Paris Match

French magazine Paris Match has agreed to pay Gisèle Pelicot €40,000 in damages for invasion of privacy. Pelicot sued the magazine after it published paparazzi photographs of her in its 17th April issue (no. 3963). The settlement was confirmed on the eve of the court case, which was due to begin yesterday, and Pelicot will donate the money to charity.

Pelicot’s former husband was convicted on multiple charges last year, after systematically drugging her and allowing other men to rape her, in a case that shocked the country. Considering the trauma she went through, splashing her photo on Paris Match’s front page was clearly insensitive.

Famously, almost thirty years ago, Paris Match published an unauthorised photograph of former French president François Mitterrand on his deathbed (in its 18th January 1996 issue, no. 2434). The magazine was also censured after it printed CCTV images of a 2016 Bastille Day attack in Nice.

Privacy is generally respected by the French media, with the exception of celebrity magazines such as Paris Match, Closer, and Voici. Prince William and Kate Middleton won damages from Closer after it printed topless photos of Middleton in 2012. George and Amal Clooney sued Voici in 2017. Valerie Trierweiler sued Closer in both 2012 and 2014. Also in 2014, Julie Gayer sued Closer, and Aurelie Filippetti won damages from the magazine.

Journal of the Siam Society

Thai Cinema Uncensored is reviewed in the new issue of the Journal of the Siam Society (pp. 149–152). In his review, written in French, Bruno Marchal describes the book as “une plongée éclairante dans l’univers cinématographique thaïlandais” (‘an enlightening dive into the Thai cinematic universe’).

JSS (vol. 112, no. 2) was published this month. Thai Cinema Uncensored has also been reviewed by the International Examiner and Bangkok Post newspapers, the journal Sojourn, the magazines Art Review and The Big Chilli, and the 101 World website.

The 100 Best Movies of All Time

The 100 Best Movies of All Time, a magazine published by A360 Media earlier this year, lists 100 classic films, though only six are foreign-language titles. The list is very mainstream, which is hardly surprising as A360 is a rebranding of American Media, the publisher of the National Enquirer and other supermarket tabloids. The Godfather is at the top of the list.

“Odey has got away with assaulting and harassing women...”

Hedge fund manager Crispin Odey has filed a defamation lawsuit against the Financial Times newspaper, almost a year after it accused him of sexually assaulting and harassing thirteen women who had worked with him. Odey’s libel suit was filed at the High Court in London today, and he denies all the allegations made against him.

The FT published its investigation into Odey on 10th June last year, as the cover story of its FT Weekend Magazine supplement (no. 1,026). The magazine’s stark headline read: “Crispin Odey has got away with assaulting and harassing women for 25 years”. The article, titled “THE GAMBLER” (pp. 18–25), was written by Madison Marriage, Antonia Cundy, and Paul Caruana Galizia.

100 Greatest Films Ever

Daily Mail film critic Brian Viner has compiled a list of the 100 greatest films ever made, in a cover story for today’s issue of the newspaper’s Weekend magazine supplement. The list skews towards mainstream titles, as Viner readily acknowledges: “I’ve deliberately left out some of the mighty early silents, and there aren’t too many foreign-language films because this has to be an accessible collection.” Another stipulation is that all titles are available on streaming platforms, thus disqualifying some esoteric arthouse films. (The Mail published a previous list of Viner’s 100 favourite films in 2020.)

The 100 Greatest Films Ever are as follows:

100. Oliver!
99. Thelma and Louise
98. Raiders of the Lost Ark
97. Goldfinger
96. In the Heat of the Night
95. This Is Spinal Tap
94. To Kill a Mockingbird
93. The Sting
92. The Vanishing
91. When We Were Kings
90. Twelve Angry Men
89. It Happened One Night
88. Chariots of Fire
87. Shane
86. Kes
85. The Exorcist
84. High Noon
83. All the President’s Men
82. Parasite
81. Star Wars IV
80. Rear Window
79. The Night of the Hunter
78. Get Out
77. Ben-Hur
76. The Best Years of Our Lives
75. Gone with the Wind
74. City Lights
73. Sunset Boulevard
72. Zulu
71. Chinatown
70. The Shining
69. Henry V
68. His Girl Friday
67. Shakespeare in Love
66. The Third Man
65. West Side Story
64. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
63. The Lives of Others
62. Toy Story
61. Spartacus
60. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
59. Apollo 11
58. Deliverance
57. The Elephant Man
56. Tokyo Story
55. Monty Python’s Life of Brian
54. No Country for Old Men
53. The Producers
52. Schindler’s List
51. Boyhood
50. Dr Strangelove
49. The Conversation
48. The Searchers
47. Duck Soup
46. Rome, Open City
45. Nashville
44. On the Waterfront
43. Bicycle Thieves
42. Top Hat
41. All About Eve
40. Vertigo
39. Seven Samurai
38. 2001
37. The Deer Hunter
36. Taxi Driver
35. There Will Be Blood
34. The Bridge on the River Kwai
33. The General
32. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
31. It’s a Wonderful Life
30. Pulp Fiction
29. Raging Bull
28. Annie Hall
27. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
26. Alien
25. The French Connection
24. The Maltese Falcon
23. The Silence of the Lambs
22. Kind Hearts and Coronets
21. The Sound of Music
20. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
19. The Banshees of Inisherin
18. Double Indemnity
17. Brief Encounter
16. Modern Times
15. Shoah
14. The Apartment
13. Singin’ in the Rain
12. Apocalypse Now
11. Bonnie and Clyde
10. Citizen Kane
9. The Graduate
8. Lawrence of Arabia
7. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
6. Casablanca
5. Some Like It Hot
4. Jaws
3. Psycho
2. The Wizard of Oz
1. The Godfather

(Note that Some Like It Hot is the 1959 comic masterpiece, not the unrelated 1939 comedy. The Maltese Falcon is the John Huston remake, rather than the 1931 original version.)

The 100 Best Movies of the Past Ten Decades

The latest issue of Time magazine (vol. 202, no. 5), dated 14th August, features a list of the 100 greatest films of the past century. Stephanie Zacharek, one of Time’s film critics, compiled The 100 Best Movies of the Past Ten Decades: ten films from each decade, from the 1920s to the 2010s, in chronological order.

As Zacharek readily admits, the list is “marked by what some will see as glaring omissions,” such as Tokyo Story (東京物語), Citizen Kane, Casablanca, and The Godfather. Stanley Kubrick’s films are nowhere to be found. In fact, when compared to Dateline Bangkok’s list of the 100 greatest films, only a quarter of the entries are common to both lists.

Zacharek’s list has also been published in a special edition of Time titled 100 Must-See Movies. Time published its first greatest-films list in 2005, compiled by Richard Corliss and Richard Schickel. From that selection of 100 titles, Corliss and Schickel chose Nine Great Movies from Nine Decades — none of which are included in Zacharek’s list.

Cigar Aficionado

This month’s issue of Cigar Aficionado magazine (vol. 31, no. 4) is dedicated to classic movies, and includes a poll of readers’ favourite films. The magazine surveyed “a random group of readers” — presumably a small sample of subscribers — 25% of whom voted for The Godfather. (The other films in the top ten list received less than 10% each.)

Cigar Aficionado has an older, male readership, and the magazine proclaimed The Godfather “the Greatest Film Ever Made” in a cover story last year, so the poll result was fairly predictable. Garrett Rutledge conducted the poll and, as he admits in the magazine, “we can’t say we’re all that surprised.”

Cigar Aficionado readers’ top ten films are as follows:

1. The Godfather
2. Casablanca
3. GoodFellas
4. The Shawshank Redemption / The Sting
6. Gladiator / Tombstone
8. The Godfather Part II / Heat / The Longest Day

The Greatest Films of All Time

Last year, Sight and Sound published the results of its Greatest Films of All Time survey. Ever since 1952, the magazine has polled film critics around the world every ten years, to compile authoritative lists of the ten greatest films ever made. In 2012, for the first time, they expanded their list to include 100 titles, and their 2022 poll was also initially published as a list of 100 films. Now, last year’s list has been expanded further, to 250 films, printed as a checklist on pp. 50–53 of the new April issue (vol. 33, no. 3).

500 Must-See Movies

Total Film magazine published a special issue in 2017 listing 500 Must-See Movies, and a second edition with an updated list appeared earlier this year. There are only minor changes to the original edition, with the addition of recent films such as Get Out, 1917, A Quiet Place, Infinity War (the penultimate Avengers movie), and Parasite (기생충). As in the first edition, only five genres are included: horror, science-fiction, thrillers, action movies, and comedies.

Empire and Us Weekly magazines have also published top-500 film lists, as did the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph newspapers. Empire later revised its list for its Australian edition, and published a collection of 500 five-star reviews. Dateline Bangkok also has its own list of 500 classic films.

Total Film’s previous greatest-film lists are: The 100 Greatest Movies of All Time from 2005, The Top 100 Movies of All Time from 2006, and 100 Greatest Movies from 2010. It also compiled a list of The Sixty-Seven Most Influential Films Ever Made in 2009.

The 100 Greatest Movies of All Time

This week’s issue of Variety (vol. 358, no. 12), published yesterday, features The 100 Greatest Movies of All Time, as selected by thirty-two of the magazine’s writers. This is one of the very best greatest-film polls: an ideal combination of arthouse titles, classic Hollywood, world cinema, and popular movies.

Variety’s 100 greatest movies are as follows:

100. The Graduate
99. Twelve Angry Men
98. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
97. Alien
96. A Hard Day’s Night
95. Toy Story
94. Bridesmaids
93. Le samuraï
92. Pink Flamingos
91. Scenes from a Marriage
90. The Shining
89. Belle de jour
88. Malcolm X
87. The Sound of Music
86. Close-Up
85. Natural Born Killers
84. Pan’s Labyrinth
83. Kramer vs. Kramer
82. Parasite
81. The Dark Knight
80. Pixote
79. Waiting for Guffman
78. Jeanne Dielman
77. Goldfinger
76. The Tree of Life
75. Boogie Nights
74. My Neighbour Totoro
73. Intolerance
72. Breaking the Waves
71. My Best Friend’s Wedding
70. Twelve Years a Slave
69. Beau travail
68. King Kong
67. Bicycle Thieves
66. Paris Is Burning
65. A Man Escaped
64. Carrie
63. Bambi
62. Dazed and Confused
61. The Passion of Joan of Arc
60. Moulin Rouge!
59. Vagabond
58. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
57. Brokeback Mountain
56. Rosemary’s Baby
55. Pather Panchali
54. Mad Max II
53. In the Mood for Love
52. The General
51. Apocalypse Now
50. Breathless
49. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
48. The Piano
47. Mean Streets
46. Notorious
45. Titanic
44. L’avventura
43. Shoah
42. Moonlight
41. The Wild Bunch
40. Fargo
39. Some Like It Hot
38. Lawrence of Arabia
37. Annie Hall
36. On the Waterfront
35. The Silence of the Lambs
34. Stagecoach
33. 8½
32. Vertigo
31. Network
30. Star Wars V
29. Double Indemnity
28. City Lights
27. Bonnie and Clyde
26. The 400 Blows
25. Bringing up Baby
24. Tokyo Story
23. The Apartment
22. Chinatown
21. Gone with the Wind
20. Blue Velvet
19. The Godfather II
18. Persona
17. Nashville
16. Casablanca
15. Sunrise
14. Do the Right Thing
13. The Rules of the Game
12. GoodFellas
11. Singin’ in the Rain
10. Saving Private Ryan
9. All about Eve
8. It’s a Wonderful Life
7. 2001
6. Seven Samurai
5. Pulp Fiction
4. Citizen Kane
3. The Godfather
2. The Wizard of Oz
1. Psycho

Note that Some Like It Hot is the 1959 comedy, and Titanic is the 1997 blockbuster. A third of Variety’s choices are also included in Dateline Bangkok’s 100 greatest films list. (That list is not ranked, though if it were, Psycho would also be at no. 1, as it is in Variety.)

500 Best Movies of All Time

In 2018, Us Weekly magazine published a special 500 Best Movies of All Time issue (vol. 18, no. 47). The top twenty-five titles are listed first, and the others are classified by genre. The films are organised alphabetically within these categories, and are not ranked. The list features more than 500 titles, as some series — the Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean franchises; The Naked Gun and Kill Bill and their sequels — are counted as single entries.

Us Weekly is a mainstream entertainment magazine, so the selection is weighted in favour of popular Hollywood movies; as the editors wrote in their introduction: “we tried to pay attention not just to what critics like, but to what audiences like as well.” There are a handful of foreign-language titles, including Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di biciclette, classified rather literally as a crime film), and just one silent film (Metropolis, listed under drama rather than science-fiction).

Us Weekly’s top twenty-five films are as follows:

• Avatar
• Black Panther
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
• Casablanca
• Chinatown
• Citizen Kane
• E.T. the Extra-terrestrial
• Get Out
• The Godfather
• Gone with the Wind
• Harry Potter
• Inception
• Lawrence of Arabia
• National Lampoon’s Animal House
• Psycho
• Pulp Fiction
• Raging Bull
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Rocky
• Scarface
• The Shawshank Redemption
• Star Wars IV
• Titanic
• Toy Story
• The Wizard of Oz

(Titanic is the 1997 blockbuster, Psycho is the 1960 masterpiece, and Scarface is the 1983 remake. Harry Potter refers to all eight films in the series.)

Empire and Total Film magazines have also published top-500 film lists, as did the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph newspapers. Empire later revised its list for its Australian edition, and also published a collection of 500 five-star reviews. Not to be outdone, Dateline Bangkok has its own list of 500 classic films.

The Greatest Films of All Time

Sight and Sound magazine has announced the results of its 2022 critics’ and directors’ polls, The Greatest Films of All Time. There have been dozens of similar polls, based on votes by either critics or the public — Dateline Bangkok has featured every greatest-film list published since 2005 — though Sight and Sound’s list is the first and most authoritative of them all. The magazine compiled its original list in 1952, with Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di biciclette) being the inaugural winner. For fifty years, starting in 1962, Citizen Kane was in first place, until it was overtaken by Vertigo in 2012.

This year’s result is much more surprising, with Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles at the top of the new list. As Laura Mulvey writes in the magazine’s latest issue (vol. 33, no. 1), “Vertigo had been gradually closing in on Citizen Kane for decades; Jeanne Dielman has appeared from nowhere.” 2001 came first in the directors’ poll, replacing Tokyo Story (東京物語), and the full results of both polls are included in the new issue of the magazine.

The Sight and Sound critics’ top ten is as follows:

1. Jeanne Dielman
2. Vertigo
3. Citizen Kane
4. Tokyo Story
5. In the Mood for Love
6. 2001
7. Beau travail
8. Mulholland Drive
9. Man with a Movie Camera
10. Singin’ in the Rain

The Genius of Prince

The US Supreme Court will rule later this year on a long-running copyright lawsuit between photographer Lynn Goldsmith and the Andy Warhol Foundation. Warhol was commissioned by Vanity Fair to create a portrait of Prince, and the magazine paid Goldsmith for the rights to use her black-and-white Prince photograph as the basis for Warhol’s painting. Both Warhol and Goldsmith were credited when the image was published in the November 1984 issue (on p. 67), to illustrate an article titled Purple Fame.

The dispute stems not from that original publication, but from a commemorative magazine, The Genius of Prince, released in 2016 by the publisher of Vanity Fair. The cover illustration for The Genius of Prince was another Warhol portrait, also based on Goldsmith’s photo, and this time she wasn’t credited. Goldsmith sued the Warhol Foundation, though the Foundation counter-sued and argued that Warhol’s manipulation of her image was sufficiently transformative that it did not infringe her copyright.

The precedent for transformative works constituting fair use dates to a 1993 Supreme Court verdict that permitted The 2 Live Crew’s sampling of Roy Orbison’s single Oh, Pretty Woman. Even more directly relevant is the case of another photographer, Patrick Cariou, who sued the artist Richard Prince for copyright infringement. In that instance, most of Prince’s images were deemed fair use, though the legal status of five works remains unresolved, as the appeals court was unable to “make a determination about their transformative nature” and the case was ultimately settled out of court.

“I have decided to take legal action...”

An Iraqi soap opera actress has announced that she plans to sue The Economist over its use of her photograph. The magazine used a photo of Enas Taleb to illustrate an article about female obesity in the Middle East. Taleb told the online magazine New Lines: “I have decided to take legal action against The Economist... I am demanding compensation for the emotional, mental and social damage this incident has caused me.”

The article, headlined Weighty Matters, appears on p. 34 of the current issue (vol. 444, no. 9,307) of The Economist, published on 30th July. The Economist was last successfully sued for damages in 2004, after it alleged “a whiff of nepotism” in the appointment of the Singaporean Prime Minister’s wife as head of a state investment agency.

Sojourn

Thai Cinema Uncensored is reviewed in the new issue of Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia (vol. 37, no. 2). In her review (pp. 374–377), Annette Hamilton writes: “This is a great read not just for those interested in film, but for anyone trying to understand the nexus between culture and politics in Thailand in recent times.” She concludes: “This book is a valuable addition to Thai cinema studies. It is well-written and instructive.” Thai Cinema Uncensored has previously been reviewed by the Bangkok Post newspaper, Art Review and The Big Chilli magazines, and the 101 World website.

Boiled Angels:The Trial of Mike Diana

In 1994, cartoonist Mike Diana was convicted of producing and distributing obscene material, after Florida police obtained copies of his zine Boiled Angel (no. 7–8). Its twisted humour was certainly provocative — zine bible Factsheet Five described it as “designed to turn your stomach” — though this was precisely Diana’s intention. As he says in the excellent documentary Boiled Angels: The Trial of Mike Diana: “My goal was to make the most offensive zine ever made.”

Following the guilty verdict, Diana was denied bail. After four days in custody, he was fined $3,000 and sentenced to 1,248 hours of community service. The documentary, by horror director Frank Henenlotter, features interviews with Diana, his family, and the defence and prosecution attorneys. It’s a thorough recounting of Diana’s trial, and it also gives plenty of historical background on the Comics Code and the underground comix movement.

Diana’s case was very similar to that of Mark Laliberté, whose comic zine Headtrip (no. 1–2) was accused of obscenity in Canada. Laliberté and Diana had traded zines, and Laliberté’s copies of Boiled Angel were also cited in the Headtrip obscenity trial. The failure to secure a conviction in Canada perhaps made the US authorities all the more eager to prosecute Diana in Florida. (At least, that’s what Laliberté alleges in the documentary.)

Although Diana is the only artist ever convicted of obscenity in the US, there have been other prosecutions of comic art. Booksellers in New York were fined for stocking Robert Crumb’s Zap Comix (specifically the ‘family values’ parody Joe Blow in no. 4; charges against Zap’s publishers, the Print Mint, were later dropped). In a similar case in the State of Washington, booksellers were prosecuted in relation to Jim Goad’s zine Answer Me! (no. 4, with a cover illustration by Mike Diana), though they were eventually acquitted.

There have also been a handful of obscenity cases against comics in the UK. Charges against Oz magazine (no. 28) and the Nasty Tales comic (no. 1) were both related to Robert Crumb cartoons, and Crumb’s book My Troubles with Women was seized by customs in 1996. (In all three cases, the charges were eventually dropped or overturned.) David Britton was found guilty on obscenity charges relating to his novel Lord Horror and his comic Meng and Ecker (no. 1); the charge against the novel was overturned on appeal, though the conviction of the comic was upheld.

“Conspiracy to corrupt public morals...”

Alfred Barrett’s lonely hearts magazine The Link, founded in 1915, was certainly ahead of its time. It published personal ads, though as its masthead proudly proclaimed, they were “NOT MATRIMONIAL” in nature. So if people weren’t looking for a spouse, what could they be looking for...? The Metropolitan Police pondered that very question, after R.A. Bennett — editor of another magazine, the moralistic Truth — sent copies of The Link to Scotland Yard.

Bennett suspected that some of The Link’s classified ads were coded messages written by gay men. One example, which he underlined with a literal blue pencil, was by someone “anxious to correspond with friend. Must be same sex, affectionate, and amiable”. Homosexuality was illegal in Britain at the time, and the police seized not only copies of The Link but also letters sent to the box numbers advertised. Barrett was convicted of conspiracy to corrupt public morals in 1921, and sentenced to two years’ hard labour.

Forty years later, in 1961, another publisher was convicted of the same offence. Frederick Shaw’s Ladies Directory, founded in 1959, was a catalogue of ads placed by prostitutes (the equivalent of the ‘tart cards’ left in phone boxes). Shaw himself had sent his publication to the Director of Public Prosecutions, seeking guidance on its legality. He got his answer when the DPP charged him with conspiracy to corrupt public morals, and after his conviction he served nine months in prison. The charge — which set a legal precedent — related specifically to no. 7–10 of the Ladies Directory. (My copy of no. 8 is an undated and unpaginated A5 booklet.)

In 1965, Way Out led a revival of the lonely hearts magazine, and soon inspired imitators such as Exit and numerous others. In his authoritative Encyclopedia of Censorship, Jonathon Green noted that these titles “were not prosecuted, and more respectable magazines began to run lonely hearts columns that might have been indictable in earlier years.” H.G. Cocks, however, in his book Classified: The Secret History of the Personal Column, demonstrates that these titles were indeed prosecuted for conspiracy to corrupt public morals: “The way the police in Britain investigated smalltime magazines like Exit and Way Out while their American counterparts merely shrugged as their own swinging industry exploded, tells us everything about the differences between the two countries.” (Classified’s coverage of the investigation into Exit and Way Out sets it apart from other books on censorship in Britain.)

The last major UK conviction for consiracy to corrupt public morals came in 1970, when three publishers of the underground magazine International Times received suspended sentences. In 1969 (issues 51–56), IT published a column of gay personal ads (Males), and this gave the Metropolitan Police the excuse they needed to prosecute the magazine, after several previous speculative raids on its offices. In an echo of the investigation into The Link fifty years earlier, and notwithstanding the legalisation of homosexuality in 1967, the police seized hundreds of letters sent in reply to the ads. The editors of a more famous underground title, Oz, were acquitted of conspiracy to corrupt public morals in 1971, though after a prolonged trial they were found guilty of obscenity (a verdict later overturned on appeal).

Although corrupting public morals is now an outdated offence in the UK, it remains a serious crime in countries such as Egypt. I 2017, Egyptian television presenter Doaa Salah was sentenced to three years in prison for outraging public decency, after she advocated single motherhood on her variety TV show مع دودي (‘with Doaa’). In an episode broadcast by Al Nahar on 28th July 2017, she delivered a tongue-in-cheek monologue recommending women to visit sperm banks, become pregnant before marriage, or enter into short-term marriages of convenience.

Similarly, another Egyptian TV presenter was jailed for one year in 2019, after being found guilty of inciting immorality. Mohamed al-Ghiety’s satellite TV talk show صح النوم (‘wake up’), featured a gay man discussing his sex life in an episode transmitted on 5th August 2018. (The man&rsuo;s face was blurred to disguise his identity.) The broadcaster, LTC TV, was suspended for a fortnight after the programme was aired.

School Kids Oz

Fifty years ago today, Britain’s longest obscenity trial came to an end, and the editors of Oz magazine all received custodial sentences. Richard Neville was sentenced to fifteen months in jail, James Anderson received a one-year sentence, and Felix Dennis was sentenced to nine months. Their crime? To allow schoolchildren to edit an issue (no. 28) of the underground counter-culture magazine Oz. The School Kids Oz conviction was a (temporary) impediment to the ‘permissive society’ that had been initiated by the mass-market paperback publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1960, of which prosecutor Mervyn Griffith-Jones famously asked the jury: “Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?”

The Oz trial began on 22nd June 1971, and ended six weeks later with a withering summing up by the judge, Michael Argyle. When the jury asked him for guidance on the legal interpretation of obscenity, Argyle simply read out a dictionary definition, thus equating obscenity with indecency. (In fact, as per the Obscene Publications Act, obscenity in law requires a tendency to deprave and corrupt.) This “substantial and serious misdirection to the jury on the question of obscenity” was noted by the Appeals Court judge, David Widgery, who quashed the obscenity convictions.

Art Review

Thai Cinema Uncensored is reviewed in the March issue of Art Review magazine (vol. 73, no. 1), on p. 111. Reviewer Max Crosbie-Jones writes: “Thais and Thailand watchers will recognise the bigger story, an all-too-common narrative arc streaked with moments of fear, absurdity and humour, in Hunt’s lingering closeups on the mangled, hidden wreckage of film censorship.” Thai Cinema Uncensored was also reviewed in The Big Chilli magazine earlier this year.

The Big Chilli

The first print review of Thai Cinema Uncensored — “the first full-length study of Thai film censorship” — has been published, in The Big Chilli magazine. The full-page book review is on p. 25 of the January issue.