Showing 61 - 70 of 130
Foreign film contenders
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/12/2015
» Star Wars is colonising your waking life, so let me warp you to the neighbouring galaxy. The Oscar season is brewing, and one of the categories we're always interested in -- at least because it's the only category that is about the world and not just about Hollywood -- is the foreign language film. This year 81 countries submitted their films to the Academy. The long list will be announced in January, and the five finalists later in the month.
Journey of the guitar king
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/12/2015
» A small documentary film opens in limited cinemas this week. Revisiting a chapter in the Thai music history that many people may have forgotten, The Guitar King tells the story of Lam Morrison, a Thai rock musician and the country's first guitar star in the late 1960s. A long-haired man in his 70s now, Lam honed his guitar skills playing in GI camps in Udon Thani during the Vietnam War, before playing at bars in Bangkok and even toured Germany and Norway.
Thai history on film
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/10/2015
» Last Sunday, the Thai Film Archive and Ministry of Culture announced 25 films that have been registered as National Heritage, the fifth year that such a list has been compiled in order to enshrine important audio-visual records.
The Shrine's history: more than four faces
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/08/2015
» Unperturbed, the four-faced Brahma statue still stares out at the Ratchaprasong intersection, the scene of Bangkok's worst bomb attack in recent memory. One of the most popular tourist spots in the capital has become a site of terror and tragedy and as the dust begins to settle, it's worth taking a look at the long and sometimes tortuous history of the shrine. This history is influenced as much by the city's modernisation and superstition as it is by its politics and moments of insanity.
Kaleidoscopic whirlpool of colour
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 05/08/2015
» You can easily miss the turn into H Gallery Chiang Mai. A small road forks off the highway at Mae Rim, skirting along an irrigation canal, and a patchwork of verdant paddies, glistening in the July drizzle, opens up like a vision. At a curve as the road takes a slight dip downhill, there is a building covered with hanging vines and bursting flowers. A gallery snuck away in the middle of northern rice fields is not an anomaly but a continuation of Chiang Mai's vast possibility. There you go, a trip to the venue is already an attraction in itself.
In search of the next hit
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/06/2015
» A string of box-office failures, an absence of hits, an onslaught of Hollywood blockbusters, an economic slump, the vacillating, unpredictable taste of audiences — all of this has plunged the Thai film industry into a gloom in the first half of 2015. Home-grown cinema can barely compete with the American juggernauts, but the past six months have been particularly wounding. Usually, Thai films take around 25% of the ticket sales, with Hollywood gobbling up the rest (the total box office value was around 4.5 billion in last year). This year, so far, local movies took a paltry 10%, according to industry analysts.
The flamboyant Yonfan
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 05/05/2015
» Yonfan giggles and chirps as he remembers his first encounter with Thai cinema.
Bocelli delivers
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/04/2015
» Andrea Bocelli, the blind Italian tenor who always hits the top notes with effortless grace, put a spell on a glamorous Bangkok crowd in a concert at Paragon Hall on Sunday night.
The end is now
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 10/04/2015
» The final instalment of The Legend Of King Naresuan franchise is a surprisingly lean 100-minute tribute to the ancient king. It feels less overblown than the previous three parts (which each ran over two hours), with more compact storytelling and an unexpected sense of mournful panegyric. After eight years, countless delays, hiccups and political undercurrents, and a combined 800-million-baht receipt, the country's longest-running film project — a clumsy shot at militaristic patriotism that began four months after the 2006 coup d'etat and ends this month, in another post-coup period — is now over. But at least this epilogue finishes with a faint glimmer of grace that has been largely missing over the years.
Mongkut, reinterpreted
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/03/2015
» When Arin Rungjang learned of the art heist near Paris earlier this month, the Thai artist had good reason to feel concerned. At dawn on March 1, thieves broke into a high-security wing of the Chateau de Fontainebleau and made off with 15 priceless works of Asian art, including Phra Maha Mongkut Longya, a replica of a royal crown studded with rubies, pearls, emerald and diamonds. It was one of several royal tributes presented to Emperor Napoleon III by King Rama IV in 1861.