Showing 1 - 10 of 10
In Cannes, it's cinema as usual
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 17/05/2022
» After the cancellation in 2020 and a bump to the month of July in 2021 -- with smaller attendance as international travel was still interrupted -- the Cannes Film Festival returns to its usual mid-May slot, keyed up and fully prepped to show the world that it's cinema, and the cinema business, as usual.
A fitting aperitif
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/05/2017
» At 70 years of age, the Cannes Film Festival opened on Wednesday with a touch of its glorious past and a heavy dose of present uncertainty. Inside the Palais des Festivals, the bustling headquarters, a decoration motif lays out the key moments of the festival's history, and special events marking the occasion are planned for the days to come. Meanwhile, for the first time, metal detectors have been installed at the entrance of the Palais and some of the cinemas, stacking up long queues. Flowers pots have reportedly been deployed as part of the strategy to prevent any unexpected intrusions.
The women of Wanita
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/03/2017
» Nine years ago, Ropita Mahamat almost lost her son in a shooting incident, a dishearteningly familiar story in the Deep South. One night at 9pm in Pattani, her son was picking a relative from a pondok school when unidentified gunmen opened fire on him -- or, more likely, on someone else, though the bullets hit him. This circumstance, like so many similar ones in the region, was never clearly explained.
Our best films of the year
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/12/2016
» As usual we have two lists, for titles released in local cinemas and the wider universe of world films shown elsewhere (and hopefully coming to our screens soon).
In the kinky zone
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/12/2016
» No more debacle: Prabda Yoon's Rong Ram Tang Dao (Motel Mist) is finally in cinemas. Last month, just one day before the original release, the film's investor TrueVisions decided that they didn't like what they saw (despite the film having been finished 10 months earlier) and pulled it off the programme to the shock of many, chiefly the director. Rampant criticism of self-censorship followed. Now the filmmakers have decided to untie themselves from the deal and release the film on their own, so you can catch it now at SF CentralWorld, House RCA and Bangkok Screening Room.
Spirits run deep
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/03/2016
» Downstairs: a vintage Fiat, a vintage Austin Mini, a few Mercedes. Upstairs: a wild museum of spiritual imagery, Brahmin, Buddhism, animism -- tall effigies of leopard-striped hermits and beautiful Buddha statues, talismanic scrolls of occult origins and prints of Khmer calligraphy.
Sleep, dreams, splendour
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/01/2016
» In Apichatpong Weerasethakul's new film, the ghosts are awake and the people are asleep. A war is being fought, but that war is invisible. Above the ground, soldiers are sleeping. Underneath, an ancient graveyard hums. At the centre of it all is a middle-aged lady, her leg damaged, her dreams interrupted, her memory luminous. She stares into the past, or maybe the future, and what she glimpses, in that limbo between sleep and life, is a cemetery of splendour.
Leaving a Thai impression
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/01/2016
» Once again, a small Thai film blew over Cannes Film Festival like a graceful lover. On Monday, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Cemetery Of Splendour (or Rak Ti Khon Kaen) was screened to a thundering 10-minute standing ovation in the Un Certain Regard section, where the film's elegant formalism and aching beauty, deeply rooted in the northeastern spirit and post-coup reflection, shook up the festival slumber.
Cannes, mon amour
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/01/2015
» Love and other nightmares filled the first half of the 65th Cannes Film Festival. There's post-Revolution love from Egypt, and the love that finds its final destiny, as love should, in death. There are the usual sidekicks of love, such as loneliness and the desire to be recognised, in the heart and in the flesh, in one's own territory and in others. It's both helpful and futile to try to find a common theme in the competition titles at the most frenzied and influential movie festival on Earth, but please allow me to indulge in the activity as a cure to the unusually wet weather that has rendered the mood rather gloomy in this war zone of film criticism.