Showing 11 - 20 of 26
A surprise behind the door
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/03/2018
» The house sits deep in the woods, near a cemetery staked with tombstones. The family consists of a father, reeling in debt, and his four children, the eldest 22 and the youngest six. The mother is ill, ashen-faced, bedridden, and she'll jingle the brass bell in her hand to summon help. That jingling bell, and the apparition of a woman in a white gown in the mother's gloomy bedroom, will signal the cue of many jump-scares in the tale that unfolds.
Asean stories on the silver screen
Life, Published on 18/08/2017
» The slums of Manila, a factory in Bangkok, the colonial wound of Indonesia: Southeast Asian stories are ready to be told this weekend at Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre's Asean Film Festival, which runs from tomorrow to Aug 23. All screenings are free and after each film there will be a discussion with critics, Asean experts and the cast of the film.
Dissecting a nation
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/06/2017
» Pasuk Phongpaichit's and Chris Baker's house is a verdant abode at the end of a maze in an Ekamai sub-soi. The garden at the back has tall trees and a small, tea-coloured pond. The whole area used to be a swamp, said Baker. The couple, both highly respected scholars in Thai studies, have been living there since 1987, or in their lexicon, "just before the boom" -- the high-flying economic expansion whose seismic shifts forever transformed Thailand in the early 1990s. Had they wanted to purchase the plot slightly later than they actually did -- after the boom had set in -- they wouldn't have been able to. "We came just before the high-rises."
Judging the judges at Cannes
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/02/2017
» There was a chorus of surprise when the 69th Cannes Film Festival last Sunday awarded its top prize to Ken Loach's welfare drama I, Daniel Blake -- because the film was largely absent from the critical radar during the 12-day festival. A bigger surprise (not to say disappointment) was when the second prize went to Xavier Dolan's melodrama It's Only The End Of The World, because the film was nearly unanimously disliked for its histrionics and theatrical conceits. When the jury, led by Mad Max director George Miller, gave the prize to Dolan's film, a joke sprang up and quickly caught on, inspired by the film's title: yes, for this film to be honoured by Cannes it is the end of the world, or the end of cinema. Apocalypse now!
New books worth reading
Life, Anchalee Kongrut, Published on 29/12/2016
» From Dust To Dust: A Journalist's Memoir
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).
The non-Hollywood contenders
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/12/2016
» Thailand has submitted the monk drama Arpatti to compete with 84 other countries in the Oscar race for best foreign-language film. Here we look at some highlights from around the world before the nominations are announced on Jan 24.
A copy of his mind
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/04/2016
» In the Indonesian film A Copy Of My Mind, a pirate DVD seller falls in love with a salon worker. Two working-class lovers struggling in a vast city, their relationship is just as heated as the smoke-choking street of Jakarta, and around them looms the tense shadow of politics as a presidential election nears.
Regional favourites, new and old
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/04/2016
» The 2nd Bangkok Asean Film Festival begins on Thursday at SF World Cinema, and will travel to Khon Kaen, Surat Thani and Chiang Mai later.
More equal than most
Life, Published on 04/01/2016
» Over the past decade of Thailand's political turmoil, the colour-coded camps contesting power have offered starkly different visions of the kind of country they would like Thailand to be. Different perceptions of inequality in Thailand are at the heart of the polarisation.