Showing 1 - 10 of 12
Poor Barbie... Oppenheimer's the bomb
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/03/2024
» The annual guessing game to read the minds of inscrutable Oscars voters is here.
A note on Thailand Biennale
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/01/2019
» One recent morning at Nopphrat Thara beach, the high tide flooded the lower part of a strange, interwoven structure. Rising from the blue water of the bay, it looked like an island, a new, unmapped island of Krabi visible from this popular spot where tourists visit and board tour boats to outlying islands.
House RCA retrospective honours Japanese Palme d'Or winner
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 27/07/2018
» Hirokazu Kore-eda's Shoplifters will open in Thailand on Aug 2, two months after the film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival. Among modern Japanese filmmakers, Kore-eda has amassed the strongest following in Thailand, largely due to the fortunate fact that most of his films -- not all, mind you -- have opened commercially here since 2004. To pave the mood for Shoplifters, a gem of a family drama that finally brought the 56-year-old director one of the highest honours in international cinema, the Thai distribution Mongkol Major brings back seven films by the master in a Kore-eda Retrospective programme at House RCA, starting today.
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.
Singing along in poll wait purgatory
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/01/2017
» Splendid 2017 begins with Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha gifting us the year's first new song. Saphan, "bridge", his sappy ballad is called.
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).
Blind love of nation is the blindest of all
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/11/2015
» Feel the force of Thai jingoism. Feel it online and at the US embassy, as they march forward like sandmen with sticks to battle the evil Darth Vader. How dare the meddling imperialist. How rude, how hypocritical!, shout the vanguards, waving bamboo spears. This is because on Thursday the new US ambassador Glyn T Davies said something that rattled the patriots — something sensible — about how people who peacefully voice their opinion shouldn’t be put in jail, referring to the excessive punishment of the lese majeste law. As expected, just hours later the nationalists banged their kettledrums.
Dogs, ghosts and that crazy walk
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/10/2015
» Three films now showing at cinemas across the city
Families: born into or built
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/08/2015
» Put simply, Hirokazu Kore-eda has made another one of his films: delicate, heart-tugging, sweet but not cloying, a meandering stream of limpid water under which an eddy of emotions, unsettled pasts and unspoken worries swirl. As in most films by the Japanese director, Our Little Sister is about family -- the joy it brings along with the complications too. It's not hard to love this tender drama featuring four attractive women in their nice old house and it's not hard either to feel that Kore-eda (Nobody Knows, Air Doll, I Wish) is so assured in his dramaturgy and use of visual language, so much so that the whole thing comes across a little light and safe.
The silence on Israel is deafening
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/08/2014
» With Gaza blitzed and bombed, with the harrowing death toll despite the 72-hour ceasefire, with the weeping drowned out by the shelling of schools while the children were sleeping — even with the pause in atrocity, who would still believe in the Biblical story of David against Goliath?