Showing 31 - 40 of 56
That precious gold statuette
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/02/2017
» The Oscars takes place Monday morning Thailand time. We pontificate and prognosticate the results
Once lost, now found
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/02/2017
» The 69th Cannes Film Festival begins today in southern France with its usual fanfare. Regarded as the world's most prestigious event of cinema professionals, the festival celebrates film as art, commerce, glitz and as cultural treasure. Fittingly, this year Cannes has invited only one Thai film to screen in the Cannes Classics programme -- the recently discovered 1954 Santi-Vina, which was once thought to be lost and has now been restored to its celluloid glory.
Nepalese film scoops top prize at SGIFF
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/12/2016
» A Nepalese drama about political and cultural divides won top prize at the 27th Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF). The 12-day event, part of the Singapore Media Festival that ended on Sunday, also saw two Thai feature films in its Silver Screen Competition, though they came home empty-handed.
A trip to the other world
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/11/2016
» A quick lowdown on Thai love motels: trashy lighting, soap-smelling beds, bad pillows, cheap porn on the TV and a trove of hush-hush secrets guarded by naked walls. Outside, the thick tarp curtains separate the public from the personal, the exposed from the invisible, the respectable from the randy. Inside, it is another world, a fantasy world, an alien world.
To Myanmar with love
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/11/2016
» The big problem about shooting a film in Myanmar, says Thai filmmaker Chartchai Ketnust, was not obtaining permission. It was the mob of onlookers trying to get a peek of the stars.
Into the strange forest
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/09/2016
» The dirt road is dry and red, scorched by the Isan sun. The headmaster is wary, sardonic, and enervated by the heat. The students, or at least some of them, are bored and ironic ("What do you want to be when you grow up?" a teacher asks. "A bank robber," he deadpans.) Next to this poor state school is a forest, sun-dappled, mysterious and probably haunted. Girls are warned not to go in there because they may never come back out.
Alternative screenings this weekend
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/09/2016
» As the multiplexes are dominated by the big Thai film Fanday, two screenings this weekend should provide alternatives for Bangkok moviegoers. First, David Lean's Doctor Zhivago will play at the Scala on Sunday at noon, then a set of nine short films addressing the issue of legal reform will be screened at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre at 3pm.
A part of Myanmar's tapestry
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/06/2016
» Even with the civilian government, the military is still untouchable in Myanmar -- at least in the movies. Last week state censorship banned the film Twilight Over Burma: My Life As A Shan Princess, an Austrian production about the real-life Austrian woman who met a Shan prince in the US, married him and moved to Burma before the 1962 military coup d'etat that brought everything down. The film, which was shot largely in Thailand and starring mostly German and Thai actors, was supposed to open the Human Rights Film Festival in Yangon last Tuesday.
A copy of his mind
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/04/2016
» In the Indonesian film A Copy Of My Mind, a pirate DVD seller falls in love with a salon worker. Two working-class lovers struggling in a vast city, their relationship is just as heated as the smoke-choking street of Jakarta, and around them looms the tense shadow of politics as a presidential election nears.
Regional favourites, new and old
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/04/2016
» The 2nd Bangkok Asean Film Festival begins on Thursday at SF World Cinema, and will travel to Khon Kaen, Surat Thani and Chiang Mai later.