The Jewel Of Medina banned in Serbia

The Jewel Of Medina, the novel by Sherry Jones about Mohammed's child-bride Aisha, has been withdrawn from sale in Serbia. It had been published by Beobuk in Belgrade in a Serbian translation, though it has not yet been published in any other country following its cancellation by Random House.

Halliwell's Film Guide 2008

This is the 23rd edition of Halliwell's Film Guide, now retitled Halliwell's Film Video & DVD Guide 2008 and edited by David Gritten. Gritten takes over from John Walker, who had edited the Guide since Leslie Halliwell's death in 1989.

Leslie Halliwell was famous for his dislike of modern cinema, refusing to give his maximum four stars to any film made after Bonnie & Clyde. His capsule reviews would damn many films with faint praise, and it's quite fun to look up your favourite films to read the criticisms which accompany even the highest-rated titles. The Seventh Seal, for instance, is a "minor classic", and Annie Hall was successful for "no good reason". Too often, a film's narrative structure is unfairly criticised; for example, Citizen Kane has "gaps in the narrative", Jaws is "slackly narrated", Dr Strangelove has an "untidy narrative", and so on.

In his stint as editor, John Walker rewrote some of the most acerbic reviews and revised many of the star ratings. At the last minute, he requested that his name be removed from this latest edition, hence the sticker bearing David Gritten's name covering Walker's.

Gritten has improved the Guide's layout, with blue text for each film title and a line between each entry. The star ratings are now much more generous than in Halliwell's day - perhaps too generous. The latest edition reviews more than 24,000 films, which is more than most other guides though less than the 27,000 in Videohound's Golden Movie Retriever. Videohound only includes films available on VHS or DVD, however, so while it does feature DTV titles missing from Halliwell's, it doesn't cover any titles which were released theatrically but not on video. For that reason, Halliwell's is still necessary.

The Jewel Of Medina cancelled

Publication of The Jewel Of Medina: A Novel, written by Sherry Jones, has been cancelled by Random House, due to fears of possible attacks by extremist Islamic groups. The novel is a fictionalised biography of Aisha, Mohammed's eleven-year-old bride. On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal printed a quotation from the novel, describing Aisha's wedding night experience: "the pain of consummation soon melted away. Muhammad was so gentle. I hardly felt the scorpion's sting. To be in his arms, skin to skin, was the bliss I had longed for all my life". (Their conjugal relations were also the subject of an especially provocative Nekschot cartoon.) The prologue to The Jewel Of Medina is available online, and a Serbian translation of the book has been published by Beobuk in Belgrade.

Unspeak

Unspeak is a label coined by Steven Poole to describe loaded words which are often used in neutral senses. It's also the title of Poole's book on the same topic.

'Surgical strike', for example, is used in war reporting to describe a military attack in which only the specific target is destroyed, with no damage to civilians or surrounding infrastructure. 'Surgical strike' is unspeak because, although it is used in a descriptive sense, it also has ideological connotations. 'Surgical' suggests a fine degree of precision, just as a medical surgeon performs delicate surgical procedures. Furthermore, during medical surgery the patient is anaesthetised, thus 'surgical strike' implies painlessness. Finally, military action is linguistically equated with the removal of disease, thus giving it positive associations. By describing military operations as 'surgical attacks', politicians are communicating a subtle ideological message, which is unthinkingly repeated by journalists who adopt the same terminlogy in their war reporting.

Poole shows how so much political and military discourse utilises metaphors which have been chosen by spin doctors for their ideological implications, and, more worryingly, how these unspeak terms have pervasively entered conventional public discourse as standard terms. Kenneth Burke describes this process, when our selection of terminology limits our perceptions, as 'terministic screening', and Quentin Skinner refers to 'evaluative-descriptive terms', words which are employed objectively despite their argumentative origins.

A History Of Advertising

A History Of Advertising, by Stephane Pincas and Marc Loiseau, presents a history of advertising from 1842 (the founding of the world's first advertising agency, in Philadelphia) to 2006 (when this book was first published, titled Born In 1842).

The emphasis is on images, with each page containing several colour reproductions of posters and stills from TV commercials. This is in contrast to Mark Tungate's Adland, which contains almost no photographs at all. The text in A History Of Advertising amounts to little more than extended picture captions, however, and the advertisements included are all American, British, or (occasionally) European, so the scope is not really international. There is an impressive bibliography, though.

The book was originally published privately by the advertising agency Publicis, and this new commercial edition is published by Taschen. The many Publicis references in the text feel too self-congratulatory, and should have been removed for this edition. I'd been hoping for a long time that either Taschen or Laurence King would produce a book such as this, and it is certainly the best available, if not the best possible, historical survey of advertising images.

The 100 Best Films Of The World

The 100 Best Films Of The World: A Journey Through A Century Of Motion-Picture History, was edited by Manfred Leier. (Intriguingly, Leier is not named anywhere on the cover or spine, and the introduction is signed simply "The Editor", with Leier identified only on the copyright page.)

The book consists of 100 films, arranged "according to the film director's country of origin". Thus, for example, Psycho (made in Hollywood) is listed in the Europe section, because Alfred Hitchcock was born in England. Oddly, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest appears in the North America list despite Milos Forman being Czech by birth. There are two pages devoted to each of the 100 films, each film represented by plot synopses and glossy stills. The detailed synopses are too spoiler-ridden for those who have not yet seen the films and redundant for those who already have.

North America

• Greed
  
• The General
  
• All Quiet On The Western Front
  
• Gone With The Wind
  
• The Grapes Of Wrath
  
• Citizen Kane
  
• Casablanca
  
• Sunset Blvd
  
• High Noon
  
• From Here To Eternity
  
• On The Waterfront
  
• Rebel Without A Cause
  
• Some Like It Hot
  
• Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ
  
• Breakfast At Tiffany's
  
• Easy Rider
  
• The Godfather
  
• One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
  
• Star Wars IV: A New Hope
  
• Annie Hall
  
• Saturday Night Fever
  
• ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
  
• Blade Runner
  
• Out Of Africa
  
• Pretty Woman
  
• Pulp Fiction
  
• The Matrix
  
• Lost In Translation
  
• Titanic

Europe

• Belle De Jour
  
• All About My Mother
  
• The Rules Of The Game
  
• Children Of Paradise
  
• The Wages Of Fear
  
• M Hulot's Holiday
  
• Black Orpheus
  
• Breathless
  
• Last Year At Marienbad
  
• Au Revoir Les Enfants
  
• Amelie
  
• La Strada
  
• La Dolce Vita
  
• Blow-Up
  
• Once Upon A Time In The West
  
• Death In Venice
  
• Last Tango In Paris
  
• Life Is Beautiful
  
• Zorba The Greek
  
• Yol
  
• All Night Long
  
• The Assault
  
• Character
  
• Metropolis
  
• The Blue Angel
  
• M
  
• Ninotchka
  
• The Tin Drum
  
• The Marriage Of Maria Braun
  
• Fitzcarraldo
  
• Wings Of Desire
  
• The Lacemaker
  
• Closely Observed Trains
  
• Kolya
  
• The Shop On Main Street
  
• Mephisto
  
• Time Of The Gypsies
  
• Ashes & Diamonds
  
• Dance Of The Vampires
  
• The Pianist
  
• Names In Marble
  
• Battleship Potemkin
  
• The Cranes Are Flying
  
• Andrei Rublev
  
• Lights In The Dust
  
• Wild Strawberries
  
• Autumn Sonata
  
• As It Is In Heaven
  
• Babette's Feast
  
• Breaking The Waves
  
• City Lights
  
• The Great Dictator
  
• The Third Man
  
• The Bridge On The River Kwai
  
• Psycho
  
• Lawrence Of Arabia
  
• Goldfinger
  
• A Hard Day's Night
  
• Dr Zhivago
  
• A Clockwork Orange
  
• Gandhi

Asia

• The Wind Will Carry Us
  
• Mother India
  
• Monsoon Wedding
  
• Rashomon
  
• The Seven Samurai
  
• Raise The Red Lantern
  
• Farewell My Concubine

Australasia

• The Piano
  
• The Lord Of The Rings I-III

The list includes no examples of Neo-Realism or Film Noir, and no films by DW Griffith, Martin Scorsese, Howard Hawks, or Yasujiro Ozu.

The English Roses & Madonna autograph

The English Roses features two children's books by Madonna, The English Roses and its sequel (Too Good To Be True) in a box set limited to 1,500 copies. The set also includes a letter autographed by Madonna and a print signed by the illustrator, Stacy Peterson. Madonna's autograph in this set is genuine, though it's more of a hasty scrawl than a proper signature.

The English Roses: Too Good To Be True

Too Good To Be True is the sequel to The English Roses, Madonna's first children's book. The central character, Binah, is broadly autobiographical (Binah says: "my mother [...] died when I was little", just as Madonna's mother did). The theme (jealousy) is interesting, though the moral could be more subtle. The illustrations are by Stacy Peterson (who can draw female characters but not males).

Sweets feature heavily, with one of the characters being called Candy Darling (named after the Andy Warhol acolyte) and one page being decorated with drawings of assorted candies - a theme which would later develop into the album Hard Candy and its title track, Candy Shop.

Subversion

Subversion, by Duncan Reekie is the first book to explore not only avant-garde art cinema and film-making collectives but the entire history of underground films, from the 1920s onwards. The book is a strange combination of dry theoretical discussion and personal polemic. Amos Vogel's Film As A Subversive Art, with its frame-enlargements from hundreds of obscure films, remains an essential study of underground cinema [and is probably my all-time favourite film book]; Subversion does not quite live up to its subtitle (The Definitive History Of Underground Cinema), but it does provide an opportunity to consider underground films within their historical contexts.

Decorative Arts

Decorative Arts: Style & Design From Classical To Contemporary is an illustrated guide to glassware, metalware, ceramics, furniture, and textiles. The author, Judith Miller, has written numerous antiques price-guides, though Decorative Arts is intended as an historical introduction.

Like Miller's other guides, Decorative Arts is published by Dorling Kindersley. I'm not particularly a fan of DK, as I explained last year. However, I can't argue with the 3,000 glossy illustrations in Decorative Arts, nor with its wide historical scope (from pre-history to the present day). There are more detailed decorative arts dictionaries and encyclopedias available, though Miller's book provides a fascinating overview of the subject.

Flat Earth News

Flat Earth News, by Nick Davies, paints an unpleasant picture of contemporary journalism. It's subtitled An Award-Winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood Distortion & Propaganda In The Global Media.

Davies criticises journalists for their reliance on wire stories and press-releases, and for never letting the facts get in the way of a good story. I'm pleased to say that the Daily Mail, a reactionary UK tabloid, is one of the main targets: Davies criticises the racist scaremongering and distortion in the Mail's immigration coverage.

Newspaper sensationalism and distortion is nothing new, of course. Press baron William Randolph Hearst (the model for Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane) once reputedly told a photographer: "You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war" (a line which was paraphrased in Kane). Famously, in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a fictional newspaper editor explains: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend".

Davies was initially inspired by the news media's unquestioning acceptance of government spin regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. As a pretext for war, the UK and US governments both claimed that Saddam Hussain possessed WMDs and even nuclear weapons, warning that he could deploy them against the West at any time. The BBC reported that some of these claims were inserted at the request of UK spin doctors, and after the invasion of Iraq, the WMD threat was exposed as a gross exaggeration. (Alastair Campbell wrote about his involvement with this issue in his diary, published last year; Davies claims that Campbell's criticism of the errors in the BBC's coverage was a smokescreen to cover the errors in the government's dossiers.)

Flat Earth News is a necessary book, because media literacy is so crucial in a media-saturated culture. Life truly has few greater pleasures than a quality newspaper, though we should always read actively and, sometimes, skeptically.

A World History Of Architecture

The second edition of A World History Of Architecture, by Michael Fazio, Marian Moffett, and Lawrence Wodehouse, has been published by Laurence King. The book presents a global history of architecture from Stonehenge to the early 21st century. Like Graphic Design: A New History, it is another in the publisher's impressive collection of historical surveys of various artistic fields.

The ultimate authority on architectural history is Banister Fletcher's A History Of Architecture, edited by Dan Cruickshank, currently in its twentieth edition. Fletcher's volume has an almost incredible 4,000 illustrations, while Fazio et al. provide a 'mere' 700. However, Fletcher's text is less accessible, and less affordable.

Into Me/Out Of Me catalogue

Into Me/Out Of Me was an exhibition conceived by Susan Sontag and curated by Klaus Biesenbach. It brought together iconic works from the past forty years of body art, and was organised into three broad themes: metabolism, reproduction, and violence. Over 130 artists were represented, including Andres Serrano, Carolee Schneemann, Robert Mapplethorpe, Judy Chicago, Hermann Nitsch, and Damien Hirst. The result was an extraordinarily comprehensive retrospective, probably the widest survey of body art thus far.

The exhibition catalogue is arranged alphabetically by artist, rather than according to the three categories of the exhibition itself. It resembles The Artist's Body (from Phaidon's Themes & Movements series), though its images are more explicit and its introduction is more anecdotal.

Indian author arrested

Rabindra Prasad Panda, author of Hajarat Muhammad, has been arrested in Cuttack, India. His book features an image of Mohammed carrying a sword on its cover.

A World History Of Photography

The fourth edition of Naomi Rosenblum's A World History Of Photography has recently been published.

Arguably the first book to present the history of photography as an art form, emphasising aesthetics alongside technology, was Beaumont Newhall's The History Of Photography, first published in 1937 and last revised in 1982. The first edition of Rosenblum's survey appeared in 1984, and since then it has been generally accepted as a successor to Newhall in scope and authority.

Both Newhall and Rosenblum begin their histories in 1839, with the invention of the Daguerreotype, though they also provide extensive pre-photographic background, as the invention and initial demonstration of photography was a process of simultaneous experimentation rather than a single 'eureka moment'. (The same is true of the cinema, with several rivals developing film projection techniques.) The first extant photograph, taken by Joseph Niepce in 1827, appears in Rosenblum's first chapter.

A World History Of Photography has over 700 pages and over 800 images. Appendices include a brief timeline and glossary, and a more substantial bibliography. The images are beautifully reproduced, and the text is as wide-ranging as the title suggests. At the end of each chapter are themed albums of full-page photographs, profiles of significant photographers, and technical histories.

The wealth of visual and textual information could, however, be more clearly organised and more up-to-date. Rosenblum acknowledges that the book is "structured in a somewhat unusual way", with chapters arranged thematically rather than chronologically (rather like the Tate Modern galleries). The book is divided into twelve major chapters, including portraiture, landscape, still life, art, and media. The chapters are too broad, however, a problem compounded by the lack of detail in the table of contents and the scarcity of subheadings within chapters. This also makes the layout feel rather dated, as do the line drawings in the technical history sections - does a book about photography really need to use line drawings? Similarly, there is not enough space given to recent and contemporary photographic artists and technologies: only a general account of digital technology, nothing about war photography after 1945, and no examples of contemporary fashion or advertising images.

The most recent historical survey of international photography is Mary Warner Marien's Photography: A Cultural History. It has 200 fewer pages than Rosenblum's, and 200 fewer illustrations, and is subsequently less in-depth in its coverage. On the other hand, it is more clearly organised and feels more up-to-date (with a large Andreas Gursky reproduction, for example). Marien's chapters are more specfic, and are subdivided more clearly. Her final chapter discusses photography after 1975 (and in the second edition she adds a new post-2000 chapter), whereas Rosenblum's final chapters begin as far back as 1950.

Josephine Baker In Art & Life

My Madonna website has been referenced in the notes and bibliography of a new book by Bennetta Jules-Rosette, titled Josephine Baker In Art & Life: The Icon & The Image. The book explores the creation of Baker's public persona, and analyses its influence on modern culture.

In my online Madonna discography, I discuss the Catholic reaction to the confluence of sex and religion in the Blond Ambition concerts, which Jules-Rosette compares to Baker's world tour of 1929-1930.

Seduced catalogue

The catalogue which accompanies the current exhibition Seduced: Art & Sex From Antiquity To Now presents representative images covering all aspects of the exhibition alongside contextualising essays by Marina Wallace, Martin Kemp, and Joanne Bernstein.

Dead Certain

Robert Draper's book Dead Certaint is subtitled The Presidency Of George W Bush, which seems a bit premature given that Bush's presidency has not yet ended. Draper had extensive access to Bush, in five personal interviews, though this is not an authorised, sugar-coated history. Draper has also spoken to all of the key members of Bush's White House team: Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice (the sole exception being Colin Powell). The result is an authoritative, detailed account of Bush's administration.

Adland

Adland: A Global History Of Advertising, by Mark Tungate, is the first truly historical and international book about the advertising industry. Its emphasis is on the industry rather than the advertisements themselves, and its index is incomplete, though it explores the business of advertising with unprecedented scope.

Another Book

Another Book, by Jon Link and Mick Bunnage, is the second compilation of material from the comic Modern Toss (the third and fourth issues; issues one and two were featured in the first Modern Toss book). The star character from the first book, Mr Tourette, is still included. He is a sign-writer, and he specialises in painting outrageously obscene slogans (often revolving around a certain word) for unsuspecting businesses.

The dominant character in this second book is Alan, who appears to have anger-management issues, creating havoc and then undergoing psychotherapy. My favourite element, though, is a series of cartoons called Work, in which the banality of corporate life is exposed with blunt simplicity, such as an office drone telling his manager: "I just got one of your pencils stuck in my eye, see you in court". All the Work cartoons have been collected into their own book, and I'm hoping that Mr Tourette will eventually get his own spin-off, too.

Potty Fartwell & Knob

Potty Fartwell & Knob: Extraordinary But True Names Of British People, by Russell Ash, is a pre-Christmas, stocking-filler book, as is The Magna Farta (and as, last year, were Profanisaurus Rex, The Joy Of Swearing, and Filthy Shakespeare). Ash has compiled thematic lists of unusual names, all taken from census records, registers of marriages, and other public documents.

Thus, for example, we learn that there was a man named Jesus Christ who was born in 1940 and died in 2004. I'd like to give more examples, but the best ones are too rude to include here. My favourite word is given its very own chapter, and the book lists twenty first names and surnames which incorporate it. (Anyone familiar with the English town Scunthorpe will get the general idea; as a personal nomenclature, it appears in even less disguised forms.)

In his introduction, Ash stresses that "wherever possible original documents have been checked" to avoid mistakes, though he also writes that his research involved "access to online material". Exactly how many census records he checked online, and how many he examined in their original versions, is unclear. I'm not convinced that all of the names listed are genuine, as it's too easy for mistakes or spoofs to creep in when records are typed into databases.

The Magna Farta

The Profanisaurus Rex swearing dictionary has been updated, with 2,000 new headwords added, in a new edition titled The Magna Farta. If you've followed the monthly updates in Viz magazine, this new edition will not offer anything extra. It's edited by Graham Dury, Davey Jones, and Simon Thorp.

1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (2007)

Stephen Jay Schneider's 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die has been tweaked again, in a new 2007 edition. As in 2006 and 2005, the changes are few and are limited to the most recent films. The Departed has been added, for example, but Nine Queens and Y Tu Mama Tambien have been unfairly excised. Cache, added in 2006, has now been cut.

Unknown Forces

Unknown Forces, edited by Sonthaya Subyen, is a monograph on Thai film director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. It is part of the Filmvirus series (#11). This post is not really a review of the book, because I can't read Thai, but the book is well worth buying for anyone who can.

Film Factfinder

Film Factfinder, like Ronald Bergan's Film, features a concise guide to film genres, directors, countries, and 100 key films. Unlike Bergan's book, it does include a film glossary and a biographical dictionary of actors yet does not include any photographs. Each entry is rather brief: the biographies are less than ten sentences each, and each genre and country is given only one or two paragraphs. (The book is edited by Camilla Rockwood; the lists of directors and actors first appeared in the Chambers Book Of Facts.)

Film Factfinder's alphabetical list of 100 "Notable Films" is as follows:

• Amores Perros
  
• Andrei Rublev
  
• Apocalypse Now
  
• L'Atalante
  
• Battleship Potemkin
  
• Belle De Jour
  
• Bicycle Thieves
  
• The Big Sleep
  
• The Birth Of A Nation
  
• Blade Runner
  
• Blow-Up
  
• Blue Velvet
  
• Bonnie & Clyde
  
• Breathless
  
• Brief Encounter
  
• Brighton Rock
  
• The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari
  
• Casablanca
  
• Chinatown
  
• Citizen Kane
  
• A Clockwork Orange
  
• Close-Up
  
• Days Of Heaven
  
• Deep Throat
  
• La Dolce Vita
  
• Don't Look Back
  
• Do The Right Thing
  
• Easy Rider
  
• 8 1/2
  
• Eraserhead
  
• ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
  
• The Exorcist
  
• Farenheit 9/11
  
• Fear Eats The Soul
  
• The 400 Blows
  
• Frankenstein
  
• The General
  
• The Godfather I-III
  
• The Gold Rush
  
• Gone With The Wind
  
• The Gospel According To St Matthew
  
• Greed
  
• High Noon
  
• His Girl Friday
  
• It's A Wonderful Life
  
• The Jazz Singer
  
• Jules & Jim
  
• King Kong
  
• Last Tango In Paris
  
• Last Year At Marienbad
  
• Lawrence Of Arabia
  
• The Leopard
  
• The Lord Of The Rings I-III
  
• Manhattan
  
• Man With A Movie Camera
  
• Metropolis
  
• The Night Of The Hunter
  
• Night Of The Living Dead
  
• The Passion Of Joan Of Arc
  
• Pather Panchali
  
• Pickpocket
  
• Psycho
  
• Raging Bull
  
• Raise The Red Lantern
  
• Rashomon
  
• Rebel Without A Cause
  
• The Red Shoes
  
• The Rules Of The Game
  
• Reservoir Dogs
  
• Russian Ark
  
• Sans Soleil
  
• Saturday Night & Sunday Morning
  
• Schindler's List
  
• The Searchers
  
• Seven
  
• The Seventh Seal
  
• Shadows
  
• Singin' In The Rain
  
• Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs
  
• Some Like It Hot
  
• The Sound Of Music
  
• Star Wars IV-VI
  
• A Streetcar Named Desire
  
• Sunrise
  
• Sunset Blvd
  
• Taxi Driver
  
• Three Colours I-III
  
• Titanic
  
• Tokyo Story
  
• Touch Of Evil
  
• Toy Story
  
• Trainspotting
  
• Triumph Of The Will
  
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
  
• Vertigo
  
• Whisky Galore
  
• White Heat
  
• The Wild Bunch
  
• Wings Of Desire
  
• The Wizard Of Oz

The list actually includes 108 films, taking the various trilogies into consideration. It was compiled by Hannah McGill.

Film Classics

Film Classics is a film studies primer published by SparkNotes (like CliffsNotes, but not as good). The book discusses twenty classic films, and begins by explaining the criteria for inclusion: technical achievement, influence, universal appeal, zeitgeist, and genre. There is also a "Shortlist of Great Directors", which lists ten significant film-makers (or eleven, because Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut are listed together). Ingmar Bergman and Sergei Eisenstein, to name but two, are conspicuous by their absence.

Each film is given around thirty pages of analysis, though the list of films is far too limited: there are only two foreign-language films, and only one silent film. Because Star Wars, The Matrix, The Godfather, and The Lord Of The Rings are all included as trilogies, there are twenty-eight films in the list, rather than twenty. (There are four films by Francis Coppola, yet none by Akira Kurosawa, Fritz Lang, Howard Hawks, Jean Renoir, or Kenji Mizoguchi - a slight imbalance?)

The classic films are as follows, in chronological order:

• The Birth Of A Nation
  
• Gone With The Wind
  
• Citizen Kane
  
• Casablanca
  
• On The Waterfront
  
• Vertigo
  
• Sleeping Beauty
  
• 8 1/2
  
• A Clockwork Orange
  
• The Godfather I-III
  
• One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
  
• Taxi Driver
  
• Annie Hall
  
• Star Wars IV-VI
  
• Apocalypse Now
  
• Schindler's List
  
• The Matrix I-III
  
• The Lord Of The Rings I-III
  
• Spirited Away

It's difficult to know who would benefit from this book. It's aimed at film students, but it's totally unacademic. There is no bibliography, the analyses of each film are all uncited and anonymous, and there are no references to film theory of any kind. General readers, though, would surely find it too dry, with its character analyses and interpretations of themes, motifs, and symbols.

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.

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.

Graphic Design: A New History

Graphic Design: A New History, by Stephen J Eskilson, is perhaps the only serious rival to Philip Meggs's A History Of Graphic Design. Eskilson is the only author, apart from Meggs, to produce (or even attempt) a comprehensive history of graphic design from the earliest printing presses to the present day.

The book's publisher, Laurence King, has previously published a number of definitive histories of various artistic fields: A History Of Interior Design, Photography: A Cultural History, History Of Modern Design, A World History Of Architecture, and A World History Of Art.

Eskilson's scope is slightly narrower than Meggs's, though arguably this is to Eskilson's advantage, as he is able to discuss case-studies in more detail. For instance, he devotes several impassioned pages to the deceptive, emasculating, and intimidating tactics utilised by propagandist recruitment posters during World War I. Meggs is less engaging than Eskilson, though his bibliography is more developed. Both books are lavishly illustrated, though Eskilson's photographs benefit from their larger reproductions.

The Blair Years

Alastair Campbell was Tony Blair's press secretary when Blair was Leader of the Opposition. When Blair became UK Prime Minister in 1997, Campbell became his Official Spokesman. When Blair won a second term in 2001, Campbell was given the unique role of Director of Communications & Strategy. He resigned in 2003, and Blair stepped down earlier this year. Campbell, who was one of the key architects of New Labour, kept a daily diary which ran to over 2,000,000 words, and a single-volume concise edition has been published now that Blair is no longer Prime Minister.

Campbell freely admits that there is much material missing from The Blair Years. (Or The TB Years, as it should be called: everyone is referred to by their initials, and the shorthand prose style is not easy to read in long stretches.) The most obvious omission is Gordon Brown: there are occasional references to his uncommunicative grumpiness, but not to the repeated blazing rows we know he had with Blair. Presumably Campbell wants to spare Brown any embarrassment, now that Brown himself is Prime Minister.

Andrew Rawnsley's excellent Servants Of The People, by contrast, offers much more on the Blair/Brown conflict, though his sources are mostly off-the-record and he only covers the first three years of Blair's premiership. Nevertheless, it's probably the most authoritative account of the Blair government yet published. Famously, it includes the anonymous observation that Brown is "psychologically flawed", a statement widely attributed to Campbell. I hope he's planning an updated edition.

Alastair Campbell was Blair's 'spin doctor', though he was often in the headlines himself. His diaries cannot be a definitive record of the period, because it's impossible for someone who was simultaneously managing and making the news to be impartial. They are also incomplete: not only has Brown been toned down, but Blair and the Cabinet Office were permitted to delete especially sensitive passages.

Notably, much of Blair's swearing has been removed, including his four-letter description of veteran Labour MP Roy Hattersley. Plenty of profanities remain, however, most of them Campbell's own comments on other people. In this respect, The Blair Years shares the frankness of Alan Clark's Diaries. Conservative MP Clark's account of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's downfall was astonishingly candid, and, indeed, Clark and Campbell were friends, with Clark making occasional appearances in The Blair Years.

The Blair Years offers a behind-the-scenes look at all the major UK political stories of the past decade, with anecdotal details of Blair's private feelings and actions. Arguably the most fascinating section, though, is that devoted to Campbell's conflict with the BBC over shortcomings in government dossiers published before the Iraq war.

The government commissioned a dossier on Iraq's military capabilities, which was written by the Joint Intelligence Committee in 2002. The dossier claimed that Iraq possessed an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, which were capable of being deployed within forty-five minutes at any time. In 2003, another dossier was also published, this time prepared within the government, though it was later revealed that much of it had been plagiarised from existing online sources.

On BBC Radio 4's Today programme in 2003, correspondent Andrew Gilligan alleged that the 2002 dossier had been "sexed up" with more forceful language: an un-named source told him that the JIC's language had been altered after suggestions from within the government. Specifically, Gilligan claimed that the "forty-five minutes" detail was added at the request of the government. In a subsequent newspaper article, again quoting his un-named source, Gilligan identified Campbell as the person who added the "forty-five minutes" detail to the dossier.

Campbell denied sexing up the dossier, but the BBC refused to retract the allegation. Gilligan's source, WMD expert David Kelly, committed suicide after his name was made public. It was suspected that Campbell had learned of Kelly's identity and leaked it himself. A public enquiry into Kelly's death by Brian Hutton exonerated Campbell and the government while criticising the BBC's editorial judgements. Consequently, the BBC's Chairman and Director-General both resigned.

In The Blair Years, Campbell denies leaking Kelly's name and suggesting "forty-five minutes". He writes extensively about his bitter confrontations with the BBC in the immediate aftermath of Gilligan's allegations, and his submission of evidence to the Hutton enquiry. It is this information which makes Campbell's diaries so valuable, rather than its interesting though hardly earth-shattering day-to-day Blair anecdotes.

Thaksin Where Are You?

Thaksin Where Are You?, by Sunisa Lertpakawat, sold out its initial print run in a matter of days, though it's still available to buy from online booksellers like se-ed.com and dokya.com in Thailand. The book itself is essentially a superficial Thaksin fanzine.

A Coup For The Rich

A Coup For The Rich, by Chulalongkorn professor Giles Ji Ungpakorn, discusses the anti-Thaksin protests of 2005-2006, last year's coup and its impact, public perception of the monarchy (quoting briefly from The King Never Smiles), and the current separatist uprising in southern Thailand. He is rather polemical, but his direct criticism of several current authority figures is refreshing and almost unique. Consequently, the book is not stocked by bookshops (with the notable exception of Thammasat University Bookstore), though it is available as an online download.

The Hollywood Studio System

Douglas Gomery's book The Hollywood Studio System was first published over twenty years ago, and has been republished in an expanded version. The first edition dealt only with the golden age of the Hollywood studio system (the 1930s and 1940s), though Gomery has now supplemented this with sections on the system's origins (1915-1930) and its death and rebirth (1950 onwards).

There are other histories of Hollywood, such as Robert Sklar's classic Movie-Made America and David Thomson's insubstantial The Whole Equation. These titles, however, are social and artistic histories, whereas Gomery's account concentrates on the studios themselves.

The Genius Of The System, by Thomas Schatz, also presents a studio-by-studio history of Hollywood. Gomery's book is drier than Schatz's, though; reading all the economic and corporate detail, you sometimes forget that the studios produced entertainment and art. Gomery takes the 'show' out of 'show business', though Schatz strikes a better balance. However, Schatz discusses only the major studios whereas Gomery finds room for them all.

The Way Hollywood Tells It

The Way Hollywood Tells It, by David Bordwell, analyses the continuation of the narrative and stylistic trends established by classical Hollywood. It rejects the notion of a post-classical cinema, arguing that the new distribution/marketing techniques of blockbuster films (Star Wars, Die Hard, etc.) do not affect the classical construction of the films themselves, that post-modern self-referentiality (in Toy Story, etc.) has precedents from the studio era, and that formal experiments (Memento, etc.) are accompanied by classical principles so as not to alienate the audience.

Bordwell, one of the most respected American film writers (his co-authored Film Art is perhaps the most popular film studies textbook), has written a sort-of sequel to The Classical Hollywood Cinema, his groundbreaking co-authored analysis of Hollywood modes of production from 1917-1960. One of his co-authors (Kristin Thompson) has already written her own sequel, Storytelling In The New Hollywood, taking a handful of films as case studies of the presence of classical traditions in contemporary cinema. Bordwell's new book is more ambitious in that it does not limit itself to case studies.

The case for a contemporary classical tradition is well made, and Bordwell's analysis is, naturally, outstanding, though this book lacks the depth of The Classical Hollywood Cinema. It ends with an extensive Hollywood timeline from 1960-2004, though the chronology includes only technical and corporate details instead of artistic milestones. Contemporary American Cinema, the only other book devoted to post-1960 American cinema, has more historical detail than Bordwell's, though its analysis is less impressive.

1,000 Films To Change Your Life

1,000 Films To Change Your Life, edited by Simon Cropper, is a book of film recommendations categorised not chronologically but (a la Tate Modern) by emotional impact. There are chapters on joy, anger, food for thought (i.e. contemplation), desire, fear, sadness, exhilaration, regret, contempt, and wonder. As a guide to films you might enjoy depending on your mood, it won't really teach you anything new, but it does give useful viewing suggestions.

An appendix titled 100 To Watch lists "100 reviews of key titles mentioned in this book", arranged alphabetically:

• After Life
  
• L'Age D'Or
  
• Aguirre: The Wrath Of God
  
• Alphaville
  
• L'Atalante
  
• An Autumn Afternoon
  
• L'Avventura
  
• Beau Travail
  
• Berlin Alexanderplatz
  
• La Bete Humaine
  
• Bicycle Thieves
  
• Branded To Kill
  
• Cat People
  
• Le Cercle Rouge
  
• Chinatown
  
• Citizen Kane
  
• Come & See
  
• The Conversation
  
• Crimes & Misdemeanors
  
• Daybreak
  
• Days Of Being Wild
  
• The Deer Hunter
  
• Dr Strangelove
  
• Dog Day Afternoon
  
• Double Indemnity
  
• Dracula
  
• The Elephant Man
  
• Eraserhead
  
• Far From Heaven
  
• The Five Obstructions
  
• Frankenstein
  
• The General
  
• Gloria
  
• The Godfather
  
• Godzilla
  
• Grand Illusion
  
• The Green Ray
  
• La Haine
  
• Hana-Bi
  
• Heat
  
• Imitation Of Life
  
• In A Lonely Place
  
• In Praise Of Love
  
• Insignificance
  
• In The Company Of Men
  
• In The Mood For Love
  
• Irma Vep
  
• The Killers
  
• Kind Hearts & Coronets
  
• King Kong
  
• Kiss Me Deadly
  
• Knife In The Water
  
• Land & Freedom
  
• Letter From An Unknown Woman
  
• The Limey
  
• The Magnificent Seven
  
• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
  
• The Man Without A Past
  
• A Matter Of Life & Death
  
• Metropolis
  
• Mon Oncle D'Amerique
  
• My Neighbour Totoro
  
• Night & Fog
  
• Night Of The Hunter
  
• Ninotchka
  
• North By Northwest
  
• Once Upon A Time In America
  
• A One & A Two
  
• Ordet
  
• Pickpocket
  
• The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes
  
• Rashomon
  
• Ratcatcher
  
• Read My Lips
  
• Sans Soleil
  
• The Scent Of Green Papaya
  
• The Searchers
  
• The Seven Samurai
  
• Sherlock Jnr
  
• Short Cuts
  
• Singin' In The Rain
  
• Some Like It Hot
  
• The Son
  
• Sonatine
  
• The Story Of The Late Chrysanthemums
  
• Sullivan's Travels
  
• Taboo
  
• Taxi Driver
  
• Things To Come
  
• Time Out
  
• Touch Of Evil
  
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
  
• 2046
  
• The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg
  
• Vertigo
  
• The Wild Bunch
  
• The Wind Will Carry Us
  
• Witchfinder General
  
• Woman Of The Dunes
  
• Z

The book also has many short essays, including Emilie Bickerton on films that "chastise the viewer for daring to enter the auditorium", Christopher Frayling on "how films can scare us", and Jonathan Rosenbaum on films that generate "open-mouthed awe". In the second of his essays, Geoff Andrews suggests that the best film directors have surnames starting with 'K', and I heartily agree. Speaking of which, there's also a brief analysis of Kubrick's oeuvre by Ben Walters.

100 Years Of Magazine Covers

Steve Taylor's 100 Years Of Magazine Covers is an international survey of a century of magazine covers, from the first issue of Punch to the latest issue of Modern Toss. The book is divided into five thematic chapters.

The first chapter discusses the magazine cover as celebrity portraiture, including a Patrick Demarchelier portrait of Princess Diana for Elle, an Andy Warhol self-portrait for his own magazine Interview, and the iconic Annie Leibovitz image of John Lennon and Yoko Ono for Rolling Stone.

Chapter two covers reportage and politics, from the reverential (Picture Post's dignified image of Winston Churchill) to the satirical (a savage Richard Nixon caricature by Ralph Steadman for Rolling Stone, and Harold Wilson on the cover of Private Eye). The scope of this chapter is far too large, though, and although it covers (American) politics quite well, there is very little room for war reportage.

The next chapter is devoted to fashion magazines, including Elle, Vogue, i-D, and Dazed & Confused. Fashion magazines from the 1960s dominate this chapter, alongside a survey of contemporary style titles such as Another Magazine. There are only a few Vogue covers represented, though the magazine deserves much more extensive coverage.

The penultimate chapter concerns cultural movements (such as feminism, civil rights, and gay rights) and youth subcultures (including punks and hippies). This chapter's main focus is underground and fanzine titles like Oz and Sniffin' Glue.

Finally, the last chapter looks at magazine covers as graphic design objects, including some wonderful 1980s typography from The Face and bold 1970s covers from Time Out. Four pages devoted to eleven cover reproductions of Fast Company in this chapter seems highly excessive.

The only previous book to present a history of 20th century magazines is Magazine Covers by David Crowley. Crowley's book has 100 pages fewer than Taylor's, though it does have an index whereas Taylor's doesn't. Crowley presents double-page spreads on each magazine, organised into the same chapter themes as Taylor. Taylor has more of a pedigree (he has worked for The Face and Arena; his book is introduced by The Face's art director, Neville Brody), though Crowley's book has more historical scope. Both books are dominated by superb illustrations, with minimal contextualising text, though Crowley's writing is more detailed.

Ratthaprahan 19 Kanya

A new anti-coup anthology edited by Thanapol Eawsakul, Ratthaprahan 19 Kanya, is written in Thai, so this blog post is purely to publicise the book rather than to review it.

Cassell's Dictionary Of Slang

Jonathon Green is probably the world's foremost authority on slang. His first comprehensive lexicon, The Cassell Dictionary Of Slang, was published in 1998. This new book is a revised and expanded second edition, with a slightly tweaked title.

The new title is subtly though surprisingly different. The first edition was published by Cassell, so the title made perfect sense, though this new edition is published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson, an imprint of Orion (Cassell's parent company). The name Cassell doesn't appear anywhere except in the title. Also, "Cassell's" implies that the book was written by Cassell, not published by them. (Compare The Oxford English Dictionary - it would never appear as Oxford's English Dictionary.)

The text has been thoroughly revised, with many words being dated more specifically, including substantial antedating. The entries and definitions have also been dramatically expanded, from 70,000 headwords in the first edition to 85,000 in the second. A typical example is the phrase 'done up like a kipper'. In the first edition, it was broadly dated to "20C" [20th century], and had only two definitions: "beaten up" and "caught red-handed". However, in the second edition, it has been dated more specifically as "1980s+", and an extra definition has been added: "utterly defeated".

There are, though, some inexplicable omissions. While there are thousands of new headwords, some old ones have gone. Turning to my favourite word, for example, an incredible forty-three new variants have been added to the second edition, though four have been mysteriously removed. Also, the (albeit limited) bibliography from the 1st edition has been deleted completely, replaced by a concise history of slang lexicography. (Green wrote a longer history of the subject in his excellent Chasing The Sun.)

JE Lighter's Historical Dictionary Of American Slang, a multi-volume work-in-progress, expects to define 35,000 headwords upon completion - less than half the number in Green's single volume. Green's work is also more geographically inclusive, covering English-language slang from all English-speaking nations, rather than limiting its scope only to America. The only other heavyweight modern slang lexicographer, the late Eric Partridge, died in 1979, though a new, two-volume edition of his Dictionary Of Slang & Unconventional English has recently been published (retitled the New Partridge Dictionary). This ninth edition runs to 65,000 headwords, though it concentrates solely on post-1945 vocabulary. Green, on the other hand, documents 500 years of slang.

Lighter's dictionary, and the two-volume edition of Partridge, are both based on historical principles - that is, they illustrate their definitions with citations, literary quotations to indicate usage in context. Green's single-volume dictionary does not include citations, for reasons of space, though the good news is that he is currently preparing his own multi-volume slang dictionary, on historical principles, with at least 100,000 headwords, to be published (hopefully) later this year.

Asia Shock

Asia Shock is a new book reviewing "dark cinema", which seems to encompass all manner of horror, (s)exploitation, and arthouse films from Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Thailand.

The book, by Patrick Galloway, reviews key films in-depth, with others given boxed-out capsule reviews. Several films, especially those from Japan and Hong Kong, have been extensively documented elsewhere, though Galloway does devote more space than previous writers to some rarely-seen Japanese cult titles.

Galloway also goes beyond the usual Japan-Korea-HK axis, to include Thai cinema. The Thai film industry is receiving worldwide acclaim thanks to arthouse directors Wisit Sartsanatieng, Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, though mainstream Thai cinema's current vogue for ghosts and horror films also deserves attention. Therefore, Asia Shock's long reviews of Nang Nak, Body Jumper, and a few others, are surprising and welcome additions.

Finally, a couple of caveats. For some strange reason, Galloway punctuates (or pads?) his reviews with long and un-necessary lists of the principal characters in each film, complete with short paragraphs devoted to each of them. Also, the bibliography is extremely short - has he never heard of Stephen Jay Schneider or Pete Tombs?