Showing 1 - 10 of 229
Show must go on to save Scala cinema
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/01/2018
» Urban conservationists, architects, archivists, cinema-goers, and all-round romantics have united for one cause: Save Scala.
Edward Yang classic headlines Taiwan Film Festival In Bangkok
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/01/2018
» Eight films will be shown at the Taiwan Film Festival In Bangkok 2018, which runs from Jan 17-23 at Quartier Cineart, EmQuartier. Besides a selection of new films, cinema lovers will certainly jam the screening of the 1991 film A Brighter Summer Day, a classic from the late Edward Yang and definitely one of the best Chinese-language films ever made.
Scala's screening of Cleopatra harks back to a bygone era
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/01/2018
» As news of the threatened demolition of the Scala is still hanging, there's a good reason to visit the cinema this Sunday.
The many faces of France
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/01/2018
» At the simplest level Agnes Varda's and JR's Visages Villages is a documentary film about photography and art-making. Going slightly deeper, as the title suggests, it's a film about faces and places, about people and their villages -- rural communities, farmland, factories and towns in the unglamorous corners of France. And yet at its most moving, most humanist moments, this film by an 89-year-old filmmaker and a 33-year-old street artist is about the heartbreaking ephemerality of art, about mortality, memory and the transient nature of everything, above all of life itself.
Oldman shines bright in Darkest Hour
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/01/2018
» Jowly, chubby, blustery, cinema-ready, Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill is an exercise in How to Win the Golden Globes and Maybe the Oscar. Which aspiring actor wouldn't want to become Churchill at least once, to act out that avuncular theatricality and grandiose temper, to assume that oratory bombast and majestic eloquence? They say you have to play a madman or a psychopath to get a shot at a best actor prize. Now we should add British prime minister into the list -- just ask Meryl Streep and now Oldman.
Paper-thin alibi for kids' day gun play
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/01/2018
» The irony must have been lost on him and on everyone around him. This Children's Day -- the day of machine guns, tanks and rocket launchers -- Thai kids will also get to take pictures with our cardboard prime minister, 10 standees in fact, in various poses and costumes deployed around Government House as special attractions.
Report from the far South
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/01/2018
» The first issue of The Melayu Review has the clean sophistication of a respectable literary journal. The layout is unfussy, the photographs black-and-white, and the text in Thai, in shipshape blocks. An editor's note on the first page quotes Dostoyevsky: "But how could you live and have no story to tell?"
In search of big ideas
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/01/2018
» BangkokEdge Festival, billed as an "idea festival", returns to its old quarters of Bangkok this weekend. Spearheaded by MR Narisa Chakrabongse, the two-day event is a vibrant smorgasbord of literature, music, art, history and politics, anchored in the charming venues of Museum Siam, Chakrabongse Villas and Rajini School. There will be talks -- plenty of panels and discussions, on subjects ranging from "What Makes The Chao Phraya A World Monument?" to "The Power Of Slam Poetry", from "Populism, Religion and Neo-Nationalism In The 21st Century" to "Years Of Living Dangerously: A Woman's Take On War". The list of participants is starry, including writers, journalists, poets, historians and artists, Thai and international. Come evening, the lawn of Museum Siam will play host to film screenings (Pop Aye on Saturday and Citizen Dog on Sunday), as well as concerts by Hugo, Yena, Rasmee Isan Soul and more.
Regime trawl for small fry no joke at all
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/01/2018
» The big fish hardly ever gets caught, not here. Only the small, the trivial, the nonsensical fish, the clownfish especially. As in school, or in prison, the bullies never bully the big kid. They only confirm their sense of power when they go after the small guys, the nerds, even the girls.
Visually impaired to make long-distance bike trek
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/01/2018
» On Sunday, a caravan of blind cyclists will attempt something arduous: biking from Bangkok to Chiang Mai on a nine-day charity trip.