Having been moved forward a week to avoid competing with the latest in the Twilight saga, Pek-Ek Ratanaruang’s latest flick Headshot (Fon Tok Kuen Fah, or ‘Rain Failling up to the Sky’) is now screening at SF Cinemas around Thailand (see Movieseer for times). Based on a short noir novel by acclaimed Thai writer Win… [more]
Screening
The oldest existing Thai film The King of the White Elephant by Pridi Banomyong will be shown by the Thai Film Archive in Salaya on Sunday Sept 25 to celebrate its 70th anniversary. The anti-war film was originally screened in New York and Singapore, as well as Bangkok and was hence made in English. A… [more]
This August, Japan Foundation Theatre has bunched up movies to celebrate the Mother’s month. Friday 5 Aug, 2011: Faraway Sunset （遠き落日） 1992, Directed by Koyama Seiijiro （神山征二郎）, 119 mins. This is a biographical film focusing on the mother of the Japanese microbiologist, Hideyo Noguchi who discovered the spirochete culture of syphilis and gained world-wide fame…. [more]
Inspired by the release of The Moon (พุ่มพวง ดวงจันทร์), a new movie about the short, troubled life of iconic electric luk thung singer Pumpuang Duangjan, we’ve put together a round-up of other, fact-tweaking Thai biopics to have entertained audiences over the years. Any we’ve missed? Feel free to let us know in the comments box… [more]
Despite having picked up the Palmes d’Or at Cannes 2010 with ‘Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives’, Apichatpong Weerasethakul remains beloved among international cineastes and relatively marginalised here in his own country. It probably didn’t help that his previous film Syndromes became Thailand’s anti-censorship poster child after Weerasethakul refused to make four ruinous,… [more]
An absurdist black comedy featuring a tootling trombone player, an arm-wrestling champ, and a saucy minx who claims to be a 65-year-old opium smuggler, Country Hotel – or the “Hell Hotel” of the Thai-language title – is a cornerstone of Thai cinema. “Thai New Wave” directors including Wisit Sasanatieng and Pen- Ek Ratanaruang have drawn… [more]
Here’s what’s playing at the Japan Foundation Theater this month: Friday 4 Twinkle （きらきらひかる） 1992 18:30 ส่องแสงพราว 103 mins Directed by Matsuoka Joji Shoko and Mutsuki marry in part to satisfy their worried parents. Mutsuki is a homosexual and Shoko tries to bring him and Kon, his lover back again after their marriage. The unusual… [more]
Last Life unfurls its characters’ inner lives the way cigarette smoke reveals the secret shape of breathing – through a slow-burning, bitter beauty. Featuring a Death and the Maiden pairing – a compulsively neat, suicidal Japanese librarian and an explosively messy, live-wire Thai woman – Last Life flirts with familiar conventions: the screwball-comedy opposites-attract couple,… [more]
Cinderella Man in stilettos. The most commercial of this grouping, Boxer is based on the true story of Parinya Charoenphol, or Nong Toom, whose main motivation for knocking heads in the ring was to earn enough money for gender-reassignment surgery. Despite the clumsily episodic and-thenism of the typical biopic (Nong Toom wins temple-fair bout, and… [more]
Here at Bangkok 101, we offer a big welcome to the first film festival of 2011, the Japan Foundation’s much anticipated Akira Kurosawa Centennial Retrospective (www.jfbkk.or.th), offers you the chance to catch free screenings of much of the late Japanese master’s oeuvre. To commemorate the centenary of his birth, acclaimed samurai classics like Yojimbo and… [more]
Thai directors are justly renowned for their terrifying horror movies, but this film tones down the shock-and-gore tactics for a more sympathetic and artful approach to the story of Nang Nak, a ghost who has inspired more than 20 cinematic iterations of her sad tale. Fine performances, lush cinematography, and melancholy menace spiked with the… [more]
A faux-naif morality tale with a satiric sting. Country crooner Pan leaves behind his sweetheart to make it big in Bangkok – and that’s when everything goes to hell. Ratanaruang disrupts what might have become a tired big-city-is-bad narrative with unruly tonal shifts; pitching comedy after buckets of tears – the result is messily enchanting…. [more]
An unusual offering from one of Thailand’s few women filmmakers. This neo-noir begins simply enough – Sipang wakes up the morning after her wedding day to find that her husband, Napat, has disappeared. She enlists the aid of Napat’s brother Chatchai and sister-in-law Busaba in the search, only to dredge up stranger and more disturbing… [more]
