Showing 1 - 10 of 11
Really, who gets to walk the red carpet?
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/05/2018
» This is the question I've been asked several times -- not because I'm a veteran of the fabled Cannes red carpet (it's long, intimidating and tedious, plus I'll never invest in a tuxedo that would make me look like a waiter anyway), but because I've been a ringside witness to the said red carpet in the past 16 years of my visiting the festival. All the thousands of photographs of stars, models, actors -- beautiful people of planet Earth, or planet Cinema -- preening down the tapis rouge at Cannes have become even more famous, more recognisable, more awe-inspiring than most of the films shown here. The aura of glamour, fame and radiance actually makes a lot of people think of Cannes as the red carpet, and not the films it shows or its coveted top prize, the Palme d'Or.
The French Connection
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/05/2018
» In the opening episode of Ten Years Thailand, a group of soldiers arrives at an art gallery to inspect a potentially subversive artwork. What constitutes a kernel of subversion, however, is hard to lay a finger on. So the story shifts: one of the soldiers begins to chat up a pretty maid, and as the Sun is setting the two of them look out from the gallery to the horizon full of shadows. Maybe of hope.
In the kinky zone
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/12/2016
» No more debacle: Prabda Yoon's Rong Ram Tang Dao (Motel Mist) is finally in cinemas. Last month, just one day before the original release, the film's investor TrueVisions decided that they didn't like what they saw (despite the film having been finished 10 months earlier) and pulled it off the programme to the shock of many, chiefly the director. Rampant criticism of self-censorship followed. Now the filmmakers have decided to untie themselves from the deal and release the film on their own, so you can catch it now at SF CentralWorld, House RCA and Bangkok Screening Room.
A trip to the other world
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/11/2016
» A quick lowdown on Thai love motels: trashy lighting, soap-smelling beds, bad pillows, cheap porn on the TV and a trove of hush-hush secrets guarded by naked walls. Outside, the thick tarp curtains separate the public from the personal, the exposed from the invisible, the respectable from the randy. Inside, it is another world, a fantasy world, an alien world.
To Myanmar with love
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/11/2016
» The big problem about shooting a film in Myanmar, says Thai filmmaker Chartchai Ketnust, was not obtaining permission. It was the mob of onlookers trying to get a peek of the stars.
A wind from the Northeast
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/03/2017
» Last month the cinemas saw a sleeper hit -- and don't be surprised if your cultural radar didn't beep. The homemade Isan film Thi Baan The Series attracted huge crowds not to Bangkok cineplexes, or not at first, but to theatres in Si Sa Ket, Khon Kaen, Maha Sarakham and elsewhere across the Northeast. Scoring big with regional tastes, the small, Isan-speaking film, made by a group of friends for 3 million baht, has now made over 20 million in box office -- 70% of it on its home turf, the rest in the capital.
Foreign film contenders
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/12/2015
» Star Wars is colonising your waking life, so let me warp you to the neighbouring galaxy. The Oscar season is brewing, and one of the categories we're always interested in -- at least because it's the only category that is about the world and not just about Hollywood -- is the foreign language film. This year 81 countries submitted their films to the Academy. The long list will be announced in January, and the five finalists later in the month.
From Laos with love
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/06/2013
» The first all-Lao film to be released in Thailand in decades, Hak Um Lum occupies that territory between naivete and honesty. Made on a paltry budget of around 1 million baht, the romantic comedy will mainly draw Thai viewers who're curious about a homemade flick from our land-locked neighbour, while those who ride the high horse of cultural snobbery will dismiss this freshman effort as totally unnecessary.
In her environment
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 29/04/2013
» MR Narisa Chakrabongse, great-granddaughter of King Rama V and daughter of Prince Chula Chakrabongse (whose story is on our front page today), runs one of Thailand's most respected publishing houses. Her River Books has brought out several books on Southeast Asia that have earned admiration for their keen sense of social history, past and present.