Books

• Paolo Baciagalupi, The Windup Girl

Almost all fiction written in English about Bangkok (from Anna Leonowens on) is terrible, and science fiction about an imagined future Bangkok is not particularly promising. This book isn’t as terrible as it might be, though the supposition that Bangkok, a city which reliably floods every year in a country with horrific environmental policies, might be a bulwark against global warming is inadvertently hilarious. (Several locations mentioned as existing in the future have already disappeared, though the culprit there is the insatiable appetites of Bangkok’s developers.) The book falls too easily into ethnic stereotyping (those with scientific know-how are Western; Chinese are crafty; Thais are mystic; the Japanese are kinky), and one’s left with the feeling that once again the city merely serves as a signifier of exoticism.

Films

• Saint Jack, directed by Peter Bogdanovich
• Der müde Tod (Destiny), dir. Fritz Lang
• 哀しみのベラドンナ (Belladonna of Sadness), dir. Eiichi Yamamoto
• Арсенал (Arsenal), dir. Alexander Dovzhenko
• The Mark of Zorro, dir. Fred Niblo
• Underground, dir. Anthony Asquith
• リリイ・シュシュのすべて (All About Lily Chou-Chou), dir. Shunji Iwai
• The Informer, dir. Arthur Robison
• Our Pet, dir. Herman C. Raymaker
• 忠魂義烈 実録忠臣蔵 (Chushingura), dir. Shōzō Makino