Showing 1 - 3 of 3
Agents of change
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/05/2025
» Awash with saturated colour and steeped in Brazil's history of authoritarianism, Kleber Mendoça Filho's The Secret Agent has emerged as a serious contender for the Palme d'Or. A former film critic, programmer and now a leading voice in Brazilian cinema, Mendoça Filho's fourth feature -- and his third in Cannes Competition -- is a political thriller, a tribute to disappeared dissidents, and a deft ode to the way memory is passed through time and technology.
Deep trouble
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/06/2018
» He got up close with a 13m whale shark near the Galapagos and swam with a curious hunchback whale in Tonga. "She was larger than a bus," he said, "the largest animal I've ever seen." At Burma Banks in the Indian Ocean, he drifted with sharks and at Similan Islands he realised that the coral reefs in the Thai seas were among the most beautiful in the world.
Hear her roar!
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/04/2018
» Katy Perry, pixie-haired and ever ebullient, roared through her second appearance in Bangkok on Tuesday night with professionalism, humour and ease. This pop-spectacle is as much a visual experience as it is an aural one -- in fact, the visual overwhelmed our attention for the most parts of the 120-minute gig. The stage -- and wardrobe -- dripped with red at one point, shimmered with silver at another, and Perry's team deployed a full arsenal of wacky props, girlish delight and zany sight gags. We even had a fart joke at one point, perhaps the first I ever heard live on the stage from Impact Arena. Perry's appeal cuts a broad swathe across the demographic, and we had a rainbow of humanity thronging the hall: office types, teenagers, party animals, hipsters, Cosplay queens, the LGBT camp, celebrities, people who think they're celebrities, girls in candy-coloured wigs, parents and children -- I mean, first-graders and stuff, lots of them in fact, arriving in cheerful anticipation and looking tired when the proceedings advanced past 11pm. In all, it looked like a cross section between the crowd at a Madonna gig and Disney On Ice. Such is the strange pull of Perry.