Showing 61 - 70 of 78
Breaking the sound barrier
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/08/2014
» The sound of a sole piano has echoed through the chamber of the Lido 2 cinema since last Thursday. At the first "Silent Film Festival in Thailand", which ends tomorrow, two musical experts in live accompaniment have enriched the soundless images projected on-screen with melodic phrasing, jazzy streaks — even avant-garde romps. Maud Nelissen and Mie Yanashita have taken turns playing along with Hitchcock's romantic dramas and German proto-expressionism, as well as Japanese and Chinese silent films showing at the festival. Their improvisatory deftness and sonic interpretations of visuals recreate the cinematic experience of an era when movies were soundless.
Wings of desire
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/07/2014
» Hayao Miyazaki’s swansong animation The Wind Rises is a tale of heartbreak, aircraft and hijacked dreams. It’s a story of a young artist who watches in horror as his art, or what he believes to be nothing else but art, is exploited by a machine of terror that scorches the Earth and terrorises the world.
A decade at House
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 27/06/2014
» House has been a home for small films — small in Thailand at least — for the past 10 years. In a city where stand-alone cinemas are listed as a severely endangered species, the boutique theatre House in the RCA strip (of all places) is a welcome anomaly in the scene dominated by neon-splashed multiplexes that dictate the popular taste of the whole country.
Picks of the year
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/12/2013
» Like ravenous hunter-gatherers, we forage the thick forest of cinema and emerge with our pickings. Or maybe: like a mental patient, we plunge into the dark asylum of movie theatres in search of sanity, of light, of secrets. Most of the times we come out empty-handed, but the point, for madmen and women out there, is to keep looking.
Think global, act local
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 17/10/2013
» Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse in 1928. After years of toiling in Hollywood, the animator joined the vanguard of the talking-picture revolution when he produced Steamboat Willie, a cartoon that synchronised sound and animation featuring the good-humoured rodent that would become iconic (and maybe immortal). Two years later, Walt and his brother Roy licensed Mickey-related merchandise. And from the humble birth of Mickey Mouse 85 years ago, the Walt Disney Company has grown into a massive global business empire with a catalogue of nearly a thousand characters, complete with movies, animation, television, music, games and consumer product divisions. The acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel and LucasFilm have expanded the Disney universe and pop-cultural influence, especially among young audiences.
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/03/2013
» Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained is a happy whip, drawing as much blood as laughter. It runs on Road Runner humour, fired by cruel comedy, cartoon revenge, cracking you up and making you wince, and that balancing act has always been one of the secrets of Tarantino's brilliance. Still, this is a serious film about history and how cinema appropriates history. In a year that most Oscar-contending titles lay pompous claims to accurate retelling of the past, from Argo, Zero Dark Thirty and Lincoln, the blissful disregard of "history" somehow makes Django the most truthful film of the lot. Or at least it feels truthful in spirit, leaving the grandstanding of other filmmakers looking spurious, frivolous, or simply wrong.
Nothing succeeds like failure
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/03/2013
» Stoker is a lurid thriller that imagines itself, and struggles laboriously to be, something else. Come on, where's the blood? Where's the viscerality, the Hitchcockian glee, the good-old perversity? That late arrival of gore _ and such aestheticised gore, sprayed like expensive jets of perfume over dainty flowers _ almost seems disingenuous given the pedigree of the genre and the director, Park Chan-wook of Oldboy fame.
Troubled Territories
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/02/2013
» The Preah Vihear conflict and the heartache of democracy are the themes of two new Thai films set to premier at the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival this week.
Osama, where art thou!
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/02/2013
» Poor Maya. The waking life of the pretty CIA agent played by Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty is spent obsessing over one thing and nothing else: hunting down that bearded piece of work dubbed by military-speak as "UBL". Usama Bin Laden is Maya's Holy Grail, her lifetime achievement, her addiction, her soulmate. If Maya were an actress, the terrorist would be her Oscar. And given that we all know what happened 20 months ago in that house in Pakistan _ the UBL assassination is re-enacted here with the thrilling, goggle-eyed, sometimes first-person video-game aesthetics _ history and headlines have already put on the spoiler alert for the world audience: Maya wins, big time. She's got her metaphorical Oscar, and fittingly, she's shocked and awed and even breaks down after the trophy (the corpse) has been brought to her.
Knowing your turf
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/10/2012
» Wanrug "Fay" Suwanwattana is sweet _ and then something more. The graduate from Universite Paris 4, Sorbonne (her thesis is on Beckett) and lecturer in French literature at Thammasat University, Wanrug has made her name in the social/political commentary scene from her passionate, erudite discussion and articles that often ask hard questions on the state of things in our country.