Showing 21 - 30 of 50
Dissecting a nation
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/06/2017
» Pasuk Phongpaichit's and Chris Baker's house is a verdant abode at the end of a maze in an Ekamai sub-soi. The garden at the back has tall trees and a small, tea-coloured pond. The whole area used to be a swamp, said Baker. The couple, both highly respected scholars in Thai studies, have been living there since 1987, or in their lexicon, "just before the boom" -- the high-flying economic expansion whose seismic shifts forever transformed Thailand in the early 1990s. Had they wanted to purchase the plot slightly later than they actually did -- after the boom had set in -- they wouldn't have been able to. "We came just before the high-rises."
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).
In the kinky zone
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/12/2016
» No more debacle: Prabda Yoon's Rong Ram Tang Dao (Motel Mist) is finally in cinemas. Last month, just one day before the original release, the film's investor TrueVisions decided that they didn't like what they saw (despite the film having been finished 10 months earlier) and pulled it off the programme to the shock of many, chiefly the director. Rampant criticism of self-censorship followed. Now the filmmakers have decided to untie themselves from the deal and release the film on their own, so you can catch it now at SF CentralWorld, House RCA and Bangkok Screening Room.
A trip to the other world
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/11/2016
» A quick lowdown on Thai love motels: trashy lighting, soap-smelling beds, bad pillows, cheap porn on the TV and a trove of hush-hush secrets guarded by naked walls. Outside, the thick tarp curtains separate the public from the personal, the exposed from the invisible, the respectable from the randy. Inside, it is another world, a fantasy world, an alien world.
Hanuman help us from a 'happy' ogre
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/09/2016
» The crusader has returned to the gate, ready to crush the infidels. I thought the new buzzword was "Thailand 4.0", whatever that means, and yet this week we're still arguing if a portrayal of a mythical ogre in a music video is blasphemy, a transgression against the high culture of Siam, the culture that stares down from a pedestal, that exists like a taxidermied animal on the altar of an abandoned temple.
Girls just wanna have fun
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/01/2016
» Two transhookers are not looking for love and warmth on Christmas Eve around the crummy blocks of Los Angeles. In Sean Baker's hilarious, rambunctious and surprisingly sweet a-crappy-day-in-the-life-of-African-American-streetwalkers, they are looking for horny customers, and for their slick pimp and his new lover (who's "a fish", derogatory slang for real women). It's also a surprise that Tangerine, a guerilla-style indie film shot entirely on iPhones, has made its way to Thai cinemas (only at SF), and those keen to sample an unusual flavour of high-spirited wacky comedy with its heart in the right place, this is the one to go for this weekend.
Cannes journal: Crazy love
Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/01/2016
» Critics go to Cannes carrying a degree of hallucination: we always expect the next screening to be a knockout – something that will "shut down the festival", like the so-dubbed grasshopper gown worn by Lupita N’yong’o on the red carpet five days ago.
8 of the best
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/01/2016
» The 40th Toronto International Film Festival wrapped last Sunday. Although a non-competitive event -- meaning there were no juries -- the festival did have a People's Choice Award voted for by viewers, which this year went to Lenny Abrahamson's abduction drama Room (last year it was The Imitation Game, which went on to earn several Oscar nominations).
Dead cool
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 27/11/2015
» Javanese vampires, an undead tribe of immortal warlocks, a hard-boiled detective and an assortment of beautiful demons -- all of which stalk the twilight of Jakarta looking for blood, thrills and power in HBO Asia's original series Halfworlds. Premiering on Sunday at 9pm on HBO, the eight-episode show mixes Southeast Asian folklore with anime-cool and noir cinema, and it shows promise of a regional TV production that carries a dose of international appeal.
Wild tales
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/11/2015
» 'Morning now dawned and Shahrazad broke off from what she had allowed to say…" -- so begins the story on each night of Tales Of 1,001 Nights, the fantastic yarns of peasants, kings, slaves, lovers, viziers, angels, sex, human anatomy (Night 449), devils in the bottle (Night 567), glory, injustice, pleasure, and all the mundane and the magical in the world. It is the collection of some of the greatest tales ever told. But then, what, exactly, is Arabian Nights all about?