Showing 61 - 70 of 98
Braving the mainstream
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/09/2015
» What's so romantic about a public hospital examination room? "It's a small, closed space. The two people in there can't escape each other," says filmmaker Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit.
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.
The purveyors of Islam
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 30/06/2015
» At the age of 12, after finishing Prathom 6, Shakireen Malilee left normal education to study to become a hafiz. Originally from Prachuap Khiri Khan, he moved to an Islamic boarding school in Min Buri, a Bangkok suburb, and devoted himself to the ancient art of memorising the Koran. Every day for eight hours, Shakireen recited from Islamic holy scripture and committed each word, each verse, each page, each chapter into his young brain. After four years, he had memorises the entire book, roughly equivalent of memorising every single word of a 500-page tome. At 16, he achieved the rare honour of being called a hafiz.
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 great Lee Kuan Yew we never knew
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/03/2015
» The page has turned, and everyone wishes to read about Lee Kuan Yew. But the great mind isn’t that easy to decipher, so we pick and choose and believe that we know the recipe for success that the late Singaporean ruler — brilliant, dogged, direct, merciless — practised in his nation-building cauldron to such a spectacular outcome.
The (sur)real world
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/03/2015
» Chulayarnnon Siriphol can't keep his jokes to himself. He has the boyish — some might say nerdy — looks of a milk-fed goody two-shoes mama's boy, but in his films, the 29-year-old often thrives on pranks, satire, mischief and a brand of droll, childlike humour that cuts through the slough of hypocrisy.
Winter Sleep, Saint Laurent
Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/01/2015
» A tortured soul who cuts exquisite clothes hits the main Cannes screen, to our supreme delight. "<i>Saint Laurent</i>", a biopic of the French couturier that was premiered here Saturday, floats into the festival with intelligence and sensual poise. It's remarkable that the director, Bertrand Bonello, manages to avoid most of the cliches about a depressed genius despite the familiar arc of the story, meanwhile Gaspard Ulliel, playing the title role, makes Yves a champagne flute that's as fragile as it is unbreakable. The good news is that the film already has a Thai distribution; so just wait for the release date, hopefully soon.
Missing Picture, Berkeley premiere at Salaya Doc
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/01/2015
» It’s funny and sad that some Thai academics are still embroiled in a debate about whether documentary film is film. Funny, because it is. Sad, because Cambodia, whose film industry and film schools are struggling hard to regain their cultural significance, has a documentary film that won a prize in Cannes and was nominated for the latest Oscars — in the foreign language category where it competed with four other fiction films. That film, The Missing Picture, will finally have a Thailand premier at the “4th Salaya International Documentary Film Festival”, a cine-event that has consistently gained ground and reinforced the importance of documentary filmmaking as art and as a social statement.
With Grace, Cannes Film Festival opens tonight
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/01/2015
» From the woes of Princess Grace to weird limo sex, from a Saint Laurent biopic to a 3D envelope-pusher, the 67th Cannes Film Festival rolls out its enviably red carpet tonight in an annual cinema bash that sees the world’s brand-name directors unveiling their latest offerings. The Nicole Kidman-starring Grace Of Monaco, by director Olivier Dahan (La Vie En Rose), will open the 10-day festival to the usual surfeit of glitz, before the gladiatorial ring of European-heavy filmmakers take turns to gauge the pulse of cinema art through their fine (and not so fine) movies.