Showing 1 - 6 of 6
Time for Asean films to shine
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/12/2021
» The pandemic notwithstanding, it has been a stimulating year for Southeast Asian cinema. Reflective, heartfelt and oddball new titles from Indonesia, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand have won major prizes or become critical favourites at international film festivals throughout 2021. Now, many of these films are coming to the big screen in Thailand as the Bangkok Asean Film Festival 2021 (BAFF) is set to open tonight.
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
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.
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.
Wild tales
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/11/2015
» 'Morning now dawned and Shahrazad broke off from what she had allowed to say…" -- so begins the story on each night of Tales Of 1,001 Nights, the fantastic yarns of peasants, kings, slaves, lovers, viziers, angels, sex, human anatomy (Night 449), devils in the bottle (Night 567), glory, injustice, pleasure, and all the mundane and the magical in the world. It is the collection of some of the greatest tales ever told. But then, what, exactly, is Arabian Nights all about?
Soulful, sorrowful, tragic
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/08/2015
» Amy is a biographical documentary of the singer Amy Winehouse, but it is also a horror film. Watching it is like watching a ghost, a confused, tortured ghost of a woman who has boundless talent in singing and none in living. As we watch Amy Winehouse -- in home video footage, concert recordings, TV interviews, etc -- it hits us that we're watching her being killed slowly at every passing minute; killed by herself, her addiction, and by the cruel ecosystem of the fame industry that feeds first on her gift then more voraciously on her downfall. This is one of the best documentary films this year, and in some parts it's also one of the hardest to watch.