Showing 1-10 of 23 results
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Film festival needs direction
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/02/2012
» If the Red Carpet works, the film festival works. That seems to be the motto of the hype machine behind last weekend's Hua Hin International Film Festival, which proudly paraded stars down the sandy, horse-free beach of the InterContinental while the cinemas were haunted by ghosts. Nothing's wrong with using a movie festival to support tourism, as long as some attention is paid to what it's all about: film, and the film-going experience.
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Wishing upon a bullet train
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/03/2012
» Hirokazu Kore-eda's I Wish is a film about small happiness hidden under earth-shaking woes. An unexpected hand clasp on the shoulder, a swimming trunk in a wash basin, the sound of a clinking bell, the volcanic ash that falls like confetti _ the random joy of life slowly works its way into the heart of a young boy at the centre of this family drama, on limited release starting yesterday. Sweet but thankfully not saccharine, observant without being obsessive, I Wish has the delicate lightness and calm lucidity of all Kore-eda's films. And although this one won't move you to ponder the painful disintegration of family values the way the director's near-masterpiece Nobody Knows did in 2004, the uncoiling of revelations here is as gentle as it is refreshing.
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If the TV went a breast too far, then turn it off
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/06/2012
» Ray Bradbury was right: Television destroys culture and makes us dumb. Turn on the blow-torch and burn books, because the mass hypnotism prescribed by TV is the status quo of modern consciousness. Regardless of your race or religion, your colour and your god, your sex or age, everyone has the same altar upon which daily worshipping is proffered, prime-time or otherwise. Every house has the same shrine, flickering, rectangular, sucking the hologrammed gods from space.
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Time capsule unlocked
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 17/07/2012
» Before photographs of people outnumbered the entire population of the world, having one's image captured on film was a privilege, a real cause for pride.
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Epic Leap
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/09/2012
» The man is 52, and yet retains his youthful vibe. His dark-framed glasses, besides his bright face, are what help us recognise him. He shows up slightly late, as to be expected from a founder, top executive, chief brain and nerve centre of one of the country's most powerful showbiz companies. On his desk is a dish of egg tarts, his choice sweet. He smiles and invites us to join him. Outside the office window of Workpoint Entertainment stretches out the vast, dry, flat, skyscraper-less expanse of Pathum Thani.
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The magic has gone
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 31/05/2013
» These prestidigitators pique our interest: four magicians with cocky talents put on a show in Las Vegas in which they transport a randomly picked member of the audience to a Paris bank and steal 3 million from its vault. Real money, of course, and the booty is distributed, falling like confetti from the ceiling, on to the viewers in the Las Vegas hall. Legerdemain or witchcraft? Hypnosis or illusion?
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What you’re watching is not a film
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/05/2014
» The conversion is complete, or at least, virtually complete. When you go to a cinema today, it’s a certainty that what you’re watching on the screen is not “a film”, but a digital projection of bits and bytes stored in a hard disk and transformed into images.
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South doesn't need any more gun-slingers
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/11/2014
» When you have cowboys and gun-slingers running the circus, it's likely to be all bang-bang. An eye for an eye, a rifle for a rifle, a kill for a kill, and as the Apache warriors storm the citadels of the new frontiers, the sheriffs are prodded to become trigger-happy.
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The premier and our age so full of fury
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/02/2016
» ‘Angry people are not always wise,” Jane Austen wrote in Pride and Prejudice.
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'Superheroes' fail to rescue democracy
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/03/2016
» We thought it would be Batman v Superman: Yawn of Justice. But it turned out to be a cut-rate spectacle performed on a sidewalk by inept actors. We thought it would be a bout between the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) and the Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC), a contest of will and superpower. But then it revealed itself to be a badly scripted soap opera executed by elderly actors who read their lines without a wink.
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