertrud
  
• King Kong
  
• Laura
  
• The Seven Samurai

19/78 (24%)

• The 400 Blows
  
• La Dolce Vita
  
• The Dead
  
• Trouble In Paradise
  
• It's A Wonderful Life
  
• M. Verdoux
  
• The Passion Of Joan Of Arc

18/78 (23%)

• Breathless
  
• Apocalypse Now
  
• Barry Lyndon
  
• Grand Illusion
  
• Intolerance
  
• Partie De Campagne
  
• Playtime
  
• Rome: Open City
  
• Senso
  
• Modern Times
  
• VanGogh

17/78 (22%)

• An Affair To Remember
  
• Andrei Rublev
  
• The Scarlet Empress
  
• Sansho Dayu
  
• Talk To Her
  
• The Party
  
• Tabu
  
• The Bandwagon
  
• A Star Is Born
  
• M. Hulot's Holiday

16/78 (20%)

• America America
  
• El
  
• Kiss Me Deadly
  
• Once Upon A Time In America
  
• Daybreak
  
• Letter From An Unknown Woman
  
• Lola
  
• Manhattan
  
• Mulholland Dr.
  
• My Night At Maud's
  
• Night & Fog
  
• The Gold Rush
  
• Scarface
  
• Bicycle Thieves
  
• Napoleon

It's a pleasant surprise to see two films by Kenji Mizoguchi - Ugetsu Monogatari and Sansho Dayu - as his work rarely appears on top-100 lists.

Thai firewall proposed

Thailand's MICT revealed a harebrained scheme to spend 500 million baht on a national firewall to block lese majeste websites. The Ministry also plans to alter the Cyber Crime Law, because waiting for a court order before blocking websites is just too much hassle. (MICT already blocks over 2,000 sites without authorisation: 1,893 as of June this year, and a further 400 since then.) How does Minister Mun Patanotai plan to implement his scheme? By threatening to revoke the licences of unco-operative ISPs. It's illegal, but at least it's not quite as bad as his earlier plan to hack into 'offensive' websites.

More worryingly, the Democrats announced today that they will campaign for tougher penalties in lese majeste cases. Surely they should be concentrating on important issues like the economy or the political crisis instead?

Memento

Memento is a psychological thriler directed by Christopher Nolan, starring Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Joe Pantoliano. It's an example of Neo-Noir film-making, exhibiting the detective-mystery plot, duplicitous characters, flawed protagonist, femme fatale, and downbeat conclusion typical of Film Noir. More specifically, Memento is an example of Film Soleil, a strain of Noir (exemplified by Chinatown) which exchanges chiaroscuro for sunshine and swaps the grime of New York for the cleanliness of California.

Leonard Shelby (Pearce) and his wife were attacked in their home by two masked men. During the attack, Shelby killed one of the men, though he sustained a head injury which gave him anterograde amnesia: he can remember his life before the attack, though he has lost his short-term memory. Consequently, he photographs everyone he meets, writes notes to himself, and even tattoos important information on his body. The film begins with Leonard searching for the second man who attacked him and his wife, a man whose initials are JG. He is helped by an amoral cop, Teddy (Pantoliano); and he meets a bartender, Natalie (Moss), who gives him vital information. Teddy and Natalie both exploit Leonard to a certain degree, as does the only other person he interacts with, a motel clerk.

Leonard exists in a constant state of confusion, unable to remember anything for more than a few minutes, and the film employs a unique narrative structure in order to give the audience the same sense of bewilderment. The story is essentially told in reverse chronological order, with each event followed by the event which chronologically preceded it. Throughout the film, Leonard tracks down clues that lead him to JG, and each new clue is initially a mystery to the audience: we learn of the significance of each event only after (technically, before) it happens, when its context is revealed by the subsequent scene. The effect is of peeling away the layers of an onion, ultimately exposing the core to complete the mystery. (The technique was also used by Gaspar Noe in Irreversible, for emotional impact rather than expositional revelation.)

Memento's narrative positions it alongside the non-linear, fragmented structures of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind and other recent films, a trend inspired by the success of Pulp Fiction. With a complex series of clues, an unreliable narrator, and a twist ending, it also recalls The Usual Suspects. The film demands an audience's attention, since every scene contains a new piece of the puzzle, and, like The Usual Suspects, multiple viewings are probably necessary in order to fully comprehend the plot.

Legendary Movies

Legendary Movies, by Paolo D'Agostini, features 140 films arranged chronologically and selected for their artistic, cultural, and commercial significance. It was written for the Italian market, as I Grandi Film: Quando Il Cinema Diventa Leggenda, and consequently there is a distinctly Italian bias to the list.

There are plenty of genuinely legendary films in the book, though there are also quite a few popular yet insubstantial (and frankly awful) titles: A Summer Place, The Pink Panther, Mary Poppins, Love Story, Forrest Gump, and Life Is Beautiful. Also, very recent films (such as the Bourne and Pirates Of The Caribbean trilogies) could hardly be described as legendary.

D'Agostini's Legendary Movies are as follows:

• Cabiria
  
• The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari
  
• Nosferatu
  
• Battleship Potemkin
  
• Metropolis
  
• The Blue Angel
  
• Frankenstein
  
• Grand Hotel
  
• King Kong
  
• It Happened One Night
  
• Modern Times
  
• Grand Illusion
  
• The Wizard Of Oz
  
• Ninotchka
  
• Stagecoach
  
• Gone With The Wind
  
• Citizen Kane
  
• Casablanca
  
• Arsenic & Old Lace
  
• Rome: Open City
  
• Gilda
  
• It's A Wonderful Life
  
• Bicycle Thieves
  
• The Asphalt Jungle
  
• Sunset Blvd
  
• Singin' In The Rain
  
• High Noon
  
• Don Camillo
  
• The Wild One
  
• Roman Holiday
  
• From Here To Eternity
  
• A Star Is Born
  
• On The Waterfront
  
• Sabrina
  
• The Seven Samurai
  
• Rear Window
  
• Rebel Without A Cause
  
• & God Created Woman
  
• The Ten Commandments
  
• The Seventh Seal
  
• The Bridge On The River Kwai
  
• The Great War
  
• Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ
  
• Some Like It Hot
  
• A Summer Place
  
• La Dolce Vita
  
• Breathless
  
• Two Women
  
• Psycho
  
• The Magnificent Seven
  
• Breakfast At Tiffany's
  
• West Side Story
  
• Lolita
  
• Jules & Jim
  
• Lawrence Of Arabia
  
• The Pink Panther
  
• Eight-&-A-Half
  
• The Leopard
  
• A Fistful Of Dollars
  
• Goldfinger
  
• Mary Poppins
  
• Dr Zhivago
  
• A Man & A Woman
  
• Guess Who's Coming To Dinner
  
• The Dirty Dozen
  
• Belle De Jour
  
• The Graduate
  
• In The Heat Of The Night
  
• Romeo & Juliet
  
• Planet Of The Apes
  
• Bullitt
  
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
  
• Rosemary's Baby
  
• Easy Rider
  
• Midnight Cowboy
  
• Love Story
  
• M*A*S*H
  
• Dirty Harry
  
• A Clockwork Orange
  
• Cabaret
  
• The Godfather
  
• The Sting
  
• American Graffiti
  
• The Exorcist
  
• Jaws
  
• One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
  
• Nashville
  
• Taxi Driver
  
• Rocky
  
• In The Realm Of The Senses
  
• Saturday Night Fever
  
• Star Wars IV: A New Hope
  
• Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
  
• The Deer Hunter
  
• Grease
  
• Apocalypse Now
  
• Manhattan
  
• Alien
  
• The Blues Brothers
  
• The Shining
  
• American Gigolo
  
• The Party
  
• Raiders Of The Lost Ark
  
• Escape From New York
  
• First Blood
  
• ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
  
• Blade Runner
  
• Once Upon A Time In America
  
• A Nightmare On Elm St.
  
• Back To The Future
  
• Top Gun
  
• Nine-&-A-Half Weeks
  
• Wings Of Desire
  
• The Last Emperor
  
• Rain Man
  
• Nikita
  
• Pretty Woman
  
• Edward Scissorhands
  
• Raise The Red Lantern
  
• The Silence Of The Lambs
  
• Thelma & Louise
  
• Basic Instinct
  
• Batman Returns
  
• Schindler's List
  
• Forrest Gump
  
• Pulp Fiction
  
• Seven
  
• Mission: Impossible
  
• Life Is Beautiful
  
• Titanic
  
• The Matrix
  
• Gladiator
  
• The Lord Of The Rings I-III
  
• Amelia
  
• Talk To Her
  
• Kill Bill I-II
  
• The Last Samurai
  
• Million Dollar Baby
  
• The Bourne Identity/Supremacy/Ultimatum
  
• Pirates Of The Caribbean I-III

Note that Ben-Hur, Frankenstein, and The Ten Commandments are all sound films and not the earlier silent versions. Also, Titanic is the 1997 James Cameron version (as opposed to the earlier 1943 and 1953 versions). There have been many filmed adaptations of Romeo & Juliet; this one is the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli version.

essential films (personal lists)

Two downloadable film lists are available, and both are organised chronologically. The first is a video featuring scenes from thirty essential films. The second is a comprehensive list of 500 classic films from my cinema history website.

Baltic will not face prosecution

A private prosecution against the Baltic art gallery has been dismissed by the UK Crown Prosecution Service. The complainant, Emily Mapfuw, alleged that the gallery outraged public decency with an exhibition featuring Terence Koh's Gone Yet Still, a statuette of a tumescent Jesus. The case has now been discontinued by the CPS, and no action will be taken.

Sulak arrested

Breaking news: Thai political activist Sulak Sivaraksa has been arrested and charged with lese majeste. The charge apparently relates to a speech he gave at Khon Kaen University on 11th December last year.

In 2007, one of his books was banned (admirably, he later challenged the ban in court), and in 2006 he was interviewed in a banned issue of the journal Same Sky. Also, a page from his website (sulak-sivaraksa.org) has been blocked by MICT.

LittleBigPlanet song deleted

The new Sony PlayStation game LittleBigPlanet has been recalled and modified, to remove a song from its soundtrack.

The song, Tapha Niang (from Toumani Diabate's album Boulevard De L'Independance), features quotations from the Koran. Fortunately, the album is still available.

Previously, a song featuring Koran quotations was removed from Joey Boy's album The Greatest Beats in Thailand.

Kubrick: Essays On His Films & Legacy

Stanley Kubrick: Essays On His Films & Legacy is a new compendium of Kubrickian scholarship, edited by Gary D Rhodes. At first glance, it closely resembles Depth Of Field, a previous collection of essays on Kubrick, with individual analyses of his major films, excluding Dr Strangelove, and several chapters devoted to Eyes Wide Shut.

The contributors to Depth Of Field (Diane Johnson, Vincent LoBrutto, Frederic Raphael, Jonathan Rosenbaum, et al.) were less academic, though arguably more authoritative. The contributors to Rhodes's book (including Rhodes himself) all have university teaching positions, yet none of them has previously published any work on Kubrick.

In his introduction, Rhodes inexplicably praises the first essay as a "monumental examination of Kubrick's photography for Look magazine". Unfortunately, the essay is a missed opportunity: instead of providing a detailed analysis or survey of Kubrick's Look photography, the author (Philippe Mather) spends page after page on photojournalism textbooks and George Ritzer's sociological theories. Also, Mather's Look sources are all secondary, and seem limited to Drama & Shadows and LoBrutto's biography.

Other disappointing essays include overly descriptive articles on Kubrick's documentaries (by Marina Burke) and Killer's Kiss (by Tony Williams), both of which feature extensive plot summaries and only limited analysis. Then there is Eric Eaton's dry, theoretical study of Paths Of Glory: he examines the film's "spatial axis", and its "conceptualization of at least two fundamental, polarized properties: (1) abstraction-concretion; and (2) the opposition of the powerful cultural forces emanating from the two states toward the concrete world of"... zzzzzzzzz.

Thankfully, there are also some more engaging essays. Hugh S Manon explores Kubrick's contributions to Film Noir, Reynold Humphries examines the politics of Spartacus, Homay King analyses the camerawork of Barry Lyndon, and there are three interesting approaches to Eyes Wide Shut (gender, by Lindiwe Dovey; carnival, by Miriam Jordan and Julian Jason Haladyn; and phenomenology, by Phillip Sipiora). [Dovey does, however, make a glaring error, writing that Eyes Wide Shut "is the only film in which Kubrick acts as an extra". In fact, Kubrick is not an extra in Eyes Wide Shut, though he does appear (either in front of the camera or, more often, on the soundtrack) in five of his earlier films.]

The book's final chapter (by Robert JE Simpson) deals with Kubrick's personal reputation and public image, discussing the media representations of Kubrick which have appeared since his death (including Raphael's book, Eyes Wide Open; the ridiculous film drama, Colour Me Kubrick; and the Stanley Kubrick Archive, in London). This is the book's most original chapter, and contains valuable information on texts which many people may be unaware of.

6th World Film Festival of Bangkok

The 6th World Film Festival of Bangkok was held at Paragon Cineplex from 24th October to 2nd November. It featured retrospectives of directors Derek Jarman and Shyam Benegal. The Festival was on a slightly smaller scale than last year, with no peripheral events, though it did conclude with an outdoor screening of Martin Scorsese's Rolling Stones documentary Shine A Light.

L'Express International banned in Morocco

The current issue of L'Express International, the global edition of the French weekly magazine L'Express, has been banned in Morocco. The magazine features images of Jesus and Mohammed on its front cover, though Mohammed's face was covered in the international edition.

Forbidden Words

Forbidden Words: Taboo & The Censoring Of Language, by Keith Allan and Kate Burridge, is an analysis of social and cultural linguistic suppression.

The authors take an inclusive approach, finding space not only for swearwords and profanities but also for political correctness, proscriptive usage, and even jargon. Each chapter begins with an abstract, though an introduction outlining the various areas of enquiry might be a useful addition, given the wide scope of the book.

The first chapter explores the origins of social taboos and literary censorship, material which will be familiar to many readers. More interesting is the next chapter, which discusses euphemistic language; here, the authors coin a new term, 'orthophemism', to describe literal vocabulary which is neither euphemistic nor dysphemistic. The bulk of the book is a series of thematic chapters describing linguistic taboos against sex, bodily fluids, food, disease, and death.

Mohammed cartoon in Russian Newsweek

In its 29th September issue, the Russian edition of Newsweek magazine reprinted one of the Jyllands-Posten Mohammed caricatures. Newsweek is one of many international publications which have reprinted the cartoons.