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  • LIFE

    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).

  • LIFE

    Be my guest

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/12/2019

    » Some arrived by boat, others by air. Some came when the British still ruled their homeland, others were driven by the bloodshed of The Partition. Some came with numerous gods, others with the one and only Allah. Some came from near Bombay, others from in and around Madras. Some came with the intention of returning, others arrived knowing that there was no going back.

  • LIFE

    A hint of political maturation

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/09/2018

    » The Bangkok Art and Culture Centre has been put under bureaucratic pressure, its budget cut and its relations with Bangkok Metropolitan Authority strained. One way to support this hub of contemporary art in downtown Bangkok is simple: visit the place, admire the art and the events, and show that the city needs a modern, open-minded art and culture venue unshackled by the old guard.

  • THAILAND

    All that glitters

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 17/08/2018

    » The director as a priest, the camera a confessional box, and the idols worthy of worship become teary girls choked by emotion.

  • OPINION

    In our Oscar worthy Blah Blah Land

    News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/02/2017

    » The bonbon labelled La La Land is likely to rule the Oscars come Monday morning. While in our Blah Blah Land the drama is bitter, the song muted and the sky inclement.

  • LIFE

    Chinese hegemony

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/01/2016

    » A gloomy assassin prowls the breathtaking fields of the Tang-era kingdom, while China's awkward march to become a 21st century world power stirs the emotional core of its people. The two Chinese-language films — Mountains May Depart from the mainland, The Assassin from Taiwan — let us savour two distinct sensibilities in the main competition as the world's largest movie showcase rounds its last bend. The awards will be announced on Sunday night, and the two films seem to have a decent chance of winning prizes, either big or small, in a year when the majority of the top-tier line-up leaves much to be desired. 

  • LIFE

    Northern lights

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/09/2016

    » With over 400 movies on the slot, the Toronto International Film Festival was a feast and a maze. The latest edition of this North American showcase concluded last Sunday, with Damein Chazelle's La La Land winning the People's Choice Award, a bellwether for the bright Oscar season (Toronto, unlike other major festivals, has no prominent juried competition, instead letting the audiences decide the big winner). The festival is known as a launch pad for Oscar hopefuls as well as independent titles looking for distribution. It also features a strong experimental section that casts its radical net far and wide.

  • LIFE

    Evocative hymn to Thai rice

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/01/2015

    » This is the film you simply have to see this weekend. Uruphong Raksasad's Pleng Khong Kao (The Songs Of Rice) is a lyrical poetry of image and sound, as beautiful as 19th-century pastoral paintings and as evocative as murmured hymns. In a compact 75 minutes, we see muddied beasts stomping the paddies and whirring tractors aglow with nocturnal eyes; we hear the chanting for the Rice Goddess and rhythmic windpipe numbers for the harvest dance. We even marvel, unlikely as it seems, at a zonk-out sci-fi rendition of a northeastern rocket festival, ablaze with fire and sparks and songs and joy.

  • LIFE

    Revisiting Wong's dance of desire

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 30/10/2020

    » Drenched with desire, Wong Kar-wai's In The Mood For Love feels like a plush, vivid dream lodged in the deepest recess of a lover's heart. Now, the heart is beating again and the dream is being projected on the big screen some 20 years after the film first stunned audiences at Cannes and launched a wave of copycats around Asia.

  • LIFE

    Life, love, liberation

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/09/2017

    » In the sole Thai film showing at Toronto International Film Festival this week, a soap opera star stuck in a loveless marriage tangles with an eccentric hitman and a powerful cult. Samui Song is the latest feature film by Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaruang, who's fashioned a crime thriller that also plays as a critique of many things: patriarchal oppression, faux-Buddhism, public healthcare and the act of cinema-making itself.

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