Showing 1-10 of 56 results
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The afterlife of Mitr Chaibancha
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/10/2023
» In an abrupt moment of life's brutal script, Mitr Chaibancha fell to his death from a helicopter ladder on Oct 8, 1970. He was filming Insee Thong (Golden Eagle), playing an anti-communist masked hero, when he slipped from the rung and plunged to the ground in Pattaya. That same evening, his body was transported to Wat Kae Nang Loeng. Thousands of people, unable to believe that Thailand's most famous actor was really, tragically dead, amassed impromptu at the temple and demanded that his corpse be raised from the coffin and shown to the public.
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Close your eyes
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/09/2017
» In June 13, 1981, Issei Sagawa, 32, was arrested after he was seen dumping two suspicious suitcases in the Seine. A student of comparative literature at Sorbonne, the Japanese man two days earlier had killed his Dutch classmate, raped her corpse, stored her body in his fridge and ate morsels after morsels of her flesh to stimulate his sexual desire. Only when the smell became unbearable did he pack what remained in the suitcases and threw them into the river. The French court declared Sagawa legally insane and released him. He returned to Japan, wrote a comic book about his world-famous case, became a food critic (no kidding), and starred in pornographic films. Today Sagawa, old and paralytic, still lives in a suburb of Tokyo.
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Colourful journey into Thailand's soul
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/01/2017
» The train clangs ahead, moving people and dreams, as it has done since 1893. In Railway Sleepers, a minutely observed film shot entirely on-board a Thai train, we see kids on school trips, young men travelling north and south, hawkers selling food and horoscope books, families and lovers, vacationers who turn the sleeping car into a party venue. They're passengers, and they're also humans. They are, as director Sompot Chidgasornpongse says, a collection of faces that make up a portrait of Thailand.
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Tears of the common people
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/09/2016
» At 227 minutes -- less than four hours -- Ang Babaeng Humayo (The Woman Who Left) is rather short by Lav Diaz's standard. His previous film, Hele Sa Hiwagang Hapis (A Lullaby To The Sorrowful Mystery), runs at seven hours. And throughout the late 1990s and 2000s, the Filipino master made films ranging in length from nine to 13 hours, something unorthodox, anomalous, even transgressive in the fast-food mentality of the modern multiplex. A four-hour film, any distributor would tell you, will scare people off. There's no room for patience and meditation in cinema these days.
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Apichatpong's memory of the world
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 30/06/2021
» It begins with a bang. Maybe the Big Bang, a culmination of cosmic murmur and subterranean hum that explodes like a burst of revelation, a sonic release of the weight of all human pain. In Apichatpong Weerasethakul's new film Memoria, a woman wakes up one morning in Bogota jolted by a mysterious sound -- a metallic, visceral, bottom-of-the-well bang. The woman, orchid farm owner Jessica (played by Tilda Swinton), wanders the Colombian capital in a daze, haunted by the unshakable aural echo, then leaves the city and heads to the mountains, where the phantom of the bang shadows her.
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Asean on screen
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/09/2020
» Ahead of the BAFF featuring Southeast Asian movies plus Chinese and Japanese titles, Life spoke with two filmmakers about their work
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View from the Far South
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/12/2019
» Young men lie face-down on the floor, their hands tied at the back. Uniformed officers punch and kick them. "Squeeze in!" they shout at the men on the ground. More kicks, more punches.
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'Bob' Halliday gone, but his light lives on
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 03/06/2017
» Bob told me many stories from a time when I hadn't even been born: During the Oct 14, 1973 student uprising, the authorities suspected he was a spy. When the Oct 6, 1976 massacre took place and the stench of blood was still fresh at Thammasat University, he surveyed the wreckage and bemoaned the state of the country he had adopted as his new home. Some evenings he reminisced on how he had lived through several dictators and prime ministers, hijacked or elected, overthrown or incapacitated -- he talked about Richard Nixon, Thanom Kittikachorn, Tanin Kraivixien, Thaksin Shinawatra, Prayut Chan-o-cha, etc. It didn't matter what happened, he'd say, as long as he could prowl produce markets in search of the perfect durian -- the caramelised Holy Grail of the fruit he adored above all else, the fruit that, as he'd say, made him "slobber like a mastiff".
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Rhapsody in black and white
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/12/2018
» This is plain simple: Roma must be seen on the big screen.
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When literature becomes light
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/07/2018
» Haruki Murakami's books exert a strange pull that's earned him a devoted following around the world -- and Thailand is no exception. One foot planted in the reality of the modern world, the other trudging through a surreal dreamland as the ground beneath his characters' feet keeps shifting, Murakami entrances and confuses, lulls and hallucinates. His novels and short stories also occupy that exclusive territory in the literary world: he's a best-selling author who's also every bookmaker's favourite to win the Nobel Prize. He's also one of a few post-war Japanese writers whose style and substance transcend cultural and national boundaries.
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