Showing 1 - 10 of 14
The world is on fire, but we still have the Oscars
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/03/2026
» Tight races in several categories as two outstanding American films, Sinners and One Battle After Another, vie for glory with other international titles.
And the winner is...
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/02/2025
» The words and the verdicts on Oscars 2025.
Deep in the paradox
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/05/2022
» In Cairo, a religious student at the prestigious Al-Azhar Islamic University is recruited by secret police to infiltrate a Muslim Brotherhood cell. In Mashad, a holy city in Iran, a serial killer prowls a seedy suburb and strangles head-scarfed prostitutes. In the first film, bloodlust officials torture dissidents with abandon. In the second film, religion is evoked and the name of God is cited as a justification for murder. This begs the obvious question: Will Boy From Heaven be banned in Egypt, and Holy Spider Iran?
BIFF unveils rich line-up
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/09/2021
» The Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) has unveiled the line-up for its 26th edition to take place on-site from Oct 6-15. Asia's premier gathering of film professionals aims to shake off pandemic-related uncertainties with a slate of over 190 titles, with the focus on Asian cinema as usual. Busan is also pushing for a wider definition of "film festival" by including, for the first time, television series as part of its official programme.
The Year of Great Reckoning
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/12/2020
» For filmgoers, it was a year of mortal dread. The screen went dark, like a coffin nailed shut, and is still like that in many places. Faith in cinema as we've known it was rattled, challenged, and endangered with a Biblical overtone; it's a plague we're dealing with, after all. It was a year unlike any other we had seen before in the 125 years since cinema was invented. And while that sounds dispiriting, 2020 has also been a "Year of Great Reckoning" during which the equilibrium was recalibrated and the idea of moving images continues, as it should, to evolve.
Imagining Krabi
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/03/2020
» There's an archaeology of narrative in Krabi, 2562, a film by Anocha Suwichakornpong and Ben Rivers currently showing in select Bangkok cinemas. Layer upon layer, stratum upon stratum, dust on dust, it gives us a glimpse of how history, legend and biography is constructed. Like playful excavators, the two filmmakers peel off the palimpsest of a place and its people, real and imagined.
A baroque nightmare, upgraded
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/11/2018
» The original 1977 Suspiria was a trashy bloodbath, an Italian giallo at its most lurid and disturbing -- a lair of maggots, murderers and witches. The remake, in cinemas this week, is high-trash Euro art house, more bourgeois and hipsterish -- a baroque nightmare whose danse macabre has been upgraded to fit the faces and forms of Dakota Johnson and Tilda Swinton. The new film has been directed by Italian Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, A Bigger Splash, I Am Love) and shot by Thai cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, whose 35mm work here is one of the film's high points.
Ghosts of various stripes
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/09/2018
» Refugees, human-trafficking and a ravenous ghoul show the real and fantastical facets of Thailand in the movies showing this week at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Knives are out in death penalty row
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/06/2018
» To execute or not to execute, the question weighed on Thai society in the past week with the force of righteous anger. It is a tough question, one that lays bare the complex intersection of morality, law, religion, belief, value, and even the position of the country on the spectrum along which the international norm is moving.
Cinema lies, football doesn't
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/06/2018
» 'Cinema lies, sport doesn't."