Showing 1 - 10 of 10
Love, beauty, violence
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/05/2024
» Last year, the world embraced Barbie and Poor Things, two outstanding films that tapped into the state of female consciousness in the 21st century. At the 77th Cannes Film Festival, which ends tomorrow, women-driven stories of all stripes are pushed further up (or down) the emotional spectrum. A noticeable number of titles premiering at the influential festival feature female protagonists in varying states of joy and distress -- and to varying results. Powerful acting by female talent also injects life and spirit into those stories, hailing from all corners of the Earth.
Cannes 2024 highlights
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/05/2024
» From Francis Ford Coppola's new epic to a Taiwanese drama starring a Thai actor and a Pol Pot drama, we pick hot titles from the French film festival that kicks off today.
Harry shows Bangkok some Styles
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/03/2023
» The accessory du jour was the fluffy pink boa. The colour scheme was hot pink -- pink pants, pink boots, pink cowboy hats, pink eyeshadow, pink hijabs. Or if not pink, then anything in the tooth-aching shades of the rainbow. It was a lively, joyous sight on Saturday night, a show of hot-hue aesthetics in a defiant contrast to the brutalist concrete skeleton of Rajamangala Stadium. How I wish concrete-mad Bangkok could look like this every day!
Eyes wide open
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/05/2020
» The literature about modern Thai politics is not abundant, and by this I mean a narrative that grounds its characters in the double-whammy of coup d'etat and street protest that characterised the mid-2000s to mid-2010s. The period, plus a few years earlier when Thaksin Shinawatra rose to power, contains some of the most convulsive and era-defining moments that continue to shape the visible and invisible dimensions of Thai society in the present time, and it's astonishing that not more writers find it a rich wellspring of artistic expression (on the contrary, visual artists and theatre artists seem more responsive to the political currents of the same period).
Women in motion
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/05/2019
» In Senegal, a teenage Muslim girl in an arranged marriage reunites with her lover, who has returned from his aquatic death. In London, a scientist mother engineers a new plant species that begins to dominate the mind of her young son. In 18th-century France, a portrait painter travels to an island off Brittany to paint a young aristocrat and finds herself smothered by love.
Last light at Lido
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/05/2018
» The Lido Theatre opened on June 27, 1968, a 1,000-seat movie palace in the fast-modernising neighbourhood of Pathumwan. The first title on the marquee was Guns For San Sebastian, a cowboy film starring Anthony Quinn.
First they came for those who 'twerk'
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 17/06/2017
» The police this week visited several cultural spaces, to appreciate the art and to mete out censorship. Next they'll give out art prizes -- to those who toe the line and serve the official ideology -- like the propagandistic communist states did in the last century.
Sex, lies and videotape
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/09/2015
» The title is appropriately provoking. The Elle Men Film Festival 18-Plus, which begins on Sept 25, has prompted cinemagoers to imagine a feast of mild pornography served up on the big screen uncut. Don't get overexcited, anyway. While three of the six films in this mini showcase indeed feature sexual content deserving the R-rating, the interpretation of the "18-plus" here can be less libidinous than that. In fact, the other half of the films shown are almost family-friendly, and that 18-year-old milestone should designate the intellectual ability to grasp a world whose complexity can only stir feelings in adults.
Ferrari boys drive us all to distraction
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 03/05/2014
» The Ferrari boys have made our blood boil. Cruising Bangkok’s streets in their super-steeds, the two kids with rich dads, speaking in faux English accents, expound their beliefs on how the country is being ruined and how it should be run, how immoral the Thaksin regime is and how their friendship, forged in battle, is stronger than steel, or something like that. It sounded like they rehearsed the script in front of a mirror for days, for they were so happy to hear the sound of their own voices, to show the world how great it is to be themselves.
Remembering the Manifesto
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/05/2012
» 'The old film is dead. We believe in the new one."