Showing 1 - 10 of 74
Parallel ambitions
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/01/2012
» We wish them the best of luck, and we pray Hua Hin International Film Festival won't turn out to be a lemon. A month ago hardly anybody had heard about this brand-new event, and now those who've heard about it are wondering if they'll take the trouble of making a trip down to the seaside town to watch the films. Our advise is, if the sky is blue and you have nothing else to do (and if you want to forsake the Bangkok Experimental Film Festival that will also happen this weekend) just go for the fun of it. Worst case, you can always decamp to the beach, or one of the seafood joints in Khao Takieb.
Film festival needs direction
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/02/2012
» If the Red Carpet works, the film festival works. That seems to be the motto of the hype machine behind last weekend's Hua Hin International Film Festival, which proudly paraded stars down the sandy, horse-free beach of the InterContinental while the cinemas were haunted by ghosts. Nothing's wrong with using a movie festival to support tourism, as long as some attention is paid to what it's all about: film, and the film-going experience.
Film fest on Idyllic island
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/03/2012
» A unique film event will take place in a most spectacular location from March 9 to 13. "Film on the Rocks Yao Noi" is an inaugural gathering of art and film people at Six Senses, a luxurious resort on Yao Noi Island in Phangnga Bay.
Big snake and a cabin possessed
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 27/04/2012
» The name that looms larger than anybody else's here is Dan-aran Saengthong. Asorapit, or Venom, has been filmed _ and augmented, to a wonky outcome _ from the writer's 47-page novella, a black satire on faith and superstition that bears down on readers with the banner of magic realism. Dan-aran is Thailand's modernist master, inspired as much by Joyce and Marquez as by old Thai scribes, and his international reputation is solid; his most famous book, White Shadow, was translated into all major European languages. Venom first appeared in the English version serialised in the Bangkok Post (translated by Marcel Barang), and later in Thai, in which readers are seduced and terrified by the story of a boy and a vicious cobra set in a village where a shaman reigns like a godhead.
Mean streets
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/06/2012
» Director Kongkiat Khomsiri's professed love for Martin Scorsese's mean-street movies is evident, beyond all doubts, in his new film Anthapan (The Hooligan). Think Goodfellas, with the 1950s Bangkok substituting New York's Little Italy, and an ingenuous Thai rookie replacing Ray Liotta. But then, we also see Chinese triads, brutal knife fights, Western-style shootout, the reference to Field Marshall Sarit's coup d'etat and the rise of the police as the force more wicked than the mafia _ and Kongkiat's film is a melange of influence, style, and politics.
Gabo revisited
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/07/2012
» On the last page of Gerald Martin's excellent biography of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the biographer recounts a conversation he had with his subject after a function in the Columbian city of Cartagena in 2007. Marquez, or Gabo to his friends, had given a speech to the guests that also included Carlos Fuentes and Bill Clinton. Gabo, then 80, already old and weak, talked about his years of living in poverty with his wife and how _ because he hardly had any money _ he could mail only half the manuscript of One Hundred Years Of Solitude to the publisher when he completed it.
Ramadan in the city
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/08/2012
» In his car he arrives just when the light turns serene orange. Thanarat Wacharapisut is in white shirt and brown slacks.
Storming oscar's language barrier
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/09/2012
» The end of September is when countries submit their representatives for the Oscar's Best Foreign Language Film, the only category the rest of the world can take part in for Hollywood's mostly self-celebratory awards show.
Director manages The Impossible
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/10/2012
» On screen, the monstrous waves roar and strike like liquid thunder. Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts, playing a couple with three young sons vacationing in southern Thailand in 2004, watch in horror as the tsunami slams on shore like a titanic fist and sweeps them away in torrential whirlpools, shattering their peace and threatening to change their lives forever.
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.