Showing 1 - 9 of 9
Macondo encountered
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 31/12/2024
» Ideally, good books should be left alone, even if they sit enshrined in a cobweb after a thousand years of solitude. In the reality of today's content industrial complex, that is unacceptable. Every good book can be and must be adapted. To watch is to live, to binge is to breathe. Literature is not a paradigm of text but fodder for algorithm. So here it is, with an air of inevitability, the much-touted, long-awaited, rigidly respectful and adequately decent Netflix series One Hundred Years Of Solitude -- the first eight parts, with the remaining eight coming next year.
The passion of Pasolini
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 10/06/2022
» Pier Paolo Pasolini was born in Bologna on March 5, 1922, and died in a violent, mysterious circumstance on the outskirts of Rome in November 1975. This year marks the centenary of the Italian poet's and filmmaker's birth, and this Sunday at 1pm, the Thai Film Archive will screen Pasolini's first film as director, Accattone, a gloriously austere ode to underclass plight. It will be the first time the 1961 film is screened in Thailand.
Remembering the history that some want forgotten
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 11/03/2022
» Royalist history paints 1932 as a coup by a self-interested clique which thwarted King Prajadhipok's wish to introduce a constitution and led Thailand to militarism and fascism. In 2017, the plaque commemorating 1932 was ripped out of the Royal Plaza -- symbolising the wish to cancel all memory of the event. Democratic history claims 1932 as a revolution which launched Thailand towards democracy and a modern society in which the majority can participate and benefit. In 2020 the youth activists reinstalled the plaque in cyberspace and called themselves the New People's Party. The event matters, one way or the other, down to today.
In School Town King, the kids are not all right
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/01/2021
» There's a sense of immediacy in School Town King, a Thai documentary about two teenage rappers from the Klong Toey slums. On the surface, this is an advocacy film, one that patiently follows the two underprivileged ghetto boys with an unorthodox dream and their misadventures in Thai schools. But what makes School Town King feel urgent is its exposé of structural narrow-mindedness and the ideological straightjacket that leaves no room for kids who do not fit the mould. The conservative school policy, the film suggests in its visual clues and off-the-cuff asides is a chronic condition that has worsened by the arrogantly old-school regime of past years. In the year of Bad Students and Free Youth upheaval, School Town King is a deafening confirmation that the kids are not all right -- and it's surprising only for ignorant adults why they no longer want to put up with it.
Weekend of classical music awaits
Life, Published on 13/10/2020
» Neilson Hays Library is hosting evenings of classical music by two groups of performers this weekend.
Rhapsody in black and white
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/12/2018
» This is plain simple: Roma must be seen on the big screen.
Liberal fascism is destroying social media
Life, James Hein, Published on 29/08/2018
» In general I try to keep out of politics but the issue of what is currently occurring on the most popular social media platforms is a critical one to consider, for everyone. I've briefly touched on this subject in an earlier article.
Musical archaeology
Life, John Clewley, Published on 10/07/2018
» James Cagney is regarded as one of the first gangster tough guys of Hollywood. Films like The Public Enemy (1931) made him a big star and his tough-guy persona belied his background as a dancer. If you look at the opening scene to his 1932 film Taxi, you'll hear him speaking fluent Yiddish, a "High German" language that originated with Ashkenazi Jewish communities and was later fused with other German dialects, as well as the Hebrew, Aramaic and Slavic languages.
Modern-day creature feature
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/02/2018
» An eccentric love story between a woman and an amphibious creature, Guillermo Del Toro's The Shape Of Water has moved ahead to the front-runner spot in the Oscar's Best Picture, racking up the total of 13 nominations including the four acting categories. Del Toro's trick of turning B-movie grotesquerie -- interspecies sex, for instance -- into a darling of cinema bourgeois can still work wonders. And while this sweet and weird story isn't entirely unpredictable -- think mid-century beauty-and-the-beast flicks such as King Kong or, obviously, Creature From The Black Lagoon -- the director's imagination gives it an authentic vintage texture and enough doses of shocks and blood.