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  • News & article

    At Cannes, humour makes a surprise visit

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/02/2017

    » Humour is hardly ever associated with Cannes competition films -- to win the Palme d'Or, for example, it's assumed a film should possess art house gravitas, serious humanity, or weighty, topical, discourse-stimulating subject matter (last year's winner, Dheepan, is about immigrants in Paris, and before that, the three-hour-long Turkish drama Winter Sleep).

  • News & article

    Colourful journey into Thailand's soul

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/01/2017

    » The train clangs ahead, moving people and dreams, as it has done since 1893. In Railway Sleepers, a minutely observed film shot entirely on-board a Thai train, we see kids on school trips, young men travelling north and south, hawkers selling food and horoscope books, families and lovers, vacationers who turn the sleeping car into a party venue. They're passengers, and they're also humans. They are, as director Sompot Chidgasornpongse says, a collection of faces that make up a portrait of Thailand.

  • News & article

    'Pre-truth' far scarier than 'post-truth'

    News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/11/2016

    » 'Post-truth" -- that's Oxford Dictionaries' word of 2016. Trump-inspired and aided by Facebook algorithms, it clicks. What happens isn't as important as what you think happens, and if you think something is true, then what is true is simply what you think. But truth be told, post-truth still suggests an involvement of truth, how truth is there and yet is blithely bypassed by emotion and prejudice, and thus there's a more dangerous term that fits better in some places: "pre-truth".

  • News & article

    Moments of record

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/10/2016

    » The film fades and has scratches, but the persistence of history is strong. On Tuesday, the Ministry of Culture and Thai Film Archive (Public Organisation) registered 25 film items into the National Heritage list for audiovisual conservation and future reference. In November and December, the Archive will host screenings of some of the newly inducted titles.

  • News & article

    For a ghost of a chance, use your talisman

    News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/10/2016

    » On Wednesday Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha talked for 135 minutes at the Bangkok Post Forum, more than Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on Monday combined. And this isn't even an election campaign. A good soldier, he's unfazed by the presence of enemies and microphone. From the podium, arms outstretched, the PM touched on a lot of topics: Thai education, the economy, Section 44, Thailand as a "developed" country, the 20-year prophecy, etc. But what struck me like a hammer was when the general mentioned ghosts.

  • News & article

    A tower of our glory, except the foreign bit

    News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 03/09/2016

    » I happened to be there at the opening of the sparkling corn-cob skyscraper, the trophy of high-capitalism and symbol of wealth. No fireworks at the launch of the MahaNakhon Tower, that would have been tacky, but we had the beam-me-up light dance and iridescent sky painting, cued to booming music. Jose Carreras sang arias.

  • News & article

    Fed up to our eyeballs of the aqua-calypse

    News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/06/2016

    » When storm clouds loom and thunder strikes, we think of one person. When the monsoon hits and water falls from Bangkok skies, his face appears in our dreams: Lord Mayor of Bangkok, wading the knee-deep floods of Ratchadaphisek Road like a horseman of the aqua-calypse, having come straight from his 16-million-baht office which, until recently, overlooked a 39-million-baht lighting décor.

  • News & article

    Superficiality takes aim at Scala

    News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/06/2016

    » There is a mix of rage, gloom and longing as, once again, the fate of the Scala theatre in Siam Square is questioned. To wreck is easy, to save is hard. The jackhammer screeches louder than nostalgia. Will the Scala, that quaint majesty stuck in a prime retail area, that solemn granddaddy in the flashy, messy, heavily commercialised quarter, be next to fall?

  • News & article

    Ones to watch

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/01/2016

    » Clear your schedule for Bangkok's main film event: The World Film Festival of Bangkok, which returns next week for its 13th edition, with a buffet of over 50 movies showing at SF CentralWorld from Nov 13-22.

  • News & article

    Expanding the Asean screen

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/10/2015

    » Across Indochina the movie houses are bubbling with energy, and as the region's big brother in popular culture, Thai film is quick to tap into these growing markets. Some recent examples: The teen comedy May Who?, which came out here earlier this month, has just opened in Laos and Cambodia (with the same familiar posters, but with the wriggling scripts of the local languages).

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