THE ONGOING publicity surrounding the insults being traded by Werner Herzog and Abel Ferrara over whether “The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” is a remake of Ferrara’s 1992 original or not, maybe of interest to the industry, and particularly to film critics, but is of little interest to movie-goers. Both versions tell the story of a drug-addled cop trying to solve a case of murder, but the interpretation is as different as chalk from cheese. Herzog, more highly thought of for his...

THERE were many good lines in Chaplin's first "talking" movie, The Great Dictator. But the one that has stuck in my mind over the years comes from the final scene (or was it the penultimate scene) in which the barber is mistaken for Adenoid Hinkle and has to make a speech."We think too much, and we feel too little", says Charlot as he addresses the massed ranks of soldiers who have been rallied to hear a pro-Nazi anti-Jewish rant. (no problem here for the programmers of the Toronto film festival...

THERE are nine movies in the main competition of the Bangkok International Film Festival 2009: Across the River (Iran); Adrift (Vietnam); Altiplano (Belgium); Breathless (South Korea); Everyone Else (Germany); Huacho (Chile/ France/ Germany); I Killed My Mother (Canada); Inland (Algeria / France), and The Search (China). Across the River, by the prolific US-based Iranian director Abbas A. Motlagh, has barely been shown outside Iran, but is bound to attract attention here. In the wake of a majo...