Showing 1 - 10 of 44
Woman directors fare strongly at Cannes this year
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/05/2025
» Cannes 2025 features seven films by female directors in the main competition, equalling the record set in 2023.
2024 movie moments
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 17/12/2024
» The past year was surprisingly fantastic for Thai cinema, and a pretty good one for the rest of the world too.
Love, beauty, violence
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/05/2024
» Last year, the world embraced Barbie and Poor Things, two outstanding films that tapped into the state of female consciousness in the 21st century. At the 77th Cannes Film Festival, which ends tomorrow, women-driven stories of all stripes are pushed further up (or down) the emotional spectrum. A noticeable number of titles premiering at the influential festival feature female protagonists in varying states of joy and distress -- and to varying results. Powerful acting by female talent also injects life and spirit into those stories, hailing from all corners of the Earth.
Ripley strikes quite exquisitely, again
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/04/2024
» Just when you thought the original book was bled dry, its last drop of smouldering homoerotic blood squeezed and sucked by multilple movie adaptations, from Rene Clement (French) and Anthony Minghella (American) to Liliana Cavani (Italian), here comes Steven Zaillian's seven-episode Netflix series bluntly titled Ripley. Dusky and exquisitely coldblooded, the latest reworking proves that the Patricia Highsmith's 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley is a living gift that continues giving after 69 years.
The afterlife of Mitr Chaibancha
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/10/2023
» In an abrupt moment of life's brutal script, Mitr Chaibancha fell to his death from a helicopter ladder on Oct 8, 1970. He was filming Insee Thong (Golden Eagle), playing an anti-communist masked hero, when he slipped from the rung and plunged to the ground in Pattaya. That same evening, his body was transported to Wat Kae Nang Loeng. Thousands of people, unable to believe that Thailand's most famous actor was really, tragically dead, amassed impromptu at the temple and demanded that his corpse be raised from the coffin and shown to the public.
Hear her roar
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/05/2023
» The image of a girl taking off her hijab is wrought with cinematic symbolism. Kamila Andini shows it in her Indonesian film Yuni (2021); Hesome Chemamah in his Thai short I'm Not Your F*cking Stereotype (2019); Ana Lily Amirpour in the Iranian vampire film A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014). Subversion? Provocation? Liberation? At this year's Cannes Film Festival, we see that image in Amanda Nell Eu's Tiger Stripes, a work as playful as it is potent in its portrayal of adolescence and what it entails for a young woman's body.
10 films to watch out for
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/05/2023
» A fierce hijab girl, a Vietnamese pilgrimage, a Scorsese-DiCaprio team up and a new Cate Blanchett drama, Cannes Film Festival opens today with an eclectic taste of world cinema.
Harry takes Bangkok in Styles
Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/03/2023
» The accessory du jour was the fluffy pink boa. The color scheme was hot pink - pink pants, pink boots, pink cowboy hats, pink eye-shadow, pink hijabs. Or if not pink, then anything in the tooth-aching shades of the rainbow. It was a lively, joyous sight on Saturday night, a show of hot-colored aesthetics in a defiant contrast to the brutalist concrete skeleton of Rajamangala Stadium. How I wish concrete-mad Bangkok could look like this every day!
The passion of Pasolini
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 10/06/2022
» Pier Paolo Pasolini was born in Bologna on March 5, 1922, and died in a violent, mysterious circumstance on the outskirts of Rome in November 1975. This year marks the centenary of the Italian poet's and filmmaker's birth, and this Sunday at 1pm, the Thai Film Archive will screen Pasolini's first film as director, Accattone, a gloriously austere ode to underclass plight. It will be the first time the 1961 film is screened in Thailand.
The next step in evolution
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 27/05/2022
» The maestro is teasing us, with his favourite instrument: the scalpel. Mechanical, electrified scalpels that split open the flesh -- often, the belly -- like a bulging purse being unzipped. This time, what comes out of the belly is a menagerie of grotesque organs -- organs with neither names nor functions, grown inside the body primed for involuntary evolution.