Showing 51 - 60 of 145
Spirits run deep
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/03/2016
» Downstairs: a vintage Fiat, a vintage Austin Mini, a few Mercedes. Upstairs: a wild museum of spiritual imagery, Brahmin, Buddhism, animism -- tall effigies of leopard-striped hermits and beautiful Buddha statues, talismanic scrolls of occult origins and prints of Khmer calligraphy.
Off to a quiet start
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/01/2016
» For its first two days, the 68th Cannes Film Festival hasn't managed to turn up the real heat. The world's most famous tapis rouge — or red carpet — of the Grande Theatre Lumiere might be set ablaze by the stars of the furiously hellish Mad Max: Fury Road, showing Out of Competition, but talking points early in this cine-circus include Catherine Deneuve's caricature on the cover of Charlie Hebdo and Salma Hayek gnawing at a sea dragon's heart cooked by a virgin. Otherwise, café punditry keeps up the Cannes tradition of guessing the Palme d'Or winner without anyone having seen all the contestants. Elsewhere on the Boulevard de la Croisette, things remained pretty underwhelming.
After the stardust has settled
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/01/2016
» Attending Cannes Film Festival is like watching Mad Max: relentless, breathless, and giddily exhilarating. The festival ended last Sunday, with the French film Dheepan by Jacques Audiard a dark-horse Palme d'Or winner, and it makes sense now to look back at the world's premier cinema showcase after a few days of recuperation from the madness, where things can be put into a better perspective.
Art helps us see through the fog of war
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/08/2014
» Her mother is Christian. Her father is Muslim. What is she?
In fighting IS, don't mimic its evil ways
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/02/2015
» It was a sad week, a week of satanic beheadings, then the barbarous immolation, executed and filmed by that godless bunch as if in mockery of Hollywood war movies. A week of moral anger and global blood lust, from Amman to Tokyo by way of Iraq. A week of sadness that quickly morphed into something like vengeance, as war cries sounded over the medieval fortresses of Jordan and Egypt and echoed to the South China Sea.
The (sur)real world
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/03/2015
» Chulayarnnon Siriphol can't keep his jokes to himself. He has the boyish — some might say nerdy — looks of a milk-fed goody two-shoes mama's boy, but in his films, the 29-year-old often thrives on pranks, satire, mischief and a brand of droll, childlike humour that cuts through the slough of hypocrisy.
Wrestling the American nightmare
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/01/2015
» Bennett Miller's Foxcatcher is perched between an American nightmare and a family tragedy, which from a vantage angle are probably undistinguishable. It's also a story of a love triangle, an unlikely kind, involving two brothers and another man who asserts himself (most notably his nose) between them. Splashed across the screen before the whole thing starts is the solemn declaration "based on a true story" — an old Hollywood habit of codifying history into truth and fiction into biography — though in this case, it works to add weight and shock to the narrative that follows.
Mama's boy
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 05/09/2014
» Mining your own family for stories is a convenient and sometimes painful process. Vorakorn Ruetaivanichkul turned his camera toward his mother, who tried to commit suicide years ago. That pilot project later became a 60-minute film that mixes home movie footage, documentary re-enactment and fantasy sequences. Mother was Vorakorn's graduation film at King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang in 2010, and now it will be released at House RCA on Sept 11.
A hard drug for the eyes
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/08/2014
» This is a tar pit. This is the eternal midnight, the thrash metal nocturne. This is some of the most striking black-and-white imagery, half-baroque, half-graffiti, dripping and saturated with lush shadows. This is also empty. The hollowness of it all is a badge of pride for the filmmakers. With Sin City: A Dame to Kill For — like the first Sin City in 2005 — you can't take your eyes off the hyper-stylised fetishism on-screen (or at least off Eva Green's strategically obscured body parts), but you'll find it difficult to remember anything afterwards. This is instant gratification, a hard drug for the eyes.
Changing the narrative
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/09/2022
» A man returns home from work in Malaysia after Covid-19 struck, then gets lost in a bureaucratic labyrinth trying to get government handouts. Another woman finds a job at a factory, but the rules require her to compromise her faith. In Yala, a skater boy sets out in search of a friendly park where he can enjoy his ride. A hijab-wearing K-pop fanatic is getting married to a man who has just converted to Islam. And in a Pattani family, a young man watches his mother being possessed by a spirit, possibly a black-magic attack from his business rival.