Showing 1 - 10 of 17
Art as our escape
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/09/2020
» This year's theme is at once hopeful and ironic: "Escape Routes" suggests a flight from our unusual times of pathological disruption and political cataclysm -- here, there and everywhere -- and yet the theme is an acknowledgment of those in-our-face uncertainties from which we struggle to find an exit.
Cool Pattani
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/09/2019
» Last weekend, along an old street in Pattani, skater boys and Lambretta riders were hanging out with poets and activists. As the rain let up and the night cooled, jazz musicians hummed and strummed, while a DJ was spinning upbeat music next to a digitally-mapped, fashionably-faded brick wall.
La La Land, Moonlight directors invoke 2016
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/09/2018
» Two years ago it was Damien Chazelle's La La Land vs Barry Jenkins' Moonlight at the Oscars. This year, the race between the same two directors seems to be shaping up again. This week at Toronto International Film Festival, Chazelle returns with his "Moon movie" First Man, and Jenkins with his adaptation of James Baldwin's If Beale Street Could Talk. The award season -- for those who still care -- is gearing up full steam now.
Strange brew
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 29/03/2018
» He went down to the crossroads, fell down on his knees, asked the Lord for mercy -- and somehow got it. In this biopic documentary, Eric Clapton -- his place in the pantheon of guitar god-dom guaranteed -- is a tragic genius denounced by his own mother and nurturing a desperate crush on his best friend's wife, which kept his guitar wailing and weeping. Here's a 60s-70s blues-rock maverick who sold his soul to heroin, cocaine, cognac, whatever, and when he emerged from the pit and things began to feel wonderful tonight, he lost his son in a terrible, terrible accident. That a new documentary about his life to date is allowed to end happily is proof that rock'n'roll (and life itself) can cheat the claws of fate and go on for longer than 12 bars.
Prabda's new film launched in Tokyo
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 31/10/2017
» The sole Thai film competing at the 30th Tokyo International Film Festival is a chamber drama -- literally -- in which two strangers are pitted in a battle of will and politics of space in a condominium room. Someone From Nowhere is the latest film by writer-director Prabda Yoon, who is in Tokyo this week to present the film in the festival's Asian Future competition. A major cine-event in the year's last quarter, TIFF will wrap on Friday night after 10 days.
Madness returns!
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/08/2017
» Before Dunkirk and Saving Private Ryan, there was The Bridge On The River Kwai.
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.
A tale of two cinemas
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/07/2015
» The benefits of reviving a century-old movie house are more than just monetary
Documenting Southeast Asian diversity
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/03/2015
» Now in its fifth edition, Salaya International Documentary Film Festival brings you real-world immediacy and reflection that covers a wide gamut of subjects — from the aftermath of the communist purge in 1960s Indonesia to the housing woes in Singapore, from the ferry tragedy in Korea to a grand tour of the National Gallery in London. The festival (better known as Salaya Doc) begins tomorrow and runs until Mar 28 at the Film Archive in Salaya and the auditorium of Bangkok Art and Culture Centre in Pathumwan (BACC). Admission is free.
That's entertainment!
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/12/2014
» The year in Thai movies, music and theatre