Showing 1 - 3 of 3
Sometimes transcendental, always relevant
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/05/2018
» The American films were on short supply this year at Cannes -- which in turn deprived the assembly line of red carpet material -- but nobody seemed to mind that except, well, some American media and fashion bloggers. That superfluous caveat aside, the recently wrapped 71st Cannes Film Festival was nearly unanimously praised as one of the best editions in recent memory, with a string of good, sometimes very good, titles playing night after night -- and even the bad films weren't so offensively bad, as was often the case. In the midst of soul-searching following the question of relevance (the world wants Avengers), the rise of streaming (the world watches films on phones), the decline of arthouse popularity, Cannes insists on the sacredness of cinema, on the future of the art, and this year it paid off solidly.
Judging the judges at Cannes
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/02/2017
» There was a chorus of surprise when the 69th Cannes Film Festival last Sunday awarded its top prize to Ken Loach's welfare drama I, Daniel Blake -- because the film was largely absent from the critical radar during the 12-day festival. A bigger surprise (not to say disappointment) was when the second prize went to Xavier Dolan's melodrama It's Only The End Of The World, because the film was nearly unanimously disliked for its histrionics and theatrical conceits. When the jury, led by Mad Max director George Miller, gave the prize to Dolan's film, a joke sprang up and quickly caught on, inspired by the film's title: yes, for this film to be honoured by Cannes it is the end of the world, or the end of cinema. Apocalypse now!
Proustian questions for our leaders
Oped, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/12/2015
» What is your idea of perfect happiness? When 99.5% of respondents in a government-sponsored poll think that the government is the best thing that ever happened for this country. Or maybe in the all of the universe, because such figures are even higher than God's rating.