Showing 1 - 8 of 8
Macondo encountered
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 31/12/2024
» Ideally, good books should be left alone, even if they sit enshrined in a cobweb after a thousand years of solitude. In the reality of today's content industrial complex, that is unacceptable. Every good book can be and must be adapted. To watch is to live, to binge is to breathe. Literature is not a paradigm of text but fodder for algorithm. So here it is, with an air of inevitability, the much-touted, long-awaited, rigidly respectful and adequately decent Netflix series One Hundred Years Of Solitude -- the first eight parts, with the remaining eight coming next year.
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.
Back to the source
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/07/2020
» Evil is not banal in Ju-on: Origins, a particularly grisly six-part Netflix series. The J-horror wave that broke at the turn of the millennium may no longer be in vogue, but this supposed origin story of the 2001 Ju-On: The Grudge is probably even more extreme in its depiction of ghostly malice and vengeance. It's scarier too -- if you have a stomach for murder, disembowelment, matricide and self-combustibility -- because here the origin of violence is mostly domestic: the violence committed by father against mother, mother against daughter, husband against wife, friend against friend. It's a series (or you could see it as a three-hour film) about monsters that shows us that monstrosity really is born and raised first and foremost by humans.
Psycho-killers, interviewed
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/08/2019
» The series didn't drop with as much ballyhoo as most Netflix new releases; instead it creepy-crawled into the algorithm of fans with chilly stealth last Friday. Mindhunter Season 2, created by Joe Penhall with several episodes directed by David Fincher, is a cerebral remedy to Netflix's glut of story-driven series and formulaic cliffhangers. Mindhunter takes almost a geeky pride in its dialogue-heavy exploration of the most vicious minds in the anthology of American true crime, the procession of ultra-violent serial murderers, pathological rapists and sadistic torturers, and in the way it isn't fixated on solving any particular cases (as is expected from a detective show) but taking time to study the methodological eccentricity of each crime and the increasingly dark obsession of the detectives, sucked ever more inextricably into the transgressive vortex.
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.
A nation of millions can't hold them back
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 29/10/2018
» Rhymes and misdemeanours. Yo, yo. Rappers are threatened to be thrown in a slammer.
Mid-career recognition
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 29/08/2018
» Respect is earned, although in Thailand respect often comes with age. To motivate artists on the rise, the Office of Contemporary Art and Culture, Ministry of Culture, initiated the title Silpathorn Artist in 2003 to honour mid-career artists — those who've contributed to their respective fields for a number of years but still not 'masters'. The Silpathorn Award focuses on contemporary disciplines — fashion, architecture, literature, music, film, performing art and visual art — and recipients, who are between 30 to 50, represent the youthful, progressive energy in the Thai creative scene. An exhibition showing their bodies of work, from design sketches to a film screening, is ongoing at Ratchadamnoen Contemporary Art Center until Sept 9.
Guilt and sin minus the politics
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/04/2018
» The squalor of Manila slums populated by high-school drug runners, then a chaotic precinct ruled by corrupt cops and even more corrupt chiefs -- these are the familiar turfs of Brillante Mendoza, the best-known Filipino filmmaker among international audiences.