Showing 101 - 110 of 130
Ban on film 'Boundary' lifted
Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/04/2013
» The government censorship board on Thursday lifted its ban on a documentary film on Thai-Cambodia border conflicts, citing a "technical mistake" on its part.
Ban on film 'Boundary' to be lifted
Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/04/2013
» The government censorship board will lift its ban on the documentary on Thai-Cambodia border conflicts if the dialogue in some scenes is muted, the film director said on Thursday.
Remembering Roger Ebert
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/04/2013
» Last Wednesday Roger Ebert announced on his blog that he'd take a "leave of presence", meaning generally that he'd be writing less, due to the reappearance of cancer in his body. On Thursday, I saw a wire service report about that and put it in this section for the Friday paper. Little did I know. Little did we all know.
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.
Being Brody
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/01/2013
» On Christmas Day last year, Adrien Brody was in Angkor Wat _ on his own. "I had a backpack on, a hat, a beard, I don't walk with the security detail," he gestures at the staff looming near where we're talking.
See no evil
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/01/2013
» We're dying to know what's there beyond the cloud, but the proverbial silver lining, if there ever was going to be one, was obscured from our airwaves.
Book sex row goes wacky
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/12/2012
» A narrow escape or just stupid miscommunication? For now let's hope we don't welcome plaudits of Bangkok World Book Capital 2013 with the banning of books.