Entertainment

Thailand entertainment news, celebrity updates, film reviews, music festivals, and cultural events—stay informed on the latest happenings locally and globally with The Thaiger, your trusted source for entertainment news.

  • Are huge LED screens coming to your cinemas? | Thaiger

    Are huge LED screens coming to your cinemas?

    First there was celluloid film, then digital projection. Now cinemas are toying with using giant LED screen technology. Ben Hobbs from H3-digital.com reports on the emerging cinema technology… If you go to the cinema, today, anywhere in the world to watch a movie – you will be watching a projected image, shone onto a white (or grey) screen. It’s been…

  • Toon’s back on the road, this time with his band | Thaiger

    Toon’s back on the road, this time with his band

    By Mr Badboy Remember Artiwara “Toon” Kongmalai and his epic run – south to north of Thailand to raise money for the country’s public hospitals? Well he’s had a well deserved rest and now getting back on the road, this time with his band ‘Bodyslam’ for a tour of 15 University campuses. The band, one of Thailand’s most popular, is…

  • Water Park Wars – Phuket wettest battlefield | Thaiger

    Water Park Wars – Phuket wettest battlefield

    by Xinyi Liang-Pholsena of ttgasia.com ttgasia.com is reporting that the water park battle in Phuket is getting very intense as new players enter the marketplace. Among them Blue Tree Phuket, poised to open its doors early 2019 as an upscale family entertainment and lifestyle complex. The sprawling 22.5ha development, located around Cherngtalay, is the result of a joint venture comprising…

  • AXN Announces Asia’s Got Talent Season 3 – Open Auditions in Bangkok | Thaiger

    AXN Announces Asia’s Got Talent Season 3 – Open Auditions in Bangkok

    PHOTO: Thailand’s “Powerstorm” made it into last year’s finals. Thailand, it’s time to get your act together! AXN has announced that the Bangkok open auditions for Asia’s Got Talent Season 3 will be held at SHOW DC, Thailand’s first entertainment and retail mega complex on Sunday, 17 June, 2018. Bangkok will be the first to kick off the regional Asia’s…

  • Laguna to hold charity concert | Thaiger

    Laguna to hold charity concert

    PHUKET: Laguna Phuket is holding a charity concert at Laguna Grove on Saturday, August 13. The ‘Big Body + Charity Concert’ and will feature Thai rockers ‘Bodyslam’ and ‘Big Ass’, as well as up and coming artist Justin Pongumpai. Part of the proceeds of the concert will go to Phuket Punyanukul School located in Pa Khlok, a special school for…

  • Books: Lusitania: The other Titanic | Thaiger

    Books: Lusitania: The other Titanic

    PHUKET: Erik Larson is an accomplished writer of non-fiction. I greatly enjoyed the fourth of his seven books: The Devil in White City, which contrasted the glories of the 1893 Chicago World Columbian Exposition with the sordid dealings of a charming serial killer. The contrast in his new book, Dead Wake (Crown Publishers, New York, 2015, 430pp) is between the…

  • Books: A great love story | Thaiger

    Books: A great love story

    PHUKET: Plot, characterization, dialogue, descriptive style – many elements combine to make a good novel, but the most mysterious is empathy, that magic emotional connection that makes a reader care passionately about fictional characters. In this, first-time novelist Atticus Lish succeeds magnificently. His Preparation for the Next Life (Tyrant Books, New York, 2015, 417pp) opens with this sentence: “She came…

  • Books: Failed search for next giant | Thaiger

    Books: Failed search for next giant

    PHUKET: I’ve long sought for the successors to the twentieth century giants of Brazilian literature, Jorge Amado and Erico Verissimo. So far, I’ve failed. Daniel Galera’s novel Blood-Drenched Beard (The Penguin Press, New York, 2014, 374pp) is the latest disappointment. The prose is pedestrian, the pace leaden and the plot improbable, shading into preposterous. The entire mess limps along in…

  • Books: An awful waste of time | Thaiger

    Books: An awful waste of time

    PHUKET: In 2002 Michel Faber published The Crimson Petal and the White, an extraordinary novel of shifting social strata set in a time and place when they were most rigid: the early Victorian Age in London. By dint of cunning and determination, Sugar, a prostitute from the age of 13, rises from brothel inmate to kept woman to household governess…

  • Reversals in life and love | Thaiger

    Reversals in life and love

    PHUKET: I needed a break. After reviewing three 600-page books in a row, I found a nice change of pace in Paul Theroux’s Mr. Bones (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, 2014, 359pp). This is Theroux’s third collection of short stories, adding to his oeuvre of 28 novels and 14 travel books. The 20 stories range widely in location – New York,…

  • When in Rome, read Hughes | Thaiger

    When in Rome, read Hughes

    PHUKET: In the 1950s, Robert Hughes was part of a group of students at Sydney University – including Germaine Greer and Clive James – who went on to lead brilliant careers outside Australia. Hughes became a hugely influential art critic at Time magazine. Besides eight books about art, he wrote a wonderful history about Australia as a penal colony, The…

  • Henning Mankell lets down readers with ‘A Treacherous Paradise’ | Thaiger

    Henning Mankell lets down readers with ‘A Treacherous Paradise’

    PHUKET: I picked up Henning Mankell’s A Treacherous Paradise (Knopf, New York, 2013, 360pp) because I was interested in reading a novel about Mozambique. It was only later that I learned that Henning Mankell is part of a coterie of Swedish crime writers who have recently attained international popularity. His Detective Kurt Wallander mystery series has been translated into 40…

  • Phuket Humor: The robots are coming | Thaiger

    Phuket Humor: The robots are coming

    PHUKET: Robots are now writing newspaper stories. A “Quakebot” used by the Los Angeles Times recently wrote a report on an earthquake just by using information it picked up online.This suggests that human journalists may soon be replaced by robots. Alarmed at this prospect, I arranged to interview a prototype robot journalist. Our conversation went like this: Q: Is it…

  • DJ Kimball Collins at XANA beach club | Thaiger

    DJ Kimball Collins at XANA beach club

    DJ Kimball Collins, a true pioneer of the American electronic music scene, who keeps traveling the world electrifying crowds and staying true to breaking underground house music for the past 25 years will perform at XANA beach club this coming Saturday August 23, during the Chandon Summer Limited Edition 2014 launch party. DJ Kimball was one of the first American…

  • Moving walls, puzzles, sacred tombs – escape if you can | Thaiger

    Moving walls, puzzles, sacred tombs – escape if you can

    PHUKET: In that magic moment between when the sun has set on Patong Beach and the nightlife hasn’t kicked off, there now exists the embodiment of a childhood fantasy: a world of hidden tombs, moving walls, lasers and code cracking. Chamber of Secrets, Phuket’s first real-life escape game, has opened its doors, but the light only shines a short way…

  • Crowning glory of a great novelist | Thaiger

    Crowning glory of a great novelist

    PHUKET: Once a decade, Donna Tartt produces a hefty, great novel. At age 28, she published The Secret History, a murder mystery centered on a clique of young classical scholars at Bennington. A decade later, she returned to her Mississippi childhood for The Little Friend. And now she has just won the Pulitzer Prize for her third and best novel,…

  • Author Michael Chabon dishes up overripe Rococo | Thaiger

    Author Michael Chabon dishes up overripe Rococo

    PHUKET: Michael Chabon’s third novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize. This exuberant romp about two young Jewish cartoonists during the golden age of American comic books in the 1930s and 1940s is one of the most enjoyable novels I’ve ever read. Now we have Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue (HarperCollins, New York, 2012, 468pp), and…

  • Snow White is coming to town! | Thaiger

    Snow White is coming to town!

    PHUKET: Watch out for the apples you buy this June, and before you bite into the juicy fruit, make sure your Prince Charming is looking out for you. If you have no idea what we’re on about, it’s time to refresh your childhood memories. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, the latest Phuket Gazette Headline Event presented by Jagota in…

  • The Amazing Spider Man 2 left hanging in Columbia’s web of indifference | Thaiger

    The Amazing Spider Man 2 left hanging in Columbia’s web of indifference

    PHUKET: Marvel took quite a lot of stick from reviewers over the movies that they released prior to The Avengers, with Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger and Iron Man 2 all being condemned by a certain element of the online whinge brigade as blatant prequels to the mega-success that was to become The Avengers. While there may be a…

  • Soap suds: A sidelong glance at Thai melodrama | Thaiger

    Soap suds: A sidelong glance at Thai melodrama

    PHUKET: Any “farang” who lives with a Thai partner will be familiar, possibly all too familiar, with the rarefied world of television soap opera. As I watch, I wonder what impact these soaps are having on the Thai psyche. That they are amazingly popular is beyond doubt. Viewing figures are massive; they are watched religiously in most households, and especially…

  • BISP students showcase their artistic talents [video] | Thaiger

    BISP students showcase their artistic talents [video]

    PHUKET: The British International School Phuket (BISP) Year 13 Visual Arts Exhibition was officially opened earlier this month, and students’ work will be available for viewing until April 24. The exhibition includes 48 unique pieces by three different student artists. In addition, the Year two students will have their elephant prints on display. The following is a transcript of the…

  • Expat Business: Rocket Scientist and Phuket entrepreneur Don Battles tells his story tonight at RPM | Thaiger

    Expat Business: Rocket Scientist and Phuket entrepreneur Don Battles tells his story tonight at RPM

    PHUKET: NASA rocket scientist, farmer, entrepreneur, intellectual and whiskey-drinking former Phuket resident Don Battles will launch his autobiography ‘Merchant of the Orient’ tonight, 6:30pm, at the Speakeasy bar in Royal Phuket Marina. Now living in Chiang Rai in his 30th year of Thai residence, Don will also tell us what he thinks a foreigner needs to do – and not…

  • ‘Music is My Life’ party kicks off tomorrow night at Diamond Beach Club [Video] | Thaiger

    ‘Music is My Life’ party kicks off tomorrow night at Diamond Beach Club [Video]

    The ‘Music is My Life’ party kicks off tomorrow night at Diamond Beach Club in Surin. Well known local club DJs Taz (Phuket House Mafia), Nemo (resident of Catch), James Dougall (Evil Twins) and an international DJ (former music director at Bed Supperclub in Bangkok) are set to perform some killer sets in tribute to DJ Josh Ezelle, a former…

  • Phuket Arts: Young artists on show at BIS | Thaiger

    Phuket Arts: Young artists on show at BIS

    PHUKET: Phuket has been showing the signs recently of a burgeoning art scene that is maturing rapidly. Many resorts offer art displays in their gift shops or lobbies and Phuket Town has a number of galleries that host various media covering a wide range of genres. Keeping art alive and passing on the visual expression of culture to younger generations…

  • Phuket Events: Phuket Bike Week 2014 | Thaiger

    Phuket Events: Phuket Bike Week 2014

    PHUKET: Just in time for Songkran comes this year’s Phuket Bike Week 2014. Celebrating its 20th year, the event is expected to attract huge crowds of “rolling thunder” for the six days of festivities in Patong and Phuket Town. The first four days of the event will be hosted at Loma Park in Patong, from April 11-14. Activities will include…

  • Phuket Books: Against the machine | Thaiger

    Phuket Books: Against the machine

    PHUKET: For me, Thomas Pynchon and Robert Stone are the two best living American writers. Both have recently come out with new novels. I’ll get around to Robert Stone next time. Bleeding Edge (The Penguin Press, New York, 2013, 477pp) is Thomas Pynchon’s eighth novel. His first, V., astonished the literary world in 1963. Gravity’s Rainbow and Against the Day…

  • Phuket Lifestyle: Music is my playground [video] | Thaiger

    Phuket Lifestyle: Music is my playground [video]

    PHUKET: Polish born pianist Katarzyna Wieczorek has turned music into her way of life. Her skills and reputation have taken her to countless festivals, won her numerous awards and let her visit the farthest corners of the globe – turning her life into a never-ending adventure filled with melody. Katarzyna Wieczorek recently performed at the British International School Phuket where…

  • Phuket Events: Get revved up for the rally | Thaiger

    Phuket Events: Get revved up for the rally

    PHUKET: Get those engines revving! The upcoming PVCPhuket.com Invitational Car Rally has automotive lovers and treasure hunt aficionados amped up and ready for action. The non-profit event on March 23 will see competitors exploring the paradise island in teams of two or more and finding sights even seasoned expats may have missed. “It’s a real opportunity to visit places that,…

  • Knocked out by Beatles in the Boat Lagoon | Thaiger

    Knocked out by Beatles in the Boat Lagoon

    PHUKET: “We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine”… There are songs that make your head rock, your fingers click and your feet stomp. There are days when you can’t get a tune out of your head; it follows you around, you keep whistling it, you catch yourself singing it out loud under the shower…

  • Phuket Old Town Festival begins today | Thaiger

    Phuket Old Town Festival begins today

    PHUKET: The annual three-day Phuket Old Town Festival kicks off this evening with a parade to celebrate the unique culture of Phuket’s residents. With Queen Sirikit Park the heart of the festivities, events will be held along Thalang Road, Soi Rommanee and Krabi Road – the heart of the Phuket Old Town area. Tonight’s opening parade starts at 5pm at…