Showing 11 - 20 of 69
Last light at Lido
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/05/2018
» The Lido Theatre opened on June 27, 1968, a 1,000-seat movie palace in the fast-modernising neighbourhood of Pathumwan. The first title on the marquee was Guns For San Sebastian, a cowboy film starring Anthony Quinn.
Young at heart
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/04/2018
» On some afternoons, Thep Kengvinit would walk to Central Pinklao, sit down at an electric piano in an electronics store, and play random songs from the 1960s. "I walk because it helps loosen my joints," said the 74-year-old grandfather, "and I play because it's relaxing".
Religious fervour serves no god well
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/04/2018
» Aformer rock musician has embraced the role of online preacher and denounced, above other things, rock music. In fact, he objects to most kinds of music, deeming it against Islam. Weerachon "Toh" Sattaying, once the high-pitched frontman of the band Silly Fools (love the name), has over the past six years quit his former lifestyle and became a born-again Muslim. Bearded, skull-capped, fiery-eyed and charismatic, Weerachon runs a dry-aged beef business and hosts an online religious programme that has cultivated quite a following.
A shared history
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/07/2017
» At a military airport in Dijon earlier this month, the sky was bright blue, streaked with thin patches of clouds above the picturesque French countryside. Zooming ahead was a squadron of seven L-39C Albatross aircraft, slim and daredevil. The jets spewed trails of smoke as they flipped and flopped in acrobatic manoeuvres in ever-shifting formations, the sonic echoes shaking the ground as their trajectories inspired awe. Precise, exhilarating, powerful.
Dissecting a nation
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/06/2017
» Pasuk Phongpaichit's and Chris Baker's house is a verdant abode at the end of a maze in an Ekamai sub-soi. The garden at the back has tall trees and a small, tea-coloured pond. The whole area used to be a swamp, said Baker. The couple, both highly respected scholars in Thai studies, have been living there since 1987, or in their lexicon, "just before the boom" -- the high-flying economic expansion whose seismic shifts forever transformed Thailand in the early 1990s. Had they wanted to purchase the plot slightly later than they actually did -- after the boom had set in -- they wouldn't have been able to. "We came just before the high-rises."
A design for life
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 10/03/2017
» At the International Furniture Fair Singapore taking place now until Sunday, a Thai designer is one of the 10 international talents featured under the Design Stars Showcase. Sarngsan Na Soontorn graduated from Chiang Mai University in 2003, went to École Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle in Paris, and has since spent his career in Paris and Chiang Mai, working in several designers' studios where he combines the influences of both worlds into products.
At Cannes, humour makes a surprise visit
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/02/2017
» Humour is hardly ever associated with Cannes competition films -- to win the Palme d'Or, for example, it's assumed a film should possess art house gravitas, serious humanity, or weighty, topical, discourse-stimulating subject matter (last year's winner, Dheepan, is about immigrants in Paris, and before that, the three-hour-long Turkish drama Winter Sleep).
Relive cinema history at Maya City
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/12/2016
» Dec 28 is the day cinema was born. On this day in 1895, the Lumiere Brothers for the first time showed their invention, the cinematograph, for paying customers at Salon Indien du Grand Cafe in Paris. The programme consisted of 10 short films; the first being Workers Leaving The Lumiere Factory, a short clip showing female workers filing out of a building in Lyon.
Our best films of the year
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/12/2016
» As usual we have two lists, for titles released in local cinemas and the wider universe of world films shown elsewhere (and hopefully coming to our screens soon).
The non-Hollywood contenders
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/12/2016
» Thailand has submitted the monk drama Arpatti to compete with 84 other countries in the Oscar race for best foreign-language film. Here we look at some highlights from around the world before the nominations are announced on Jan 24.