Showing 111 - 120 of 192
Bolder line-up at Luang Prabang Film Festival
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/10/2015
» Entering its sixth year, the Luang Prabang Film Festival marches on. This year LPFF, the only film event in the historic town on the bank of the Mekong, will take place from Dec 5-9, with around 40 feature films from across Southeast Asia.
Thai history on film
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/10/2015
» Last Sunday, the Thai Film Archive and Ministry of Culture announced 25 films that have been registered as National Heritage, the fifth year that such a list has been compiled in order to enshrine important audio-visual records.
Stranded on Mars
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/10/2015
» The tale of Robinson Crusoe in space seems natural, because nowhere on Earth evokes desolation, hopelessness and maybe hope more than the black unknown of the cosmos. But then, after Sandra Bullock is set adrift alone in the dark orbit of Gravity, after Matthew McConaughey gets his share of metaphysical brooding in space, what's left for Matt Damon and his director Ridley Scott to ponder about?
A poem in motion
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/09/2015
» From the first shot to the last, when the assassin leads a group of peasants into the majestic wilderness of Tang Dynasty China, this is likely to be the most ravishing film you'll see in a long while. The swift tumult of fabric, the heart-bleeding colours, the luxuriant verdant of the forest -- The Assassin, shot on 35mm at a time when almost every film in the world is shot on digital, is also a martial arts drama that compels us to rethink the essence of the genre. Historically regarded as a cheap, sweaty form of entertainment, the wuxia film has reached the pinnacle of high-art in this Taiwanese production -- and some audiences will certainly feel baffled, if not exasperated.
Braving the mainstream
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/09/2015
» What's so romantic about a public hospital examination room? "It's a small, closed space. The two people in there can't escape each other," says filmmaker Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit.
Asean on screen
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/08/2015
» When was the last time you saw a Malaysian film? An Indonesian? A Vietnamese? The odds are even lower for a Myanmar or a Bruneian. As the Asean banner is being splashed across the region, with the emphasis on the economic free-flow, the cultural exchange among Southeast Asians remains a glaring deficit. Cinema, perhaps the most accessible form of cultural expression, is no exception.
The Shrine's history: more than four faces
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/08/2015
» Unperturbed, the four-faced Brahma statue still stares out at the Ratchaprasong intersection, the scene of Bangkok's worst bomb attack in recent memory. One of the most popular tourist spots in the capital has become a site of terror and tragedy and as the dust begins to settle, it's worth taking a look at the long and sometimes tortuous history of the shrine. This history is influenced as much by the city's modernisation and superstition as it is by its politics and moments of insanity.
The 4-billion-mile voyage to open minds
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/07/2015
» We’re not going anywhere near Pluto, not any time soon. Not until we set our educational compass towards the future, towards the outside world and not the navel-gazing self. That’s as unlikely as life on the ice volcanoes at the edge of the solar system.
Dancing to nationalism's outdated tune
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/07/2015
» Why should we let the Uighur migrants stay here and “breed litters of children”? says PM Prayut Chan-o-cha in his customary UNHCR-is-not-my-father tone. “Litters of children” — the unit term usually used to describe dogs and other animals, was employed without a blink here. In the original Thai, the PM used the word krok, a rougher, throatier and much more derogatory term than the English equivalent. Krok gives the image of animal lust. It signifies a large number of puppies crawling from the belly of a bitch. It’s not the term any mother would want to be heard describing their children.
The poetic ramblings of John Torres
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/06/2015
» John Torres, a Filipino filmmaker and punk-rock musician, makes films that look and sound like symbolist poems. Thoughts, images, history, vignettes, fiction, fact, faces in the crowds and disembodied voices floating in and out — they come together, clash and converse, coalescing into a stream as lucid as it is mysterious. In Todo Todo Teros (2006), Torres imagines moviemaking as a form of terrorism, which is perhaps what cinema should be, not only in Manila, where the director lives and works, but everywhere on this typhoon-infested side of the world. In Years When I Was A Child Outside (2008), the haunting secret about the filmmaker's father becomes a dream from which he cannot wake up. In Refrains Happen Like Revolutions In A Song (2010), a girl who's not exactly herself goes around a village as the past and the present become indistinguishable (as in poetry, why should they?).