Showing 1-10 of 15 results
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10 films to watch out for
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/05/2023
» A fierce hijab girl, a Vietnamese pilgrimage, a Scorsese-DiCaprio team up and a new Cate Blanchett drama, Cannes Film Festival opens today with an eclectic taste of world cinema.
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Into the devil's lair
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 05/11/2021
» Like a session of cinematic séance, Rang Zong (The Medium) channels a cemetery-sized roll call of classic horror elements. The film, recently picked as Thailand's representative for the Oscar's International Feature, is proudly possessed by the ghosts of The Exorcist, The Blair Witch Project, the Paranormal Activity franchise, and Ari Aster's Midsommar, but with Southeast Asia's earthy voodooism, plus a serving of Korean-style blood-and-viscera gore as well as an icing of zombie scare-aesthetics. It's a full-course buffet of fright tricks, complete with an apocalyptic, 30-minute-long exorcism orgy that leaves no spell unuttered and no human unpossessed. All of this is couched in a faux-documentary setup, with handheld shots, grainy CCTV footage and characters speaking directly to the camera.
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Who is our Oscars Favourite?
B Magazine, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/02/2019
» The most important of all unimportant things, the Oscars arrive on Monday morning, Thailand time. In a year that seems more muted than usual, Hollywood's biggest jamboree has striven to stay relevant with the inclusion of blockbuster titles such as Black Panther and Bohemian Rhapsody, besides the more edgy and less popular films that have claimed much of the headlines, such as Roma and Green Book. While there are many cinematic awards around the world, the Oscars still seem to matter the most, and the ritual of predicting the winners is at once a frivolous parlour game and an annual survey of the vital signs of mainstream cinema. Don't bet on it, but we offer our takes here.
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Religious fervour serves no god well
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/04/2018
» Aformer rock musician has embraced the role of online preacher and denounced, above other things, rock music. In fact, he objects to most kinds of music, deeming it against Islam. Weerachon "Toh" Sattaying, once the high-pitched frontman of the band Silly Fools (love the name), has over the past six years quit his former lifestyle and became a born-again Muslim. Bearded, skull-capped, fiery-eyed and charismatic, Weerachon runs a dry-aged beef business and hosts an online religious programme that has cultivated quite a following.
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Starting with the script
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 29/06/2017
» Script development is key to successful movies, and good scripts are what filmmakers in Southeast Asia need. The first Southeast Asia Fiction Film Lab (or Seafic) has been conceived for the purpose of strengthening the quality of feature-length fiction films from the region, and after eight months, the programme is reaching its climax this weekend in Bangkok.
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Squaring off at Cannes
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/06/2017
» It was "a bad year", "a disappointing year", "a weak year", and so on. Curmudgeonly, typically, sometime jeeringly -- I count myself in the pack -- the critics bemoaned Cannes' official selection in the year it was supposed to be all glory and fireworks as the world's most important film festival blew its 70th candle. To the press corps present, the consensus (or something close) was that the "elite" competition titles were a catalogue of predictable provocations and unrealised ambitions, on top of the more-of-the-same arthouse fare from directors who attract attention by their names rather than by their latest works. It's true. But as always with Cannes, the expectation is too high, the collective hallucination too overpowering, and the four-to-five-films-a-day ordeal took a toll on enthusiasm even to the most passionate out there.
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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!
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An enigmatic, carnal pilgrimage
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/04/2016
» Terrence Malick's Knight Of Cups opens with a solemn passage from the 17th century text The Pilgrim's Progress, and right from the start this enigmatic film lays its cards on the table and yet withholds what they really mean. The pilgrim's progress was "delivered under the similitude of a dream". He set out on "a dangerous journey" before "a safe arrival at a desired country".
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Bowie, in film
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/01/2016
» A shape-shifter on stage, David Bowie naturally found a new home in acting. Over the past 40 years, the late performer starred in many films -- though acting seemed more like another one of his experimental projects -- working with top directors such as Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan and the late Tony Scott, and playing roles from vampire and wizard, to alien and Andy Warhol (in Basquiat, a biopic of the artist by Julian Schnabel). It would be impossible to list them all, so here are my five picks on Bowie's screen performances.
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Sex, lies and videotape
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/09/2015
» The title is appropriately provoking. The Elle Men Film Festival 18-Plus, which begins on Sept 25, has prompted cinemagoers to imagine a feast of mild pornography served up on the big screen uncut. Don't get overexcited, anyway. While three of the six films in this mini showcase indeed feature sexual content deserving the R-rating, the interpretation of the "18-plus" here can be less libidinous than that. In fact, the other half of the films shown are almost family-friendly, and that 18-year-old milestone should designate the intellectual ability to grasp a world whose complexity can only stir feelings in adults.
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