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  • LIFE

    2023 ROUNDUP A vintage year for Thai cinema?

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/12/2023

    » There were cheers of jubilation and gasps of disbelief as Thai cinema found itself awash with excitement in 2023. This has been the most successful year for mainstream Thai movies in a decade, a box-office triumph far exceeding all expectations. To many, the 2023 coup de theatre calls for celebration. "We are back!" cried optimistic pundits. But also: "Really? Is it just a one-time cinema party and can we keep the ball rolling?"

  • LIFE

    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.

  • LIFE

    Hear her roar

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/05/2023

    » The image of a girl taking off her hijab is wrought with cinematic symbolism. Kamila Andini shows it in her Indonesian film Yuni (2021); Hesome Chemamah in his Thai short I'm Not Your F*cking Stereotype (2019); Ana Lily Amirpour in the Iranian vampire film A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014). Subversion? Provocation? Liberation? At this year's Cannes Film Festival, we see that image in Amanda Nell Eu's Tiger Stripes, a work as playful as it is potent in its portrayal of adolescence and what it entails for a young woman's body.

  • LIFE

    If it was up to me...

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 10/03/2023

    » The Oscars are once again upon us and Life goes out on a limb to pick the peaches.

  • LIFE

    Deep in the paradox

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/05/2022

    » In Cairo, a religious student at the prestigious Al-Azhar Islamic University is recruited by secret police to infiltrate a Muslim Brotherhood cell. In Mashad, a holy city in Iran, a serial killer prowls a seedy suburb and strangles head-scarfed prostitutes. In the first film, bloodlust officials torture dissidents with abandon. In the second film, religion is evoked and the name of God is cited as a justification for murder. This begs the obvious question: Will Boy From Heaven be banned in Egypt, and Holy Spider Iran?

  • LIFE

    In Cannes, it's cinema as usual

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 17/05/2022

    » After the cancellation in 2020 and a bump to the month of July in 2021 -- with smaller attendance as international travel was still interrupted -- the Cannes Film Festival returns to its usual mid-May slot, keyed up and fully prepped to show the world that it's cinema, and the cinema business, as usual.

  • LIFE

    Stranded on Mars

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/10/2015

    » The tale of Robinson Crusoe in space seems natural, because nowhere on Earth evokes desolation, hopelessness and maybe hope more than the black unknown of the cosmos. But then, after Sandra Bullock is set adrift alone in the dark orbit of Gravity, after Matthew McConaughey gets his share of metaphysical brooding in space, what's left for Matt Damon and his director Ridley Scott to ponder about?

  • LIFE

    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.

  • LIFE

    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

  • LIFE

    Quentin's Hollywood, circa 1969

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/09/2019

    » Not everything ended in the year 1969. Not every sunshiny starlet died gruesomely in her own Cielo Drive villa at the hands of crazed hippies. And not every potbellied actor, fading cowboy and washed-up stunt double bit the Hollywood dust kicked up by the changing of the guard and the closing of that heady decade. Not, at least, in Quentin Tarantino's affectionate, good-humoured, and surprisingly elegiac film about Hollywood and its oddball residents.

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