Showing 51 - 60 of 77
And so it continues...
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 30/05/2014
» The Legend Of King Naresuan 5 follows The Legend Of King Naresuan 1, 2, 3 and 4, and comes before The Legend Of King Naresuan 6 (possible). The story is simple. Prince Nares (later King Naresuan) and his Ayutthaya army fight the invading Hongsawadee, or the Burmese.
Brawn, bosom and blood
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/03/2014
» In the absence of Gerard Butler, we thankfully have Eva Green. Hissing rather than acting, uncoiling like a Persian rattlesnake, she is a bitch-babe naval commander lusting for blood and revenge. Her costume is that of a warrior as clothed (or imagined) by John Galliano, a fetishised wardrobe of buxom leather, metal spines and cultish accessories. It’s chic brutality. And with those burning coals in her eyes she stares down the muscled generals on her own side and the topless Greeks, greasy torsos and all, on the other. More than any other character in 300: Rise Of An Empire, her Artemisia knows this film is just one notch above camp and one below a high-budget death metal music video. Green’s vampish theatricality is the best part of this narcissistic, violent almost-cartoon.
Picture predictions
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/02/2014
» The last time the Los Angeles Times checked, the nearly 6,000 Oscar voters were 94% white, 77% male, almost 100% American, with the average age of 62. So much for movies as democracy, so much for art as majoritarianism, because to guess the Oscar winners — the time-honoured and completely useless activity practised around the world — is to guess the taste and preference of these faceless voters.
The horrror
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/08/2013
» Often, movies designed to inspire dread end up worse: dreadful. Fright becomes an urge to flight, and "horror" seeps like poisonous rays from the screen and becomes descriptive not of the genre but of the ongoing experience while remaining seated in that dark coffin of a cinema. Horrible is more like it.
There's no truth, There's only cinema
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/05/2013
» Cambodian director Rithy Panh's new documentary film pays tribute to and questions the power of image. With a tender, evocative and self-reflective tone, the film is about images that can be shown and that cannot, that should be seen and that should not, that are lost and that are found, that are touchable and that are invisible, that are ethically dubious and that are movingly, irredeemably personal.
In her environment
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 29/04/2013
» MR Narisa Chakrabongse, great-granddaughter of King Rama V and daughter of Prince Chula Chakrabongse (whose story is on our front page today), runs one of Thailand's most respected publishing houses. Her River Books has brought out several books on Southeast Asia that have earned admiration for their keen sense of social history, past and present.
Asia's alter ego
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 29/03/2013
» Two upcoming film showcases explore the many faces of Asean and offer a close look at Thailand.
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/03/2013
» Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained is a happy whip, drawing as much blood as laughter. It runs on Road Runner humour, fired by cruel comedy, cartoon revenge, cracking you up and making you wince, and that balancing act has always been one of the secrets of Tarantino's brilliance. Still, this is a serious film about history and how cinema appropriates history. In a year that most Oscar-contending titles lay pompous claims to accurate retelling of the past, from Argo, Zero Dark Thirty and Lincoln, the blissful disregard of "history" somehow makes Django the most truthful film of the lot. Or at least it feels truthful in spirit, leaving the grandstanding of other filmmakers looking spurious, frivolous, or simply wrong.
Nothing succeeds like failure
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/03/2013
» Stoker is a lurid thriller that imagines itself, and struggles laboriously to be, something else. Come on, where's the blood? Where's the viscerality, the Hitchcockian glee, the good-old perversity? That late arrival of gore _ and such aestheticised gore, sprayed like expensive jets of perfume over dainty flowers _ almost seems disingenuous given the pedigree of the genre and the director, Park Chan-wook of Oldboy fame.
Love and other nightmares
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/02/2013
» What's more vicious than a ghost, as we Thais know from folklore and legends, is a female ghost wrecked by motherly love (in the Thai version, she would've been locked up in a clay pot). The gnarly, ferocious banshee in Mama is driven as much by post-humous rage as by fearsome tenderness, and save for some moments of dread up until mid-way, she scored slightly below-average on our fear-hardened scare metre.