Showing 1 - 5 of 5
A new vision on Siam's enduring symbol
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/04/2017
» The elephant and the man, walking down the road to redemption and encountering the wounded and the marginalised, the madmen and the prostitutes. In the film Pop Aye, which will kick off Bangkok Asean Film Festival 2017 this evening (see sidebar), the fine-tusked beast accompanies the lost soul as the duo find their way home from Bangkok to the Northeast.
Art, revenge, despair
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/11/2016
» Tom Ford's Nocturnal Animals opens with a montage of naked, fat-rippling, extremely obese women, their bodies wrapped in the American flag as they dance to the beat. We then cut to the opening of an art exhibition featuring those naked women on platforms, curled up as live installation pieces, or as morbid glitz, an excess of grotesquerie amid the well-dressed LA crowd.
Northern lights
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/09/2016
» With over 400 movies on the slot, the Toronto International Film Festival was a feast and a maze. The latest edition of this North American showcase concluded last Sunday, with Damein Chazelle's La La Land winning the People's Choice Award, a bellwether for the bright Oscar season (Toronto, unlike other major festivals, has no prominent juried competition, instead letting the audiences decide the big winner). The festival is known as a launch pad for Oscar hopefuls as well as independent titles looking for distribution. It also features a strong experimental section that casts its radical net far and wide.
East versus West
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/10/2013
» The first shot in Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity lasts almost 10 minutes, a long, unbroken take of Sandra Bullock and George Clooney in a gravity-less float, a mix of cosmic tumble and lyrical spacewalk backdropped by the breathtaking, panoramic orb that is Earth and specks of nameless stars. I watched the film on Imax 3D, and the enormous screen enhances so spectacularly the film's visual choreography, especially the depth: space seemed to extend beyond the edge of the screen and the infinite black swathe around Bullock and Clooney reaches further and further back. The 3D trickery has been much heralded, but here's a rare film where the technology is integral to the emotional register of the story.
A look at the drawing board
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/08/2013
» At the D23 Expo last weekend in Anaheim, Rapunzel rubbed shoulders with Darth Vader as Minnie made friends with Captain America. Angelina Jolie swooped down as the horned, husky-voiced witch and John Goodman, last heard as Sully in Pixar's Monsters University, was declared a new legend. Attended by thousands of Disney fans, families and stars, D23 _ so named after the year that Walt Disney set up his studio in Hollywood _ was a biennial fan gathering and corporate expo where the creative vision of Walt and the entrepreneurial acumen of his organisation were celebrated, affirmed and expanded.