Showing 1 - 8 of 8
Lights out at Lido, but can art hub shine?
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/06/2018
» It was a tearful farewell at the Lido Theatre on Thursday night, with a thousand fans congregating to say goodbye to the old-school, unglamorous, 50-year-old cinema in Siam Square. After the last picture show on May 31, all Lido’s staff and managers lined up like a guard of honour to wai and thank the audiences filing out of the rooms, a surprise parting shot that tugged deeply at the heart strings of even the most unsentimental viewers. To paraphrase Chris Hemsworth, aka Thor of Asgard, Lido is not a place but a people. It’s also a memory. That’s why we wept. That’s what we’ll miss Lido for.
Paint it noir
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/04/2018
» Jean-Pierre Melville, the supreme stylist of French film noir, is getting the retrospective he (and his fans) truly deserve. Starting on April 17, the Alliance Francaise Bangkok will screen five Melville films, plus one documentary about the filmmaker and another that makes strong allusion to his style.
Last night at the Scala -- or is it?
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 17/02/2018
» We have the latest update on the Scala Theatre: Its closing date is now set for May 31.
Horror film does double duty as social satire
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/04/2017
» Hot on the trail of the Oscar-winning Moonlight and half-a-century after Katherine Hepburn gasped at her daughter's black fiancée in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, here comes Get Out, a "social thriller" about a black man trapped in a white horror. These weird white folk voted for President Obama -- they keep repeating that to assure themselves and others -- but their exaggerated civility is more creepy and menacing than ever in Trump-ruled America.
At Cannes, humour makes a surprise visit
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/02/2017
» Humour is hardly ever associated with Cannes competition films -- to win the Palme d'Or, for example, it's assumed a film should possess art house gravitas, serious humanity, or weighty, topical, discourse-stimulating subject matter (last year's winner, Dheepan, is about immigrants in Paris, and before that, the three-hour-long Turkish drama Winter Sleep).
Superficiality takes aim at Scala
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/06/2016
» There is a mix of rage, gloom and longing as, once again, the fate of the Scala theatre in Siam Square is questioned. To wreck is easy, to save is hard. The jackhammer screeches louder than nostalgia. Will the Scala, that quaint majesty stuck in a prime retail area, that solemn granddaddy in the flashy, messy, heavily commercialised quarter, be next to fall?
Pit stop for ‘Fast and Furious 7’
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/03/2015
» Local audiences will have to wait to catch Fast and Furious 7 in cinemas as a result of a contract dispute between a Thai movie studio and a Thai star who appears in the Hollywood film.
Curtain draws on cinematic history
Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/01/2014
» In 1905, a Japanese entrepreneur, T Watanabe, set up Siam's first permanent cinema in Bangkok. It was called "Japanese Cinema", and later "Royal Japanese Cinema" after it had been granted royal permission to display the government seal.