Showing 1 - 10 of 11
Court cites national security to extend 'Shakespeare' ban
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/08/2017
» The Administrative Court yesterday rejected the complaint filed by the filmmakers of Shakespeare Must Die in which they asked for the ban on the film to be lifted, thereby extending a ban that has already lasted five years.
Corona and the death of cinema (again)
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 30/03/2020
» "Cinema is an invention without a future," said Louis Lumiere who, along with his brother Auguste, invented the Cinematographe in 1895. From its birth, cinema was convinced of its own death. From the very beginning, cinema predicted its own eventual demise. And that was before the two world wars, the advent of home video, laser disc, DVDs, Blu-rays, terrorism, mass shootings, Netflix, and now the coronavirus, the latest scourge that has sealed shut cinema houses around the world.
Cinema paradiso no more
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/08/2017
» Everything changes. It changes in its own time.Cells die. Cells grow. Death and birth happen all the time.Like the mind, it's gone before you even know. Like when I project a movie, a reel of film rotating at high speed looks like a still image.
Vivid homage to a bygone celluloid era
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 27/10/2014
» Once upon a time, before hard drives, film was film — meaning 35mm celluloid strips that stored atomised images transformed into moving pictures by light. The picture houses that showed film, too, were once stand-alone palaces of dreams populated by dreamers who fed on the riches of shadows, and staffed by projectionists with their whirring, beastly machines.
Piyabutr plays House role by the book
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/09/2019
» How thick does a book need to be to stop a bullet? Perhaps, I imagine, Piyabutr Saengkanokkul is asking himself that same question.
A view from the gas chamber
Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/01/2016
» A Holocaust movie surprisingly becomes a topical subject in Thailand, after the highly publicised, highly embarrassing incident of a Thai aristocrat's grand denial of that historical tragedy (and a subsequent rebuttal by an Israeli ambassador).
Superheroes of doctored democracy
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/04/2015
» This is the week when the draft constitution is being debated and the “citizen-centric” charter proposed by legal superheroes — Iron Menace, Thor-toise, Captain anti-America, etc — are scrutinised. The people will be at the centre of the new era, so they promise. The citizens, or at least “good citizens”, will be empowered to stand up against suit-and-tie crooks while judicial rat poison and ethical vanguards will ensure that Thais are cleansed of evil politics.
East versus West
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/10/2013
» The first shot in Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity lasts almost 10 minutes, a long, unbroken take of Sandra Bullock and George Clooney in a gravity-less float, a mix of cosmic tumble and lyrical spacewalk backdropped by the breathtaking, panoramic orb that is Earth and specks of nameless stars. I watched the film on Imax 3D, and the enormous screen enhances so spectacularly the film's visual choreography, especially the depth: space seemed to extend beyond the edge of the screen and the infinite black swathe around Bullock and Clooney reaches further and further back. The 3D trickery has been much heralded, but here's a rare film where the technology is integral to the emotional register of the story.
More blood, Bella, more blood!
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/11/2012
» The vegan vampire Edward, pale as Pluto, lets his hand creep up the blouse buttons of his bride, Bella, recently converted by love from human to immortal blood-sucker. But lust still courses through their cold-blooded bodies, or so we mortals can only presume.
Remembering the Manifesto
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/05/2012
» 'The old film is dead. We believe in the new one."