Showing 1 - 9 of 9
On the edge of sanity
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 17/01/2020
» In Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse, Willem Dafoe is a demented Poseidon, or perhaps a crazed, ocean-battered ex-sailor on the run from a Melville novel. Playing one of the two lighthouse keepers on a wind-whipped rocky islet in the Atlantic, circa 1890s, Dafoe turns up his mad-uncle mode, feral hair, chronic farting and drawling speech, plus a possessive relationship with the lantern -- the source of light atop the lighthouse (he refers to it as a "she").
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.
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.
Last light at Lido
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/05/2018
» The Lido Theatre opened on June 27, 1968, a 1,000-seat movie palace in the fast-modernising neighbourhood of Pathumwan. The first title on the marquee was Guns For San Sebastian, a cowboy film starring Anthony Quinn.
Oscar contenders from around the world
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 10/11/2017
» A record 92 films have been submitted to the Oscar Foreign Language Film category. We take a look at some
Once lost, now found
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/02/2017
» The 69th Cannes Film Festival begins today in southern France with its usual fanfare. Regarded as the world's most prestigious event of cinema professionals, the festival celebrates film as art, commerce, glitz and as cultural treasure. Fittingly, this year Cannes has invited only one Thai film to screen in the Cannes Classics programme -- the recently discovered 1954 Santi-Vina, which was once thought to be lost and has now been restored to its celluloid glory.
Sleep, dreams, splendour
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/01/2016
» In Apichatpong Weerasethakul's new film, the ghosts are awake and the people are asleep. A war is being fought, but that war is invisible. Above the ground, soldiers are sleeping. Underneath, an ancient graveyard hums. At the centre of it all is a middle-aged lady, her leg damaged, her dreams interrupted, her memory luminous. She stares into the past, or maybe the future, and what she glimpses, in that limbo between sleep and life, is a cemetery of splendour.
What you’re watching is not a film
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/05/2014
» The conversion is complete, or at least, virtually complete. When you go to a cinema today, it’s a certainty that what you’re watching on the screen is not “a film”, but a digital projection of bits and bytes stored in a hard disk and transformed into images.
Reaping what they Sow
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/01/2014
» Rice is what has raised Thailand, but our staple crop hasn't raised many smiles in the Land of Smiles lately. When Uruphong Raksasad set out to make Pleng Khong Khao (The Songs Of Rice) two years ago, he didn't imagine that his documentary would acquire a timely resonance now that the epic mess of the government's rice-pledging scheme has become an escalating imbroglio and national embarrassment. Rice, the filmmaker believes, is the soul of the country, but the song it sings has unfortunately turned into a sad one.