Showing 31 - 38 of 38
The old(ish) man and the sea
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/02/2014
» JC Chandor's All Is Lost is a taut maritime drama about a man who struggles to survive in the Indian Ocean after his yacht is holed and slowly starts to sink. The entire film has only one character, an unnamed man played by Robert Redford, and we're stuck with him on his vessel and later on a life raft, watching him calmly struggling against the waves, the storm, the disorientation, the hopelessness. We don't know who this man is (he's merely described as "Our Man" in the credits) or why he's there, and the film doesn't have any flashback or any cutaway to, say, his family anxiously waiting for news of him. There are no other external perspectives. We're stranded with him. We are, literally, in the same boat with him and we see everything as he sees it; it's almost an hour into the movie before there's a long shot from above showing him surrounded by a vast body of water. Our Man, his radio inoperative after the yacht gets flooded, speaks only twice during this 105-minute film. The third time he opens his mouth is the only time the film allows him a howl of despair.
Mental stability not required
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/02/2013
» Whip Whitaker is flying high, literally. In his stirring, head-first performance in a movie about a nose-diving aircraft and its drug-addled pilot, Denzel Washington plays a wreck looking for a break in the clouds and, naturally, for salvation _ moral, legal, professional.
Peter chan_ balancing on the cutting edge
B Magazine, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/01/2013
» Facing a forest of reporters' microphones, Peter Ho Sun Chan speaks Thai with the slight accent of someone who remembers the tongue, but not the spontaneity.
Regionalcross-Over
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/08/2012
» It helps that the part doesn't require him to speak much. Playing a soldier stationed in the Spratlys, a group of disputed islands in the South China Sea several nations lay claim to with some even flexing their military might, Ananda Everingham, in the new Filipino film Kalayaan, only has to speak three sentences in Tagalog.
Poster boy
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/07/2012
» Santi Tuntipantarux unfolds an Apocalypse Now poster and points at the wrinkles and creases. They appear at the bottom, just below Marlon Brando's stern, slightly demented countenance. But the folds are not marks of imperfection - they are proof of authenticity.
Finding ways to make their market
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/06/2012
» Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit admits he's an impatient person.
Southeast Asian Round-UP
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/06/2012
» From a new film festival in Kuala Lumpur to Myanmar movies on General Aung San
Lao new wave
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/04/2012
» For decades, the light has been out in Laos. The movie screens have become totally dark, and the profession known elsewhere as "actor" is, up to today, still non-existent. For so many years our land-locked neighbour has subsisted on a staple of Thai TV soaps and movies, cultural imports that have travelled, or been smuggled, through airwaves and distribution channels, and so much is our cross-Mekong dominance that Lao people have almost forgotten what it's like to watch a Lao film.