Showing 1 - 9 of 9
The Year of Great Reckoning
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/12/2020
» For filmgoers, it was a year of mortal dread. The screen went dark, like a coffin nailed shut, and is still like that in many places. Faith in cinema as we've known it was rattled, challenged, and endangered with a Biblical overtone; it's a plague we're dealing with, after all. It was a year unlike any other we had seen before in the 125 years since cinema was invented. And while that sounds dispiriting, 2020 has also been a "Year of Great Reckoning" during which the equilibrium was recalibrated and the idea of moving images continues, as it should, to evolve.
Hot from Toronto
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/09/2018
» Some highlights and award hopefuls from the film festival that will likely occupy the spotlight in the coming months
Cinema paradiso no more
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/08/2017
» Everything changes. It changes in its own time.Cells die. Cells grow. Death and birth happen all the time.Like the mind, it's gone before you even know. Like when I project a movie, a reel of film rotating at high speed looks like a still image.
A wind from the Northeast
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/03/2017
» Last month the cinemas saw a sleeper hit -- and don't be surprised if your cultural radar didn't beep. The homemade Isan film Thi Baan The Series attracted huge crowds not to Bangkok cineplexes, or not at first, but to theatres in Si Sa Ket, Khon Kaen, Maha Sarakham and elsewhere across the Northeast. Scoring big with regional tastes, the small, Isan-speaking film, made by a group of friends for 3 million baht, has now made over 20 million in box office -- 70% of it on its home turf, the rest in the capital.
Lights, cameras and Pixels
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 31/08/2016
» The rain came down just before the scheduled kick-off, a scatter of teasing drops at first then a roof-rattling downpour. The well-dressed guests at "MahaNakhon: Bangkok Rising, The Night Of Lights", an outdoor bash to launch Thailand's new tallest building, found cover in the most civil manner. Beer, wine and finger food were whisked out on trays in Dean & Deluca, a bistro in the adjacent building owned by the same developer, Pace Development. Some wondered aloud: Where's Pharrell Williams? Where's Jose Carreras? Outside, onlookers who had filled BTS Chong Nonsi station and the surrounding footpaths, waiting for the light show, fled, scattered, or just held their position dauntlessly.
Scala doc to open film festival
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/03/2016
» Our cinematic monument of majesty, the last palatial cinema house in town, the Scala on Siam Square stands alone in defiance and melancholy as a remnant of a different era. As its fate -- the spectre of eventual demolition -- keeps popping up in the news every few years, the movie house is now the subject of a documentary film. The Scala, directed by Aditya Assarat, is part of a pan-Asia ensemble called The Power Of Asian Cinema that will screen as the opener of the 6th Salaya International tomorrow.
Lessons from Rishikesh
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/11/2014
» Five years ago, Chayada Martjaroen made a trip through India. She made her way up North, stopping and moving and enjoying the sights and sounds of that multifarious country, until she arrived at Rishikesh, a town on the Ganges full of ashrams and yoga schools.
Vivid homage to a bygone celluloid era
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 27/10/2014
» Once upon a time, before hard drives, film was film — meaning 35mm celluloid strips that stored atomised images transformed into moving pictures by light. The picture houses that showed film, too, were once stand-alone palaces of dreams populated by dreamers who fed on the riches of shadows, and staffed by projectionists with their whirring, beastly machines.
The Lottery labyrinth
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/10/2012
» For 230 years Thai people have gambled on the lottery _ legit and underground, paper-based and imagination-prone. Along with every discussion of the lottery comes a whole syllabus of tangled subjects: economic value, political manipulation, tax structure, legal philosophy, morality, superstition, national character, the distribution of wealth and luck.