Showing 41 - 50 of 69
Our ‘saviours’ say shut up, put up, pay up
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/04/2015
» Death and taxes are the only two sure things in life, so the joke goes. I had a nice time at the tax office last week, three days before the deadline. It wasn’t a “fun time”, which is impossible, but nice enough in my dealings with a courteous tax lady who performed her arithmetic gifts with a pencil and calculator, smiling and helpful in her office full of paper and weary-looking taxpayers — some of them street vendors and odd-jobbers, I gathered. There’s something Kafka-esque about a visit to the Revenue Office: The mild dread (of what?), the anxious wait and, above all, the wild guess about the bureaucratic labyrinth that delivers our payment into the invisible state coffers.
Pit stop for ‘Fast and Furious 7’
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/03/2015
» Local audiences will have to wait to catch Fast and Furious 7 in cinemas as a result of a contract dispute between a Thai movie studio and a Thai star who appears in the Hollywood film.
Sin and the art of redemptive violence
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/01/2015
» Sitting in the courtyard of the Carlton Hotel in Cannes, Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke talks about violence _ the violence in his new movie that is riding a wave of critical favour at the world's biggest film festival, and the real violence back in his home country where the unstoppable motor of progress has brought on many changes, good and otherwise.
Excellent exposure
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/11/2014
» At first, no one could imagine how a town without a cinema would host a film festival. Movies need screens, but where's the screen? And we're not just talking about any town — it's Luang Prabang, the enchanting Unesco World Heritage site by the Mekong, the town known better for its rapt serenity and majestic temples than for its role as a movie junction.
Toons and tunes
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 27/11/2014
» John Lasseter wears a Hawaiian shirt with Big Hero 6 prints. The characters — a Japanese boy and a white, pneumatic robot called Baymax — were fashioned in the style of Japanese anime.
Be afraid, but not very afraid
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 31/10/2014
» Bring me the heads of horror filmmakers, for this Halloween Thai cinemas are auspiciously crawling with ghosts. Two new Thai films — one passably creepy, the other disappointing — are in theatres to supply a spook fix during this demon-infested weekend; there are rotten-faced zombies and posthumous vengeance, and hysterical possession and haunted infrastructure (hospital, house, factory, bathroom, you name it). Lately, Thai horror movies aren't getting high readings on the scare-o-meter, and yet in the land of a million spirit houses, ghosts still reign as a sound business venture and cinematic catalyst. Of the two new films, the more thought-out and carefully-scripted is The Eyes Diary, directed by Chookiat Sakveerakul. By his standard — Chookiat made the grisly 13 Beloved and teen romance The Love Of Siam — the new film is a minor exercise. The Eyes Diary sets out to probe a litany of themes — guilt, love, sacrifice, fatal obsession — but as one of Thailand's most reliable scriptwriters, I only wish Chookiat would've twisted them harder and darker.
Wings of desire
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/07/2014
» Hayao Miyazaki’s swansong animation The Wind Rises is a tale of heartbreak, aircraft and hijacked dreams. It’s a story of a young artist who watches in horror as his art, or what he believes to be nothing else but art, is exploited by a machine of terror that scorches the Earth and terrorises the world.
What you’re watching is not a film
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/05/2014
» The conversion is complete, or at least, virtually complete. When you go to a cinema today, it’s a certainty that what you’re watching on the screen is not “a film”, but a digital projection of bits and bytes stored in a hard disk and transformed into images.
Here's your (wrong) lunchbox
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/04/2014
» Because the way to the heart is often through the stomach, neglected housewife Ila (Nimrat Kaur) decides to consult an auntie who lives above her Mumbai flat for lunch recipes that can satisfy her inattentive husband.
Word-wise web
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/04/2014
» Last week a video clip went viral. It features a mock interview with a Westerner who recounts his first experience of being cursed at by Thai people. Deftly using comical expletives and po-faced humour, the clip clocked up one million hits within 24 hours. At the end of the five-minute video, called BKK 1st Time, the clip reveals itself to be an advertisement for a new book, a lighthearted piece of non-fiction written by a Thai student. The gist of the matter is that this publication, entitled New York 1st Time, is to be launched at the 42nd National Book Fair, the country’s largest annual gathering of booksellers and readers, which is currently under way at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Center.