Showing 1-10 of 27 results
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Bismillah, Freddie will not let us go
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/11/2018
» Freddie Mercury, played with an earnest commitment bordering on fetishism by Rami Malek in the biographical film Bohemian Rhapsody, is a rock star the likes of which we hadn't seen before the 1970s and haven't since: An Asian frontman of a British rock outfit, a four-octave opera lover who sang in leotards and thongs, a proud organiser of orgiastic jamborees, and a gay man who endeared himself to the hard-rock audience that, in all likelihood in those pre-diversity days, either failed to realise that their mustachioed rock-god was out-and-out queer or suppressed their suspicion so completely that they didn't feel any cognitive dissonance in their devotion to Queen. Even the name Freddie gave the band laid it all bare.
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Still the champions
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/09/2016
» On Sept 30, the Bangkok bohemians will have our rhapsodical ecstasy. We've probably heard Bohemian Rhapsody 1,001 times, but for many it will be the first time we'll hear it live. "Queen + Adam Lambert On Tour 2016" will make a stop at Impact Arena with legendary rockers -- Brian May on guitar and Roger Taylor on drums -- charging through its repertoire with the new flamboyant frontman.
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Female Lawrence deserves more
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/06/2016
» Gertrude Bell was an adventurer, desert explorer, cartographer, polyglot, writer, kingmaker, and an overshadowed figure during World War I. She spoke Arabic, German, French and several other languages; T.E. Lawrence sought her advice; the Arabs respected her; the British Empire wanted her to spy for them; she helped Sheikh Faisal, who fought with Lawrence against the Ottomans, become the king of Iraq. In short, a great woman who lived a full life. And now in the motion picture Queen Of The Desert, Bell is played by Nicole Kidman in her wind-kissed scarf, lovelorn smile and in a story fraught with Oriental romanticism. The great adventurer doesn't receive a great cinematic treatment after all.
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Hat-trick for Thai cinema
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/02/2015
» In the snowy German capital, the year's first major cinema festival has kicked off. The 65th Berlin International Film Festival (or Berlinale, as it's better known) opened last night with Nobody Wants The Night, a drama by Spanish director Isabel Coixet, starring Juliette Binoche and Rinko Kikuchi. Some of the hot world premieres include Terrence Malick's Knight Of Cups, Kenneth Branagh's Cinderella, Werner Herzog's Queen Of The Desert, and other art-house darlings. The Berlinale runs until Feb 15, with the Golden Bear being announced next weekend.
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Follow the yellow brick road
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/06/2019
» There is a newly-invented subgenre of the rock biopic: the queer, British, 1970s-set rock biopic, preferably with family trauma and cruel (or at least unsympathetic) parents. First was Bohemian Rhapsody, the shoddy Freddie Mercury flick, whose status as an Oscar-nominated title still befuddles. Now comes Rocketman, in which Taron Egerton preens and struts in Elton John's greatest hits of wardrobe flamboyance, even at his AA session.
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An imperfect world
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/05/2019
» Even on the ground at the Cannes Film Festival, what people seemed to be anticipating most on Monday was, well, the final episode of Game Of Thrones. No, it wasn't being shown at the festival (how unbecoming that would be), but isn't it a sign of our times that a TV episode has the Valyrian-steel nerve to dominate global discussion and upstage the world's biggest film showcase?
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The old skeleton in the closet
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 05/04/2019
» Motherly ghosts are Southeast Asia's fiercest creatures, as they cling to their memories with a vengeance. In Marn-Da (The Only Mom), a Myanmar-Thai haunted-house horror, a motherless child wanders her old colonial house -- she was already dead, sure -- looking for love and hugs. When a new family moves in, the girl-ghost finds the perfect mother she never had and the old skeleton in the closet comes tumbling out.
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Celine Dion floats Bangkok's boat
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/07/2018
» That "sinking boat" song -- that's how Celine "My Heart Will Go On" Dion, joking with the casual humour of a seasoned Las Vegas residency entertainer, refers to her most played, most loved, most karaoke-d, and perhaps most clichéd number. How many times have you heard it? Hundreds, if not more, intentionally or accidentally. And yet, apparently, there's nothing compared to hearing it live, 21 years after that big boat sank in Titanic, belted out at top octave and lung power by Dion herself, as she did to the roaring crowd at Impact Arena on Monday night in her first-ever concert in Bangkok.
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Into the Khmer Rouge abyss
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/09/2017
» It's the kind of project that courts doubt and even disdain from the very logline. Angelina Jolie, the Hollywood A-lister lately known for marital drama, is directing a film in Cambodia about the atrocity of the Khmer Rouge years, based on the memoir of a woman who, as a girl, lived through it all.
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Sexy, savage spy
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/08/2017
» The Berlin kitsch of the late 1980s -- neon galore, rave clubs, Communist chic -- serves up a gaudy backdrop to the Cold War violence and betrayals in Atomic Blonde. Charlize Theron, in a wardrobe as striking as it is tongue-in-cheek, plays Lorraine Broughton, a hard-boiled British spy sent to West Germany to retrieve a valuable top-secret list.
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