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  • News & article

    Ripley strikes quite exquisitely, again

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/04/2024

    » Just when you thought the original book was bled dry, its last drop of smouldering homoerotic blood squeezed and sucked by multilple movie adaptations, from Rene Clement (French) and Anthony Minghella (American) to Liliana Cavani (Italian), here comes Steven Zaillian's seven-episode Netflix series bluntly titled Ripley. Dusky and exquisitely coldblooded, the latest reworking proves that the Patricia Highsmith's 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley is a living gift that continues giving after 69 years.

  • News & article

    Asean Film Festival is finally here

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/03/2024

    » Despite the odd, unexplained double postponement -- the first when it was moved from early December 2023 to late January 2024, and then from January to March -- the Bangkok Asean Film Festival finally gets under way, from today until Sunday at SF CentralWorld. Despite the adjournment, the line-up looks decent, with the best Southeast Asian titles culled from the past year -- Tiger Stripes, Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell, Abang Adik, Dreaming And Dying, Oasis Of Now, Nowhere Near, Morrison, Thai classics The Adventure Of Sudsakorn and The Adulterer, and a short film competition.

  • News & article

    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?"

  • News & article

    10 films to watch out for

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/05/2023

    » A fierce hijab girl, a Vietnamese pilgrimage, a Scorsese-DiCaprio team up and a new Cate Blanchett drama, Cannes Film Festival opens today with an eclectic taste of world cinema.

  • News & article

    Harry shows Bangkok some Styles

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/03/2023

    » The accessory du jour was the fluffy pink boa. The colour scheme was hot pink -- pink pants, pink boots, pink cowboy hats, pink eyeshadow, pink hijabs. Or if not pink, then anything in the tooth-aching shades of the rainbow. It was a lively, joyous sight on Saturday night, a show of hot-hue aesthetics in a defiant contrast to the brutalist concrete skeleton of Rajamangala Stadium. How I wish concrete-mad Bangkok could look like this every day!

  • News & article

    The vagabond returns

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/01/2023

    » A film once overlooked and misunderstood may have found its moment many years later, the work's peculiar vibrations finally detected and at last appreciated.

  • News & article

    Pandemonium

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 30/09/2022

    » The first shot of Athena will be discussed in every writing about the film. A bravura choreography of movement that begins with an intimate close-up of a face and ends, after 10 blood-rushing minutes, with an explosion of revolutionary rage -- a la Les Miserables and Do You Hear The People Sing? transported to a predominantly-Muslim Paris suburb -- that opening shot is so hypnotising and immersive in its non-stop kineticism that we're led to forgive that it's also an earnest show-off, a proud enshrinement of style and attitude over everything else. Romain Gavras, a filmmaker known for making music videos for Jay Z and M.I.A, will cement that approach with many similar shots throughout the film -- long, seemingly uninterrupted shots with parkour camerawork full of angry bodies -- more than enough for aspiring filmmakers of the world to slobber over.

  • News & article

    Time for Asean films to shine

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/12/2021

    » The pandemic notwithstanding, it has been a stimulating year for Southeast Asian cinema. Reflective, heartfelt and oddball new titles from Indonesia, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand have won major prizes or become critical favourites at international film festivals throughout 2021. Now, many of these films are coming to the big screen in Thailand as the Bangkok Asean Film Festival 2021 (BAFF) is set to open tonight.

  • News & article

    Pedro Almodovar celebrates life in all its messy turns

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/11/2021

    » Pedro Almodovar's films turn camp into art, or art into camp. Or even better, he isn't bothered all that much whether the candy-coloured hijinks, the sexual anything-goes, the carnal perfidy and maternal heartbreak in his movies are a form of art or a celebration of camp. And we, the audience, shouldn't either. Almodovar, the internationally best-known Spanish filmmaker, thrives on something much simpler, I think. Freedom.

  • News & article

    Time is not on anybody's side

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/10/2021

    » There's the anatomy -- the bone and the flesh, supple or flaccid. Then there's time, the cruellest judge of all. In Jakrawal Nilthamrong's Anatomy Of Time (the Thai title is simpler, Wela), the first sound we hear is a tick-tock metronome like the soundtrack of the cosmos as we watch an old lady gently tending to her tubed and bedbound husband. Time will be folded back. The old woman will become young and her dying husband will appear as a spirited, dashing military captain fighting communist insurgents for the good of the nation.

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