Showing 1 - 9 of 9
Asean films receive special showcase
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/07/2018
» The riches of Southeast Asian stories and images are celebrated at the 4th Bangkok Asean Film Festival, which opens tonight at SF CentralWorld and runs until Sunday. Hosted by the Thai Ministry of Culture, this year's edition marks the 51st anniversary of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the regional body whose primary mission is economics and which increasingly pays more heed to cultural promotion.
A new vision on Siam's enduring symbol
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/04/2017
» The elephant and the man, walking down the road to redemption and encountering the wounded and the marginalised, the madmen and the prostitutes. In the film Pop Aye, which will kick off Bangkok Asean Film Festival 2017 this evening (see sidebar), the fine-tusked beast accompanies the lost soul as the duo find their way home from Bangkok to the Northeast.
Giving women a voice
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 03/03/2017
» A robust line-up of films is coming to us in HeForShe Arts Week Bangkok Film Festival. Organised by UN Women, next week's festival has selected films with messages on gender equality -- or inequality -- and unfair treatment of women in different cultures (not just in the "Third World" countries, to be sure). It sounds heavy, but the good thing is that the titles picked for the event this year are entertaining and heartfelt on top of being socially relevant.
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
Colourful journey into Thailand's soul
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/01/2017
» The train clangs ahead, moving people and dreams, as it has done since 1893. In Railway Sleepers, a minutely observed film shot entirely on-board a Thai train, we see kids on school trips, young men travelling north and south, hawkers selling food and horoscope books, families and lovers, vacationers who turn the sleeping car into a party venue. They're passengers, and they're also humans. They are, as director Sompot Chidgasornpongse says, a collection of faces that make up a portrait of Thailand.
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.
Will the best films win the Oscars?
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/02/2016
» The Oscar night is also the Oscar-bashing night. It was always the night (or morning, in our time zone) of constant bemoaning and condescension, because the Academy voters, like most voters, always get it wrong, at least to million others around the world who believe, in our collective delirium, that we have a stake in this pageant taking place somewhere in Los Angeles. Things have taken a turn for the worse with the snap judgement made possible by social media; now the outrage and disbelief are so raw since they're aired in real time, on Facebook and Twitter, like I did last year when I was convinced that it was against every law of nature that Birdman, a well-crafted display of pretension and self-obsession, won over the more delicate Boyhood.
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?
In search of the next hit
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/06/2015
» A string of box-office failures, an absence of hits, an onslaught of Hollywood blockbusters, an economic slump, the vacillating, unpredictable taste of audiences — all of this has plunged the Thai film industry into a gloom in the first half of 2015. Home-grown cinema can barely compete with the American juggernauts, but the past six months have been particularly wounding. Usually, Thai films take around 25% of the ticket sales, with Hollywood gobbling up the rest (the total box office value was around 4.5 billion in last year). This year, so far, local movies took a paltry 10%, according to industry analysts.