• LIFE

  Poor Barbie... Oppenheimer's the bomb

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/03/2024

  » The annual guessing game to read the minds of inscrutable Oscars voters is here.

• LIFE

  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.

• LIFE

  Highbrow picks from Netflix

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/05/2020

  » Cannes Film Festival, the annual jamboree of world cinema usually taking place in May, has been postponed until further notice. In its absence, we delve into the Netflix menu and find four films that made their debut at Cannes over the past decades and made a noise in their own way.

• LIFE

  Once upon a time on the French Riviera

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/05/2019

  » The spectacle ahead will -- hopefully (cinema sages are an optimistic bunch) -- be spectacular. The 72nd Cannes Film Festival opens tonight and there are all manner of curiosities to look forward to: an army of hipster zombies; Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate; Korean parasites; a Maradona doc; an Elton John biopic; Islamic extremism in Belgium; British miserabilism (Brexit and other demons); and, of course, Elle Fanning on the red carpet for 11 days straight, performing jury duty at the world's most reported, most hyped and most influential film festival.

• LIFE

  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?

• LIFE

  Women in motion

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/05/2019

  » In Senegal, a teenage Muslim girl in an arranged marriage reunites with her lover, who has returned from his aquatic death. In London, a scientist mother engineers a new plant species that begins to dominate the mind of her young son. In 18th-century France, a portrait painter travels to an island off Brittany to paint a young aristocrat and finds herself smothered by love.

• LIFE

  EU film fest brings many shades of modern Europe

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/05/2017

  » The stories of Europe are told in the 13 films at the European Union Film Festival 2017, which begins tonight at SF CentralWorld.

• LIFE

  Truth and lies

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/05/2018

  » By some description, this is one of the most political editions of Cannes Film Festival in recent memory, both on screen and off. After three days, the brouhaha over #MeToo (the festival has a dedicated hotline for sexual harassment report, which begs the question: why here and now?), the comment by Jury President Cate Blanchett on the small percentage of female filmmakers in the programme, and the fact that two of the directors whose films are in the competition are under house arrest in their respective countries (Iran and Russia) -- all of this cast a mixed shadow over the 71st edition of the world's largest film festival that still boasts influence and glamour while struggling to maintain its relevance.

• TRAVEL

  Andalusian dreams

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/02/2024

  » Two Middle Eastern tourists looked excited as they held up a phone to an exquisitely carved arabesque in Nasrid Palace at the Alhambra. No, they're not taking photos. They're comparing the Arabic text on their screen with the 8th century stone calligraphy. I hear them mumble in Arabic -- here's the translation:

• OPINION

  Footie ecstasy prescription won't last long

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/06/2014

  » Tell me, what’s happiness? Football, of course. Not playing it, not qualifying for it, but consuming it. Precisely, happiness is watching the 64 matches of the highest-level football played in the far-flung Amazonian longitudes, the broadcast signals being sucked live from space to the tubes of 65 million Thais at the expense of — a bargain, I believe — 427 million baht paid for by tax money from the public purse straight to a private firm. They should make it a policy to distribute ecstasy pills to accompany our late-night viewing, just to be certain maximum happiness is achieved, sustained and thanked for.

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