Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening August 28-September 3, 2014

Tukkae Rak Pang Mak (Chiang Khan Story)

Bits and pieces of veteran director Yuthlert Sippapak's own life are mixed into Tukkae Rak Pang Mak (ตุ๊กแกรักแป้งมาก, Chiang Khan Story).

A romantic comedy, representing yet another genre shift for the prolific director who's tackled action, comedy, horror and melodrama – often all in the same film – the story is set 25 years ago in Loei's historic Mekong River port city. Jirayu La-ongmanee is a kid with the rather odd name of Tukkae – named after the chirping house lizard. As a kid, his best friend was the district chief's daughter Pang. She (Chonthida “Pleng” Asavahame) moves away and returns much changed, and does not remember Tukkae at all. He's always had a thing for her, but doesn't tell her who he is.

Interestingly, much of the story takes place in a small-town movie theater, the likes of which have mostly disappeared from the landscape. In addition to views from the projection booth, there are also depictions of the old hand-painted movie billboards that used to be common in Thailand but have been mostly replaced by photos printed on giant plastic sheets.

Chiang Khan Story marks a comeback of sorts for Yuthlert. The Loei native who drifted off to New York and came back to Thailand in the early Aughts to make movies like the action-comedy Tattoo Killer, the New York-set melodrama February, Pattaya Maniac and Buppha Rahtree, which he made a franchise. Since then, he's done more than a dozen films over around half as many years, but lately he's taken a break after his potentially controversial Deep South drama Fatherland (ปิตุภูมิ พรมแดนแห่งรัก, Pitupoom) was yanked from release by the film's producer.

His new film is the first release from a new studio Transformation Films, a joint venture of M Pictures, Bangkok Film Studio (formerly Film Bangkok), True I-Content and Matching Studio. Rated 15+

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Also opening

Lucy – Scarlett Johansson is a drug mule who becomes a one-woman army after the drug she's transporting leaks into her blood stream, giving her superhuman talent and the ability to use more than just 10 percent of her brain. The latest by writer-director Luc Besson, it looks to be a return to the female-led action films he used to do, such as Nikita, The Fifth Element, Joan of Arc and Leon: The Professional. Morgan Freeman and Choi Min-sik. Critical reception is mixed leaning to positive, with lots of praise for another solid performance by Johansson, who's been on a roll with Under the Skin, Her, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and now Lucy. Though strictly in 2D, it's also in IMAX cinemas. Rated 15+

What If (a.k.a. The F Word) – Harry Potter's Daniel Radcliffe is a medical school drop-out who's been burned by a string of bad relationships. But he forms an instant bond with Chantry (Zoe Kazan), a young woman who lives with her longtime boyfriend (Rafe Spall). Adam Driver, Mackenzie Davis, Megan Park and Oona Chaplin also star in this British-American indie romantic comedy. Michael Dowse (Goon, Take Me Home Tonight) directs. Critical reception is generally positive. Rated 15+

Standing Up – A pair of geeky bespectacled kids are bullied at summer camp and left stranded on an island. Together, the boy and girl decide to run away together. Annalise Basso, Chandler Canterbury, Radha Mitchell and Val Kilmer star. D.J. Caruso (I Am Number Four, Eagle Eye) directs. Critical reception is mixed. It's at Apex cinemas in Siam Square and House on RCA.

Ju-on: The Beginning of the End – Japan's Grudge series of ghost thrillers continues with a seventh entry. Here, a schoolteacher visits the home of a boy who's been absent from school. Unaware of the spirits that live there, she finds herself reliving the tragic events of years before. Sho Aoyagi, Yoshihiko Hakamada and Nozomi Sasaki star. Masayuki Ochiai, who helmed the Hollywood remake of Shutter, directs. Critical reception is mixed. Thai-dubbed only. Rated 15+

Kiki’s Delivery Service – A young witch comes of age while starting her own business making deliveries with her flying broomstick, with assistance from her talking cat. It's a live-action adaptation of a novel by Eiko Kadono, a story best known for the 1989 Studio Ghibli animated feature. Fūka Koshiba stars as Kiki along with Ryōhei Hirota, Machiko Ono and Tadanobu Asano. Takashi Shimizu, best known for his Ju-on ghost thrillers, directs. Critical reception is mixed. It's in Japanese with English and Thai subtitles at Apex cinemas in Siam Square.

Raja Natwarlal – After his partner-in-crime is killed, a small-time conman seeks help from a mentor in plotting revenge. In Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Major Cineplex Sukhumvit, Central Rama III and Pattaya. Opens Friday.

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Also showing

18th Thai Short Film and Video Festival – Opening tonight at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center, highlights include Cambodia 2099, a short film by French-Cambodian director Davy Chou that is part of a new program of French shorts called "French Connection". There's also Stone Cloud, a new work by noted Thai video artist Jakrawal Nilthamrong that is part of a special program later in the week. And, from the Queer shorts line-up, there's the hilarious MeTube: August Sings Carmen 'Habanera'. Also tonight, Archive EX 1, which is a selection of historic Thai experimental films in honor of the Thai Film Archive's 30th anniversary. Friday's highlights include The Best of Clermont-Ferrand, which is a showcase from the world's largest short-film festival, and a competition program of Thai filmmakers vying for the top-prize R.D. Pestonji Award. Saturday and Sunday are full days starting at 11am, with many things to see, including the International Competition and the S-Express package from the Philippines. On Monday, the festival shifts over to the Lido for a one-off screening of Filipino auteur Lav Diaz' four-hour social drama Norte, the End of History. The show starts at 6 – don't miss it. The fest returns to the BACC on Tuesday the the S-Express Singapore show, and on Wednesday, catch Letters from the South, featuring observations on the Chinese diaspora from Southeast Asian directors. For more details, please see the schedule on the festival's Facebook page.

The Friese-Greene Club – A family is haunted by tragedies in A Tale of Two Sisters, the finale entry in this month's Asian horror series on Thursday nights. Tomorrow, it's just another brick in the wall of Alan Parker's films with Pink Floyd's The Wall. Saturday, it's the extremely weird Tokyo Gore Police, and on Sunday, Tyrone Power is on the fringes of society in Nightmare Alley. Next Wednesday is the beginning of a monthlong tribute to Robin Williams, showcasing his best performances, opening with the unsettling thriller One Hour Photo. Other special focuses next month are "The Genius of Ang Lee" on Thursdays, "funny things that happen in England" on Fridays, "so bad they're good" movies on Saturdays and a tribute to Lauren Bacall on Sundays. Shows are at 8pm. The FGC is down an alley next to the Queen's Park Imperial Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 22. There's just nine seats, so book them. Also, check the Facebook page for updates and program changes.

The Lives of Others – Flamboyant British director Ken Russell offers his sumptuously surreal view of German composer Gustav Mahler's life in 1974's Mahler. Winner of the Technical Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, it screens at 12.30pm on Sunday at Thammasat University Tha Prachan as part of the Filmvirus double bill of biographical films. That's followed by parts one and two of The Bill Douglas Trilogy, My Childhood and My Ain Folk. These are 1970s autobiographical films about the Scottish filmmaker's early childhood – part three, My Way Home, will screen the following Sunday. The venue is the Pridi Banomyong Library at Thammasat University Tha Prachan, in the Rewat Buddhinan Room, floor U2, the basement. Dress appropriately and inform the desk worker you are there to see a movie. For details, call (02) 613-3529 or (02) 613-3530.

Alliance Française – "Novels on the big screen" is September's theme for the free French films, starting with Michael Kohlhaas, starring Mads Mikkelsen as a 16th-century horse trader who runs into conflict with a greedy nobleman and becomes a lawless swashbuckler. Based on an 1810 German novel by Heinrich Von Kleist, it's in French with English subtitles at 7pm on Wednesday, September 3.

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Sneak preview

Boyhood – One of the most hotly anticipated films of the year, Boyhood is a triumph for director Richard Linklater, who filmed the coming-of-age drama over 12 years, capturing various stages of life for a kid named Mason (Ellar Coltrane), from ages 5 to 18. Patricia Arquette is his divorcée mother and Ethan Hawke is the dad. It premiered at this year's Sundance fest and also won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival. Critical reception is crazily positive. It's in nightly sneak previews at Apex Siam Square, House on RCA, Paragon and CentralWorld before a wider release next week. Rated 13+

Deliver Us from Evil – A New York police officer joins forces with an unconventional priest (Edgar Ramirez) to investigate a strange series of paranormal crimes. It's supposedly a true story. Olivia Munn also stars. Scott Derrickson (Sinister, The Exorcism of Emily Rose) directs. It's in sneak previews from around 8 nightly at most multiplexes before opening wide next week. Rated 18+.

Bangkok Cinema Scene special: 18th Thai Short Film and Video Festival, August 28-September 7, 2014

The schedule is out for the 18th Thai Short Film and Video Festival, which has many highlights, among them the screening of Filipino auteur Lav Diaz' four-hour opus Norte, the End of History.

Think of it as the experimental "video" portion of the Thai Short Film and Video Festival, which has long given space to medium- and feature-length works in its Digital Forum section.

A nominee for the Golden Palm at last year's Cannes Film Festival and winner of the best director award at the Cinemanila festival, Norte centers on three characters – a struggling family man who is framed for murder and sent to prison, the man's wife, left behind alone to pick up the pieces, and the real killer, whose disillusionment with society is pushing him to the edge of sanity. Norte producer Moira Lang will be among the festival guests. Norte screens from 6 to 10.30pm on Monday, August 1 at the Lido, while the rest of the festival takes place in its usual venue, the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre.

Shorter offerings are among the highlights of a new French Connection program.

"Too many good French films were submitted this year, so we decided to select some of them for a special programme," says Sanchai Chotirosseranee, a festival programmer and deputy director of the Thai Film Archive, which organizes the fest.

Among the offerings will be the festival's opener on Thursday, Cambodia 2099, by young French-Cambodian director Davy Chou, who previously surveyed Cambodia's lost cinematic golden age in Golden Slumbers. He'll also be a festival guest and will judge the international short-film competition. Selected for the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes this year, the 20-minute film has three friends gathering on Phnom Penh's Koh Pich, aka Diamond Island, talking about their dreams and what Cambodia will be like at the end of this century.

Still more French connections come from the Clermont Ferrand International Short Film Festival, the world's largest short-film showcase. As the Thai Short Film and Video Festival has done for the past several years, there will be special package of the Best of Clermont Ferrand. This year's line-up will have five films, among them La Lampe au beurre de yak, which won the grand prix. Directed by China's Wei Hu, it has a young itinerant photographer and his assistant trying to photograph Tibetan nomads in front of various backdrops.

Six of Southeast Asia's top filmmakers join for one film, Letters from the South, each taking a segment to look at the Chinese diaspora in the region. The directors are Thailand's Aditya Assarat, Singapore's Royston Tan and Sun Koh, Myanmar's Midi Zhao and Malaysia's Tan Chui Mui and Tsai Ming-liang.

And more views from across the region can be seen in the S-Express program curated by film experts from Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines.

And, in celebration of the Film Archive's 30th anniversary, there will be a special programme from the Archive's collection as well as the annual Queer shorts collection of Thai and foreign films.

As always, the centerpiece of the Thai Short Film and Video Festival is the competition among Thai indie filmmakers for the top-prize RD Pestonji Award, named in honor of the country's pioneering auteur, along with documentaries, animated shorts and student films vying for other awards.

Again, the schedule can be found at this link, and more details and images from the fest can be seen at the festival's Facebook page.

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening August 21-27, 2014

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

Back in 2005, director Robert Rodriguez had the cool idea of taking Dark Knight writer-artist Frank Miller's neo-noir Sin City graphic novel and recreating the gritty frames and hard-boiled dialogue in a movie. Famously, the thrifty filmmaker made it on the cheap in front of green screens, with cars and other objects represented by cardboard boxes. Special effects and scenery were added later, but the film also boasted a stellar cast that included Bruce Willis and Mickey Rourke. It made Frank Miller a movie franchise, with another of his graphic novels, 300, also given the panel-by-panel treatment and becoming a huge hit with a sequel, and Miller himself  directing The Spirit.

Now Rodriguez and Miller reteam for Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, which offers four more gritty tales ripped from a glowing black-and-white film-noir fantasy world. Even lousy bums who were killed off in the first film are back, with Roarke as soft-hearted brute Marv and Bruce Willis as the doomed honest cop John Hartigan.

Rosario Dawson is back as the domineering leader of the city's dames, with Jessica Alba as the dancer Nancy and Powers Boothe as a corrupt senator. Newcomers include Eva Green, Ray Liotta and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Josh Brolin takes over the role of femme-fatale chew-toy Dwight, who was previously played by Clive Owen, and Dennis Haysbert steps into a role played in the first film by Michael Clark Duncan.

Critical reception is mixed. Rated 18+

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

When Michael Bay announced plans to take over the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, he said he would be making drastic changes to the characters' origins, and that the film would likely just be called Ninja Turtles. Fans were furious, and after much hate was spewed, Bay relented. Now the film is here, with the full TMNT name and the origin story intact.

The "Heroes in a Half Shell" are Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Donatello, pizza-chomping warriors who arose from the ooze of New York's sewers and learned martial arts from a rat sensei named Splinter. Their arch-enemies are the Foot Clan led by the fearsome Shredder.

The movie adds Megan Fox as a plucky reporter who's trailing the turtles. Will Arnett, William Fichtner and Whoopi Goldberg are among the other stars, with Johnny Knoxville lending his voice to lead turtle Leonardo and Tony Shalhoub as the voice of Splinter.

The director is Jonathan Liebsman, the South African helmer of Wrath of the Titans and Battle: Los Angeles.

Critics say the movie stinks but it doesn't matter – it's been the No. 1 movie in the U.S. for the past couple of weeks, and two more sequels are already in the works, with the next film due out in 2016. This opened for a sneak-preview run last week and now moves to a wide release. It's in 3D (converted) in some cinemas. Rated 13+

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Also opening

Kristy – A college student makes the fateful decision to remain on campus alone during a holiday break and finds herself pursued by masked killers. This movie is also known as Random, but for reasons I can't figure out, it's called Kristy here. Scott Derrickson, the director of Sinister and the upcoming Deliver Us From Evil is executive producer and Oliver Blackburn directs. Rated 15+

James Cameron's Deepsea Challenge 3D – The ocean-obsessed Titanic director puts himself in the picture as he plunges more than 10 kilometers to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in this documentary about his record-setting dive for National Geographic. Critical reception is mixed. It's in real 3D in some cinemas. Rated G.

Third Person – Writer-director Paul Haggis forces together three stories of troubled relationships in this thriller. In Paris, Liam Neeson is a writer who has left his wife (Kim Basinger) to be with his mistress (Olivia Wilde) who cannot commit to him because of a terrible secret. In New York, a young mother (Mila Kunis) is in a custody battle with her husband (James Franco) after she is accused of attempting to murder her son. And in Rome, an American businessman (Adrian Brody) falls for a Romanian lady (Moran Atias) and is drawn into a kidnap plot involving the woman's daughter and a Russian gangster. The shine has worn off Haggis since his upset Oscar win for the heavy-handed and preachy Crash, and critical reception is generally negative. Rated 15+.

Mardaani – Rani Mukerji stars in this rare female-led action thriller from Bollywood. She's a senior police inspector in Mumbai, investigating the disappearance of a teenage girl. The clues point to a mafia kingpin's human-trafficking ring. Tahir Raj Bhasin and  Sanjay Taneja also star. It's in Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Major Cineplex Sukhumvit, Rama III and Pattaya. Opens Friday.

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Also showing

Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand – The FCCT's Contemporary World Film Series explores cross-cultural struggles with The Namesake, a 2006 drama by Oscar-nominated director Mira Nair. Irrfan Khan and Tabu star as a Bengali couple who immigrate from Kolkata to New York and have children. Through a series of mishaps, their son is named Gogol, after the father's favorite Russian author. He (Kal Penn of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle) grows up lazy and resentful, but through various struggles, travels and romantic entanglements, he learns to embrace his Indian heritage. Critical reception is generally positive. The show, courtesy of Mirabai Films and the Embassy of India, is at 7 tonight at the FCCT. Indian Ambassador Harsh Vardhan Shringla will be on hand with Indian wines and treats from Mrs Balbir's. Admission for non-members is 150 baht plus 100 baht for the wine and food.

The Friese-Greene Club – Released from prison after serving time for a crime she didn't commit, a woman seeks revenge in Park Chan-wook's Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, tonight's Asian horror entry. Tomorrow, it's another Alan Parker film, with the 1980 classic Fame. Saturday is the very trippy The 5,000 Fingers of Doctor T, a fantasy about schoolboys imprisoned at a music school for forced to play a giant piano. It's written by none other than Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. By coincidence, this Sunday's film-noir offering will serve as a tribute to Lauren Bacall, the smoky-voiced leading lady who died on August 12 at age 89. It's The Big Sleep, one of the best with Bogart and Bacall. Shows are at 8pm. The FGC is down an alley next to the Queen's Park Imperial Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 22. There's just nine seats, so book them. Also, check the Facebook page for updates and program changes.

The Lives of Others – The great American rock band The Doors are featured in this Sunday's Filmvirus double bill of biopics at Thammasat University Tha Prachan. First up is The Doors, Oliver Stone's fast-and-loose recounting of the band's formation in the 1960s, with Val Kilmer as mercurial frontman Jim Morrison. Kyle MacLachlan portrays organist Ray Manzarek, Frank Whaley is guitarist Robby Krieger and Kevin Dillon is drummer John Densmore. Stone's movie has been criticized by Manzarek and the others as being wildly inaccurate. But they all like the documentary When You're Strange, which was made for the American Masters series on American public television. It features the music of The Doors and archival footage, as well as excerpts of HWY: An American Pastoral, an experimental film made by Morrison. Johnny Depp narrates. The show starts at 12.30 on Sunday in the Pridi Banomyong Library at Thammasat University Tha Prachan, in the Rewat Buddhinan Room, floor U2, the basement. Dress appropriately and inform the desk worker you are there to see a movie. For details, call (02) 613-3529 or (02) 613-3530.

Alliance Française –  Selections from last year's My French Film Festival in Bangkok are featured this month, which closes out with the 2011 thriller De Bon Matin, in which a banker arrives at work, promptly shoots two of his colleagues and then sits down to await the arrival of the police. It's in French with English subtitles at 7pm on Wednesday, August 27.

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Take note

Details are still coming together for the 18th Thai Short Film and Video Festival, which runs from next Thursday to September 7 at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center.

This week the Coconuts website issued a report that was meant to clarify rumors about the future of the Lido and Scala cinemas.

The report was in response to online rumors that the contracts for the two endangered theaters had been extended three years. Property owner Chulalongkorn University answered that the rumors were untrue, and that in the case of the Lido, the contract has already expired. However, talks are taking place to get a new contract in place, and it seems likely that the wrecking ball might not swing at the Lido or Scala until 2016.

Or maybe not. Enjoy these places while you can. There are other rumors floating about Siam Square's redevelopment plans, but I'll leave those for another day.

Meanwhile, the Southeast Asia Movie Theater Project has a look at the Scala on the closing night of the Silent Film Festival.

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening August 12-21, 2014

Plae Kao (The Scar)

The classic tragic romance of the Bang Kapi countryside in the 1930s, Plae Kao (แผลเก่า, a.k.a. The Scar) is a story best known for its 1977 film version by Cherd Songsri, starring Sorapong Chatri as the farmboy Kwan who is hopelessly in love with the neighbor girl Riam (Nantana Ngaokrachang).

Although their families are bitter rivals in the village, Kwan persistently romances Riam by playing his wooden flute, and accompanies her for swims in the lotus pool and on long rides through the rice fields on the back of a water buffalo. But then Riam is sent away by her social-climbing father to Bangkok, where she is taken in by a wealthy woman. Promised the hand of a rising young politician, she becomes distant from Kwan.

There have been remakes and TV versions of the late Cherd's masterpiece, even though the idea of remaking his film ought to be akin to doing a remake of Citizen Kane – it is unnecessary and should never be attempted. Instead, why not organize frequent, easy-to-access revival screenings of the original Plae Kao and other classics of Thai cinema?

But no. Director ML Bhandevanov "Mom Noi" Devakula, the reigning king of Thai-film remakes, feels the need to put his own weird high-brow stamp on Plae Kao, which is adapted from a novel by Mai Muengderm. A drama coach who has schooled virtually every Thai actor on the screen today, Mom Noi made a string of lavish romantic drama films in the 1980s and '90s and then made his comeback as a film director in 2008 with Chua Fah Din Salai (Eternity), an erotic-novel adaptation that had been filmed before. He followed that up with Umong Pha Muang (a.k.a. The Outrage or At the Gate of the Ghost), a northern Thailand-flavored adaptation of Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon. Last year, he did a two-part retelling of Jan Dara, another erotically charged piece of Thai literature. It had been made into a film just 10 years before.

With his new Plae Kao, Mom Noi aims to bring the old story to contemporary audiences with help from fresh-faced young half-Thai stars, Chaiyapol Julian Pupart from Jan Dara as Kwan and Davika Hoorne from Pee Mak Phra Khanong as Riam. The supporting cast is filled out by a host of youngsters from the reality-TV talent show The Star and a handful of veterans who've acted in Mom Noi productions before. Rated G.

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Also opening

Joe – Every once in awhile, Nicolas Cage takes a break from the over-the-top performances that make bad movies a little more tolerable, and reminds us he's still a fine actor who is capable of great work in great movies. Joe is one of those. It's directed by David Gordon Green, a director I admire in any genre. Pineapple Express or Eastbound and Down (or The Sitter) anyone? Or are you stuck on George Washington? The indie drama has Cage as an ex-con who becomes the unlikely role model for an abused teenage boy. The kid is played by Tye Sheridan, who previously earned critical raves in another backwoods American thriller, Mud. Winner of two awards at last year's Venice fest, including the Marcello Mastroianni best-actor gong for Sheridan, critical reception is generally favorable. It's at SF cinemas. Opens on Thursday.

22 Jump Street – The tongue-in-cheek big-screen reboot of the 1980s TV series 21 Jump Street barrels on. The premise involved young police officers recruited to do undercover anti-drugs work at a high school. Now they are in college. Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill star as the mismatched buddy cops who proved to be a hilariously winning combination with the first film. Critical reception for the sequel is generally positive, with the consensus being it's the once-in-a-blue-moon sequel that improves upon the original. Rated 15+

Singham Returns – Anybody remember the 2011 Bollywood actioner Singham? I don't, but no matter, because he's back. Ajay Devgn stars as a straight-shooting, no-nonsense deputy police commissioner – an honest cop in a corrupt world. Kareena Kapoor also stars. It's in Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Major Cineplex Sukhumvit and Rama III. Opens Friday.

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Also showing

Silent Film Festival – There are just two nights left in the first Silent Film Festival in Thailand – The Water Magician at 8 tonight at the Lido and tomorrow's closing-film gala at the Scala with The Lodger. From 1933, Kenji Mizoguchi's The Water Magician centers on a young woman who is water juggler for a travelling theater troupe. A headstrong young woman, she taunts a carriage driver into driving faster and he loses his job. She falls for him and pledges to put him through law school, no matter what. Tickets are 100 baht. Alfred Hitchcock's murder thriller The Lodger, hailed as a masterpiece of the silent era, will feature accompaniment from Bangkok Opera maestros Trisdee Na Patalung and Somtow Sucharitkul. The show is at 8pm at the Scala; tickets are 500 baht. The Nation has stories today on the accompanists and early Hitchcock.

The Friese-Greene Club – Already covered in last week's entry, tomorrow night's question-and-answer session will have David Cluck talking about his experiences working as first assistant director on The Merry Gentleman, a 2008 drama that was the directorial debut of Michael Keaton. This Thursday's Asian horror offering is Confessions by Tetsuya Nakashima, in which a grieving mother plots revenge for her daughter's death. Friday's Alan Parker film has Mickey Rourke squaring off against a shadowy figure (Robert De Niro) in Angel Heart. Gaspar Noe's controversial Enter the Void is Saturday's "head trip", and on film noir Sunday, feast your eyes on one of cinema's greatest long takes (and Charlton Heston as a Mexican) with Orson Welles' Touch of Evil. Next Wednesday is another question-and-answer session, with Bangkok-based production designer Jim Newport sharing his thoughts about working on the 1987 cult-classic thriller The Stepfather. Shows are at 8pm. The FGC is down an alley next to the Queen's Park Imperial Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 22. There's just nine seats, so book them. Also, check the Facebook page for updates and program changes. Please have a look at that other blog for a new video on the FGC.

As We Can See Here: A Tribute to Harun Farocki – German experimental filmmaker and video artist Harun Farocki died on July 30 in Berlin at age 70, leaving behind more than 100 films, mostly short documentaries that explored contemporary life and its various depredations – war, imprisonment, surveillance and capitalism. In tribute, the Reading Room and Filmvirus will present a selection of his films and host a talk. Here is the schedule:

Saturday, August 16

• 13:00 - As We Can See Here (or As You See), 1986, 72min
• 14:15 - Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory, 1995, 36min
• 14:55 - Still Life, 1997, 58min
• 16:00 - Prison Images, 2000, 60min
• 17:00 - War at a Distance, 2003, 54min
• 18:00 - Nothing Ventured, 2004, 50min

Sunday, August 17

• 13:00 - Images of the World and the Inscriptions of War, 1988, 75min
• 14:15 - How to Live in the German Federal Republic, 1990, 83min
• 15:40 - Respite, 2007, 40min
• 17:00 - Discussion: Keiko Sei and Graiwoot Chulphongsathorn

The venue is The Reading Room, a fourth-floor walk-up art gallery on Silom Soi 19, opposite Central Silom Tower. For more details, please see the Facebook events page.

The Lives of Others – Writers are featured in this Sunday's Filmvirus double bill of biopics at Thammasat University Tha Prachan. With help from producers Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull screenwriter Paul Schrader honors Japanese writer Yukio Mishima with Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. That's followed by Hamsun, with Max von Sydow as the Nobel Prize-winning Norwegian author who later was named a traitor for his support of Nazi Germany. The show starts at 12.30 on Sunday in the Pridi Banomyong Library at Thammasat University Tha Prachan, in the Rewat Buddhinan Room, floor U2, the basement. Dress appropriately and inform the desk worker you are there to see a movie. For details, call (02) 613-3529 or (02) 613-3530.

Alliance Française – Selections from last year's My French Film Festival in Bangkok are featured this month. Tomorrow's film, already covered last week is Une bouteille à la mer (A Bottle in the Gaza Sea). Next week, it's La désintégration about Arab boys living in Lille, France, who fall under the influence of a charismatic older Arab. The show is at 7pm on Wednesday, August 20.

Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand – The FCCT's Contemporary World Film Series explores cross-cultural struggles with The Namesake, a 2006 drama by Oscar-nominated director Mira Nair. Irrfan Khan and Tabu star as a Bengali couple who immigrate from Kolkata to New York and have children. Through a series of mishaps, their son is named Gogol, after the father's favorite Russian author. He (Kal Penn of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle) grows up lazy and resentful, but through various struggles, travels and romantic entanglements, he learns to embrace his Indian heritage. Critical reception is generally positive. The show, courtesy of Mirabai Films and the Embassy of India, is at 7pm on Thursday, August 21 at the FCCT. Indian Ambassador Harsh Vardhan Shringla will be on hand with Indian wines and treats from Mrs. Balbir's. Admission for non-members is 150 baht plus 100 baht for the wine and food.

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Sneak preview

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Mired in fanboy controversies that are too tiresome to recount, producer Michael Bay's reboot of the 1980s character-licensing juggernaut recounts the origins of four pizza-chomping outcast brothers who rise up out of the sewers of New York to discover their destiny as crime-fighting superheroes. They join forces with a plucky TV reporter. She's former Transformers star Megan Fox, who made nice with Bay after she compared him to Hitler. They combat the supervillain martial-artist Shredder. Jonathan Liebesman, the South African helmer of Battle: Los Angeles and Wrath of the Titans directs. Critical reception is mixed. In 3D (converted) in some cinemas, it's in nightly sneak previews at most multiplexes until it opens wide on August 21.

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Take note

Except for Joe, most new movies are being released a couple days earlier this week to celebrate today's combined holidays of Her Majesty the Queen's Birthday and Mother's Day. The next update here will likely be on August 21, at which point I hope to have a few details about the 18th Thai Short Film and Video Festival, running from August 28 to September 7 at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center.

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening August 7-13, 2014

The Swimmers

Thailand's GTH studio again aims for the eyeballs of the country's most lucrative movie-going demographic – upper- and middle-class urban teens – with their latest thriller The Swimmers (ฝากไว้..ในกายเธอ, Fak Wai Nai Kai Ther), in which a pregnant girl commits suicide in her school's swimming pool. Her ghost then haunts the guy who knocked her up.

Juthawut Pattarakamphon and Thonphop Lirattanakhachon star as the lads who have been going to the gym and minding what they eat. They are named Perth and Tan, and are rivals on the school's swim team. Supatsara Thanachart is Ice, the troubled young woman who is Tan's girlfriend but attracts the attentions of Perth.

The writer-director is Sophon Sakdaphisit, who has been behind GTH's string of hit thrillers, penning the early 2000s hits Shutter and Alone before making his directorial debut with 2008's Coming Soon. He followed that up in 2011 with Laddaland, a mature psychological drama.

Critical buzz so far places The Swimmer somewhere below Laddaland but perhaps a bit above Coming Soon. Rated 18+

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Also opening

The Expendables 3 – Sylvester Stallone's latest action extravaganza arrives amid controversy over a near-perfect copy of the film being leaked to file-sharing sites weeks before its theatrical release. Not keen for that kind of publicity, the studio Lionsgate has made a federal case out of it. The story has Stallone's team of mercenaries trading shots with an arms dealer who was a former business partner. He's played by Mel Gibson. Back for more action are Expendables regulars Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Terry Crews and Jet Li. Arnold Schwarzenegger is also back, again. New to the proceedings is embattled star Wesley Snipes plus Hollywood vets Harrison Ford, Kelsey Grammer and Antonio Banderas, and some new blood with Twilight star Kellan Lutz. There's even one "expendabelle", mixed-martial-arts fighter Ronda Rousey. The director is Patrick Hughes, who previously helmed the Australian thriller Red Hill – one definitely worth seeking out. Critical reception is mixed, leaning to negative. Rated 15+

Swelter – Another ageing action star, Jean-Claude Van Damme, fights for multiplex real-estate against his former Expendables castmates with Swelter, which is described as a "brutal heist drama" in the vein of Reservoir Dogs plus a few other movies, such as A History of Violence and High Plains Drifter. Alfred Molina, Lennie James (Snatch) and Grant Bowler (TV's Defiance) also star. It's a modern-day western about folks turning up in a dustblown town looking for another guy who double-crossed them. Like most of Van Damme's films of late, this is going direct-to-DVD in the States, so there's not yet much critical reception. Rated 15+

Into the Storm – This "found footage" disaster thriller revisits the territory of Twister and the more-recent Sharknado, though without the sharks. Various folks with cameras – high-school students, thrill-seekers, storm chasers and townspeople – track an unprecedented outbreak of tornadoes. Richard Armitage, Sarah Wayne Callies and Matt Walsh star. Critical reception is mixed. Actually, because it's "found footage", it's not in 3D, because, you know, that wouldn't be realistic. So count your blessings. Rated G

Entertainment – Akshay Kumar is a young man who finds out his entire life has been a fraud. He goes in search of his real father – India's largest diamond merchant. In Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Major Cineplex Sukhumvit and Rama III. Opens Friday.

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Also showing

Silent Film Festival – Alfed Hitchcock's debut feature, 1925's The Pleasure Garden, opens the festival at 8 tonight at the Lido. It's about the romantic entanglements of a pair of chorus girls. Tomorrow night is Hitch's boxing drama The Ring. Highlights this weekend include a free talk by piano accompanists Mie Yanashita and Maud Nelissen at 2 on Saturday, following a noon screening of Japan's The Water Magician. Sunday offers a free lecture on "The Silent Hitchcock" by Professor Charles Barr. It's at 2pm, wedged between repeat showings of The Pleasure Garden and The Ring. The big highlight is on Wednesday, when the fest shifts over to the Scala for one of Hitchcock's masterpieces, The Lodger from 1927, featuring a live performance by young Thai maestro Trisdee na Pattalung. And, just announced, Trisdee will be joined on Wednesday by his mentor, composer and conductor Somtow Sucharitkul. Tickets are 100 baht for the Lido shows and 500 baht for the closing-night gala at the Scala, available in advance from the box offices. Find out more at Facebook.com/silentfilmthailand.

Elle Fashion Film Festival – The fashionable fest put on by Post Publishing and SFX the Emporium runs until Saturday, with highlights that include Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel, Michael Winterbottom's baudy escapade The Look of Love, the typewriter romance Populaire and the French singer biopic My Way. Be aware that some of the movies, including Grand Budapest, are being projected from Blu-ray, and may be a bit unclear at times. If you're picky about such things, check at the box office before plunking down 200 baht for the tickets. For more details, please see my earlier blog post or the SF Cinema website.

The Friese-Greene Club – Live octopus is on the menu for tonight's offering of Asian horror, Park Chan-wook's classic revenge thriller Oldboy – pointlessly remade recently by Spike Lee. Tomorrow, see how bad it gets in a Turkish prison with director Alan Parker's Midnight Express. Saturday's head trip is Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman's supremely weird Being John Malkovich, and on Sunday, an insuranceman (Fred MacMurray) has a hard sell in Billy Wilder's classic film noir Double Indemnity. Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson also star. Next Wednesday, it's the story of a troubled woman (Kelly MacDonald) taking up with a suicidal hitman in The Merry Gentlemen, the first and so far only feature directed by Michael Keaton. Hear what it was like to work on the set from Bangkok-based film pro David Cluck, who served as Keaton's first assistant director. Cluck's extensive credits also include such films as The Artist, The Apparition and Oculus. Shows are at 8pm. The FGC is down an alley next to the Queen's Park Imperial Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 22. There's just nine seats, so book them. Also, check the Facebook page for updates and program changes.

The Lives of Others – Artists are featured in this Sunday's Film Virus double bill of biopics at Thammasat University Tha Prachan. First up is Goya in Bordeaux, focusing on the master painter's late-life voluntary exile to France. That's followed by Utamaro and His Five Women. From 1946, it recounts the life of Kitagawa Utamaro (1756-1806), known for his paintings of Japan's erotic "floating world". It's directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, whose earlier film The Water Magician, is part of the Silent Film Festival. The show starts at 12.30 on Sunday in the Pridi Banomyong Library at Thammasat University Tha Prachan, in the Rewat Buddhinan Room, floor U2, the basement. Dress appropriately and inform the desk worker you are there to see a movie. For details, call (02) 613-3529 or (02) 613-3530.

Alliance Française –  Selections from last year's My French Film Festival in Bangkok are featured this month, and next week's selection has resonance with the current situation in Gaza. From 2011, Une bouteille à la mer (A Bottle in the Gaza Sea) centers on a 17-year-old French immigrant in Israel who puts a message in a bottle, seeking an explanation for a bomb attack in Jerusalem. It's found by a young Palestinian man, who initiates an e-mail correspondence with the girl. It's in French with English subtitles at 7pm on Wednesday, August 13.

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Take note

Whenever I mention the Lido and Scala to a co-worker, she tells me how they used to charge 20 baht for the front three rows, which would often be filled by students from nearby Chulalongkorn University. She's told me that anecdote about a dozen times or so, and I don't guess it ever gets old.

Now, for the first time in more than 10 years, prices have gone up at Siam Square's Apex cinemas. At the Lido, seats in the rear rows are 120 baht, but still 100 baht closer to the screen. The Scala's seats are priced at 140 baht for the bleacher section, 120 baht for the back rows on the floor up to row O and 100 baht down front.

The move follows Apex's recent shift to digital projection, which was introduced under a special "promotional" price of 100 baht. However, with the prices at other cinema chains now routinely topping 200 baht, the Lido and Scala remain fantastic bargains even after the price hike, so please support them.

Making the Apex cinemas a better bargain is their "Movie Mileage Card", which you get stamped on each visit. A full card gets you into a film for free! And, unlike loyalty cards at other cinemas, the Apex Movie Mileage Card never expires, is free and has no strings attached. Ask for one on your next visit.

Next Tuesday, August 12, is Her Majesty the Queen's birthday, and in honor of the big national holiday, movie distributors will release another batch of new films, among them a remake of the classic Thai romance Plae Kao (The Scar), the buddy-cop comedy 22 Jump Street, Tommy Lee Jones' western The Homesman, the acclaimed drama Joe starring Nicolas Cage and a sneak preview of Michael Bay's reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I'll update with another post early next week.

Bangkok Cinema Scene special: Silent Film Festival in Thailand, August 7-13, 2014

Three early films by Alfred Hitchcock, including his first feature, are among the highlights of the first Silent Film Festival in Thailand from August 7 to 13 at the Apex cinemas in Bangkok’s Siam Square.

Organised by the Thai Film Archive and the British Council, the festival will feature seven silent films, all accompanied by live piano performances.

The Hitchcocks – three of the nine features he directed in the silent era, and all painstakingly restored by the British Film Institute – are his debut The Pleasure Garden, The Ring and a masterpiece, The Lodger.

Other offerings are Prix de Beaute from France, Nerven from Germany, Little Toys from China and The Water Magician from Japan.

The fest’s opener is 1925’s The Pleasure Garden, about the messy relationships of a pair of chorus girls. Hitchcock’s obsessions are evident from the first frame, which depicts a cascade of chorus girls’ legs tripping down a spiral staircase.

From 1927, The Ring is about rivalry between boxers, both in and out of the fighting arena. It’s Hitchcock’s only original solo screenplay – when talkies came in, the visually fixated director tapped other writers to help with dialogue.

The big event of the festival will be the closing screening of 1927’s The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, which will be held in Siam Square’s landmark Scala theatre and feature musical accompaniment by world-famous Thai composer and conductor Trisdee na Pattalung.

Described by Hitch himself as “the first true Hitchcock movie”, the thriller has foggy London beset by a series of murders by “the Avenger”. His victims, all young blonde women, are discovered each Tuesday night. Ivor Novello stars as a mysterious new lodger in a boarding house.

“I think these films demonstrate how Hitchcock built himself to become the Hitchcock we know,” says Chalida Uabumrungjit, deputy director of the Thai Film Archive. “No matter if it is a drama, melodrama or suspense, Hitchcock’s silents hint at his ability to manipulate the visual elements.”

More visual splendor comes from Japan with 1933’s The Water Magician (Taki no Shiraito), a tragic love story set in the Meiji period and directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, and from China with Little Toys. Also from 1933, and directed by Sun Yu, Little Toys stars Ruan Lingyu as an artisan toymaker whose world is ripped apart by the death of her husband disappearance of her son.

From France, 1930’s Prix de Beaute is perhaps better known for being the first talkie made by starlet Louise Brooks. She portrays an ordinary typist at a Paris newspaper who suddenly decides to enter the Miss Europe beauty pageant. Her dialogue and singing were dubbed for the sound version, but of course it’s the silent one that’s showing in Bangkok.

The oldest entry in the fest, 1919’s Nerven by director Robert Reinert, taps into the mood of post-war Germany as it deals with the political disputes of an ultraconservative factory owner and a leftist teacher who is secretly in love with his rival’s sister.

Apart from Trisdee on the closing night, two other pianists will take turns accompanying the films, Maud Nelissen from the Netherlands and Mie Yanashita from Japan. Both world-class silent-movie pianists, they have performed all over the world.

The Silent Film Festival in Thailand runs from August 7 to 12 at the Lido cinemas and on August 13 at the Scala. Tickets are Bt100 at the Lido, Bt500 for the closing-night gala at the Scala, and can be purchased in advance from the box offices. All films will have English and Thai intertitles. Here is the schedule:

• August 7, 8pm, The Pleasure Garden (Lido)
• August 8, 8pm, The Ring (Lido)
• August 9, noon, The Water Magician; 2pm, talk with accompanists Mie Yanashita and Maud Nelissen (free with Thai translation); 4pm, Prix de Beaute; 6pm, Little Toys, 8pm, Nerven (Lido)
• August 10, noon, The Pleasure Garden; 2pm, “The Silent Hitchcock”, lecture by Professor Charles Barr (free with Thai translation); 4pm, The Ring; 6pm, Nerven; 8pm, Little Toys (Lido)
• August 11, 8pm, Prix de Beaut้e (Lido)
• August 12, 8pm, The Water Magician (Lido)
• August 13, 8pm, The Lodger (Scala)

Find out more at Facebook.com/silentfilmthailand.