Showing 1-10 of 11 results
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Asian talents score big at Cannes
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 31/05/2023
» From Japan to Malaysia by way of Vietnam, Asian filmmakers of disparate sensibilities triumphed at the recently-wrapped 76th Cannes Film Festival. The Palme d'Or may have gone to French filmmaker Justine Triet from her tense drama Anatomy Of A Fall, but six other awards handed out by the world's most influential film festival went to filmmakers from Asia, an unprecedented slate of recognition.
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Guilt and sin minus the politics
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/04/2018
» The squalor of Manila slums populated by high-school drug runners, then a chaotic precinct ruled by corrupt cops and even more corrupt chiefs -- these are the familiar turfs of Brillante Mendoza, the best-known Filipino filmmaker among international audiences.
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Toronto top picks
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/09/2017
» A showcase of Oscar hopefuls and world cinema highlights, the film festival which wrapped up last weekend is one of the most influential in the world. Here are our highlights
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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.
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Will the best films win the Oscars?
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/02/2016
» The Oscar night is also the Oscar-bashing night. It was always the night (or morning, in our time zone) of constant bemoaning and condescension, because the Academy voters, like most voters, always get it wrong, at least to million others around the world who believe, in our collective delirium, that we have a stake in this pageant taking place somewhere in Los Angeles. Things have taken a turn for the worse with the snap judgement made possible by social media; now the outrage and disbelief are so raw since they're aired in real time, on Facebook and Twitter, like I did last year when I was convinced that it was against every law of nature that Birdman, a well-crafted display of pretension and self-obsession, won over the more delicate Boyhood.
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The dark side of wife
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/10/2014
» In Fight Club (1999), David Fincher dishes out a mockery at male machoism, the sweat-soiled, hyperbole manliness manifest through smug violence and Brad Pitt's swagger. What happened, however, was that Fincher's stylish film somehow became a trophy movie for those he aimed his sarcasm at — the macho type adores the film, which isn't that surprising given how cool it is. Flash forward to what we have this week in cinemas worldwide, Gone Girl, a thriller that's probably replicating that curious logic in pop-culture destiny. The film about the absurdity of married life, a dark warning against the cost of domestic bliss, is perhaps a perfect date movie for happy or unhappy couples, since the film's extreme satire takes cover under the sharp, highly engaging narrative and storytelling heft. It's a film worth showing at every wedding anniversary, for entertainment, yes, and to remind the participants of their parts in their own personal movies.
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Terminator Genisys does not compute
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 03/07/2015
» Hollywood's lusty obsession with reboots, retools, reloads, recasts and regeneration falls with a loud thud in Terminator Genisys, a clunky, messy, analogue-minded science fiction thriller that's hardly scientific or thrilling. If this is what the post-millennia Gen-Z audience have in terms of pop-cultural marquee, those above 35 can revel in the nostalgic romp of James Cameron's 1984 original, a far more intelligent and terrifying film about our fear of technology, with Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his star-making role, elevating robotic poker-face into a kind of acting scholarship.
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The big picture: prizes vs popularity
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/03/2015
» When Birdman won Best Picture at the Academy Awards last week, a New York Times headline read: "Oscars show growing gap between moviegoers and Academy", referring to the fact that a small, semi-art-house film that wasn't seen by many people received the industry's highest honour. The article goes on to quote film historian Philip Hallman, who says "most people have to finally accept that the Oscars have become elitist and not in step with anything that is actually popular".
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Mongkut, reinterpreted
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/03/2015
» When Arin Rungjang learned of the art heist near Paris earlier this month, the Thai artist had good reason to feel concerned. At dawn on March 1, thieves broke into a high-security wing of the Chateau de Fontainebleau and made off with 15 priceless works of Asian art, including Phra Maha Mongkut Longya, a replica of a royal crown studded with rubies, pearls, emerald and diamonds. It was one of several royal tributes presented to Emperor Napoleon III by King Rama IV in 1861.
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Sensual biopic encapsulates an age
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/11/2014
» Bertrand Bonello's Saint Laurent is an exquisite opium den, a biography of sensual feelings rather than of fact. Running at 150 minutes, the film is more interested in what Yves Saint Laurent senses, feels, imagines and dreams than the actual reality around him. Usually, a biopic of a personality strives to "humanise" the subject — we're supposed to see him/her at his best and worst, his genius and his foibles. Here, Bonello and his actor, Gaspard Ulliel, have done something more startling: they don't humanise Saint Laurent as much as sensualise him.
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