The talk begins at 7 and the film screens at 8. Tickets have already sold out but organisers have added a second show and seats for this are still available.

Joining the talk with Than Mui will be his preferred actors from the ’80s including Sorapong Chatree, Ron Ritthichai and Chatchai Plengpanich.

The film is set in town at the Thai-Myanmar (Burma at that time) border close to the conflict between the Burmese central government, then known as SLORC and the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), which has been going on for years but is little known to the outside world. It centres on Danai, a young police lieutenant (played by Sombat Metanee’s son, Siricoup) who arrives at a rough-and-tumble border post on the Salween River. Sorapong plays Sergeant Ram. Nappon Gomarachun portrays the son of the local godfather, Chatchai Plengpanich is a Karen soldier and Ron a SLORC colonel.

“Salween” was originally titled “Gunman 2” as it followed Than Mui’s 1983 film, “Gunman” but the stories are not related though both star Sorapong and Ron.

For details of the second screening and to book a ticket, log on to http://www.SFCinemaCity.com or call (02) 268 8888.

See the remastered trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_bLNUf0QQc

Based on King’s novella “The Body,” Rob Reiner’s 1986 cult hit spawned its own genre, typically featuring a group of wise-cracking, cursing kids, often on bikes, facing up to teenage trauma in Anytown, USA.

Several Steven Spielberg movies fit the mold, as does J.J. Abrams’s “Super Eight,” but critics also point to small screen fare like the Duffer Brothers’ “Stranger Things” and the 1990 horror TV miniseries “It,” remade this year as a smash-hit theatrical film.

The latest example of the genre, indie movie “Super Hard Times,” is unlikely to reach anything like as wide an audience as “It,” but the critical plaudits are comparable.

Part coming-of-age fable, part brutal teen slasher, Kevin Phillips’s feature directorial debut is not itself based on a King novel, but owes a clear debt to its “kids on bikes” predecessors.

“The themes that were present in the script both enticed me and scared me,” Phillips said at a preview screening ahead of the film’s US release on Friday.

“It took me a while to truly come around to deciding this was the movie to make.”

– Blood-drenched violence –

===========================

The events take place in a pleasant but prosaic suburb in upstate New York, where Zach (Owen Campbell) and his intense, mop-haired friend Josh (Charlie Tahan) are negotiating young adulthood in the mid-1990s.

It is the era before social media and smartphones but teenagers have never needed the internet to find their kicks in first loves and experimenting with drugs.

The boys’ relationship changes suddenly and traumatically when Josh accidentally kills their overbearing companion Daryl (Max Talisman) with a samurai sword in a tussle fueled by an argument over cannabis.

They hide the body and Zach goes back to his everyday life, trying present a cool front but backing away from a budding relationship with high school crush Allison (Elizabeth Cappuccino).

Josh, apparently traumatized by guilt, retreats to his bedroom at first — only to return suddenly to school and his social life, acting like he doesn’t have a care in the world.

But the nightmare of what has happened sets in motion an increasingly complex set of circumstances that spiral into dark paranoia and spectacular violence.

Phillips worked with cinematographer Eli Born to create something that “could harken back to films we loved growing up when we were kids in the 1990s,” he said.

– ‘Visceral and gripping’ –

===========================

Co-writer Ben Collins recalls how the idea for the movie came to him in his sleep.

“I don’t dream a lot or I don’t remember my dreams, but it was like I woke up and the fact that I even remembered it was striking,” he told the audience at the screening, part of the Downtown Los Angeles film festival.

“When I was taking a shower it was coming back, and it was basically just kids (messing) around with a samurai sword.”

Collins, whose dream featured Japanese children, assumed that he had been influenced by a real-life event in the news.

“In the dream the kid got decapitated, and I was like, ‘That sounds insane — let me make sure that didn’t really happen.’ I spent the day Googling it, and it didn’t happen,” he said.

He decided that if it wasn’t real, it was a compelling enough idea to pursue in film, although no one actually loses a head in “Super Dark Times.”

Critics have lavished the film with plaudits since its premiere in January at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, handing it an impressive approval rating of 86 percent on reviews collation website Rotten Tomatoes.

“Super Dark Times is that special kind of film that we as genre fans are always desperate to discover, the one that we fall in love with and show to all of our friends,” said Brad Miska, founder of horror genre website Bloody Disgusting.

“It’s essentially a new classic that will stand the test of time.”

The charming psychologist Dr Jason Bull returned to the small screen on Wednesday night for a second season of the hit series from CBS that’s loosely based on the early days of talk show host Dr Phil McGraw’s career as a jury consultant and founder of one of the most prolific trial consulting firms of all time.

Michael Weatherly plays Bull, the holder of three PhDs, who heads a jury consulting firm known as Trial Analysis Corporation (TAC) and combines his expertise in trial science with technology to select the right jurors for his clients and help their lawyers come up with defence strategies most likely to win over the jury.

Weatherly’s face is known to small screen viewers having played Logan Cale in the series “Dark Angel” and Cooper Alden in the popular soap “Loving.” Before joining Bull, he had built a strong fanbase as Chief Agent Tony DiNozzo, the charming and womanising police detective who was a mainstay of “NCIS” for 13 seasons.

Indeed, he was so convincing in his portrayal of DiNozzo that most viewers were convinced he was like his TV character in real life. So when it was announced that he was leaving “NCIS”, fans were shocked, saying he’d never be able to play anyone else.

But the actor slipped so effortlessly into his new role as Jason Bull that the naysayers were forced to eat their words.

Bull is brilliant, brash and charming as well as the ultimate puppet master as he combines psychology, human intuition and high-tech data to learn what makes jurors, attorneys, witnesses and the accused tick. He is also very much in demand, helping his clients pick a jury that will deliver the verdict they want.

His enviable team at TAC is full of expertise to shape successful narratives down to the very last detail. They include his quick-witted former brother-in-law, Benny Colon, a lawyer who acts as defence attorney in the company’s mock trials; Marissa Morgan, a neuro-linguistics expert from Homeland Security Department; former NYPD detective Danny James; haughty millennial hacker Cable McCrory, and Chunk Palmer, a fashion-conscious stylist and former All-American lineman.

In high-stakes trials, Bull’s combination of remarkable insight into human nature, three PhD’s and a top-notch staff creates winning strategies that tip the scales of justice in his clients’ favour.

Weatherly recently sat down with a group of journalists from Asia and Europe to talk about his career and what the viewers could expect from season 2.

The actor is effusive in his praise for the new technologies that dominate not only the series but also modern life, explaining that they help save cost and time.

He also spoke about his early career in soaps, remembering how he and the rest of the cast were told to be in the studio every morning at 7 and often stayed until late at night. “We would all spend 10 hours rehearsing, even the actors that weren’t in the scene. Then the lighting technicians and cameramen would come in and we’d spend another hour rehearsing the entire episode. It was so exhausting,” he said.

Such slave labour no longer applies. “These days we use block shooting,” Weatherly said. “Each episode is broken into chunks so you don’t have to have everybody there all day long.”

But sometimes he misses the “bad” old days. “It was kind of nice that everybody understood the whole story and what their contribution to the series was. So yes, technology has its pros and cons.”

In block shooting, scenes from two different episodes are shot in the same location. This approach is often adopted if the locations are expensive or require the actors and crew to travel long distances. “The advantage is that if you have a location that’s used once in several episodes, you can shoot all scenes on the same day and that saves time and money.”

Modern technology, he continued, also benefits the world of dating. “Two years ago, when you were going on a first date, you could google the person. These days you do a criminal background check on someone to find out if he paid the bill on his last date.

“That’s what Bull does, Bull takes this idea into account.”

Weatherly prepared for the role by talking to McGraw about his experiences as a jury consultant but stresses that he isn’t playing McGraw in the series. “Bull is an invented character,” he says.

“And Bull makes a lot more sense to me than Tony DiNozzo, which is interesting because people always say that it’s fun to play yourself.”

While Weatherly admits that there is a lot of him in DiNozzo –“he is very optimistic, positive though a little shallow” – he says he has changed since joining “Bull”.

But at first he was a little concerned about shifting to a new role mainly because of audience expectation.

Weatherly didn’t want to give too much away about the new season but admits there are changes now that Glenn Gordon Caron of “Moonlighting” and “Medium” has come in as executive producer. The first season was created by McGraw and Paul Attanasio (“House”) and had Steven Spielberg as one of the executive producers.

“Season 2 maybe a little darker and Bull is more unpredictable. And he may even lose a case,” he teases.

The new season kicked off Wednesday night with a faceoff between Dr Bull and his courtroom rival and romantic interest Diana Lindsay played by Jill Flint. Bull and the TAC team have to partner with the sharp and brilliant defence attorney JP Nunnelly (Eliza Dushku) for the last of three promised cases.

“Bull” Season 2 airs every Wednesday at 8pm on RTL CBS Entertainment (True Vision Channel 337).

Three of Ireland’s best-loved films come to Bangkok next week in the inaugural edition of the Irish Film Festival.

Organised by the Embassy of Ireland and hosted by the Bangkok Screening Room, the festival, which runs from next Friday through October 8, features “The Quiet Man” (1952), “Ryan’s Daughter” (1970) and last year’s hit “Sing Street.”

“The Embassy is absolutely delighted to present the first Irish Film Festival in Bangkok. Filmmaking in Ireland has a rich tradition and the films being showcased are great examples of this tradition. I invite all Thais to come and see these films to get a flavour of Irish culture, landscape and humour,” Irish ambassador Brendan Rogers says.

“This event marks another wonderful, positive milestone in Irish-Thai relations. Since the Irish Embassy opened almost three years ago relations between Thailand and Ireland have been going from strength to strength and I look forward to welcoming local Thais to our inaugural Film Festival.”

Directed by the late David Lean, who is also known for “Bridge on the River Kwai” and “Lawrence of Arabia”, “Ryan’s Daughter”, takes place in the political turmoil of Ireland in 1916. While the British battle European aggressors in World War I, the Irish Republican Army makes a secret deal with the Germans for a cache of weapons to battle British rule. Against this backdrop, Charles (Robert Mitchum) meets Rosy (Sarah Miles) on a return trip to Dublin. They fall in love and marry, but Rosy has an illicit affair with British officer Randolph Doryan (Christopher Jones). Tim O’Leary (Barry Foster) is the IRA gun runner waiting for a shipment of German rifles to arrive by sea on the West coast of Ireland. When evidence of the affair is paraded in the streets to discredit the unfaithful Rosy, Charles ignores the indignant neighbours but tells the British authorities of the impending gun shipment in an effort to halt reprisals from the occupied forces. It’s being screened at 5.50pm on October 7.

“The Quiet Man” is directed by John Ford and stars John Wayne as a retired Irish-American boxer who returns home where he finds love. The film won the Academy Award for Best Director for John Ford and for Best Cinematography.

There are two opportunities to catch the film: 9pm on October 6 and at 4.20pm on October 8.

“Sing Street”, which shows at 9.30pm on October 7 and 6.50pm on October 8, is set in 1980’s Dublin and is told through the eyes of 14-year-old Conor (Ferdia WalshPeelo), who tries to adjust to his new inner-city public school where the kids are rough and the teachers are rougher. He meets beautiful Raphina (Lucy Boynton), and with the aim of winning her heart he invites her to star in his band’s music videos. There’s only one problem: he’s not part of a band…yet. She agrees, and now Conor must deliver what he’s promised. Calling himself “Cosmo” and immersing himself in the vibrant rock music trends of the decade, he forms a band with a few lads, and the group pours their heart into writing lyrics and shooting videos.

Tickets are Bt120 for adults and Bt90 for children, students, and BKKSR members. They can be booked at bkksr.com/irishfilmfestival

All movies will be screened in English with Thai subtitles

Find out more at http://www.Dfat.ie/Thailand or Bkksr.com/irishfilmfestival.

Directed by Andrea Sedlackova, this much-talked movie about doping in sport has won awards at festivals around the world. It was the Czech Republic’s Oscar-nominee in 2014.

Set in 1983, during the socialist era in Czechoslovakia, it centres on Anna, a talented female athlete who is being groomed to participate in the Los Angeles Olympics. She is put on a “secret medical programme” where her coach is ordered to give her a performance-enhancing steroid, to improve her results. When it has uncomfortable physical effects on her body, Anna refuses to take the drug. Her mother is ordered to administer the steroid to her, under the pretext of vitamins. The mother agrees, a former political dissenter agrees, not least because she is kept under the watchful eye of the authorities.

The film-event is supported by the Embassy of the Czech Republic, who will serve snacks and drinks after the screening.

Czech ambassador Marek Libricky will introduce the film.

The screening room is at Room 201 (Second Floor) of River City Bangkok. Book a seat at rcbfilmclub@gmail.com or anusorn@rivercity.co.th or call (02) 2370077-8 extensions 622 or 701.

For more upcoming film series and updates, visit Facebook River City Bangkok or http://www.RiverCityBangkok.com.

The Lab, which will focus on grant writing and project pitching, will be held during the opening weekend of the eighth annual festival, which will take place December 8-13.

Building on the first iteration of this Talent Lab in 2016, this year’s Lab will be expanded to two days, and include a pitching workshop and pitch forum with feedback from a panel of film professionals. A jury will select one project from the forum to attend the TFI Network market at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival (April 18-29, 2018).

Hosted annually by TFI, the industry market gives filmmakers the opportunity to build connections with a wide range of industry insiders who can potentially help them advance their projects.

TFI will then mentor the winning filmmaker or filmmaking team through the completion of the project. All participants in the Talent Lab will also receive preferential consideration for any of TFI’s grants.

Participating filmmakers will have the chance to win a financial award to produce their film. Through the Aurora Producing Award, Singapore-based media investment firm Aurora Media Holdings will contribute $10,000 to one film project.

The 2016 Talent Lab had 10 participating film projects from eight Southeast Asian countries and was led by TFI’s manager of Artist Programmes, Bryce Norbitz. At the end of the project pitching sessions, the Filipino documentary project “Beastmode” was selected to attend the 2017 TFI Network market, where its production team built connections and, later, signed with an American producer.

“We are honoured to return to the Luang Prabang Film Festival for the second year in a row to support such talented and unique filmmakers from Southeast Asia, especially given the lack of US support to filmmakers from the region,” said Molly O’Keefe, senior director of Artist Programmes at the Tribeca Film Institute. “As part of our year-round work erasing barriers of entry to the industry for underrepresented filmmakers, we are excited to support another LPFF project this year by bringing its filmmakers to our TFI Network market to meet with members of the US and international industry.”

To read more about the 2017 LPFF Talent Lab or access the Call for Applications, visit https://docs.google.com/document/d/18WEp-YwIUaXo56YDzJhiQ838C9LwVE7wynKNjgH7GLI/edit

For an update on the festival’s movies and activities, visit www.LPFilmFest.org or Facebook.com/lpfilmfest.

Whatever your image of what lies beyond there’s a version of it immortalized on celluloid somewhere in Hollywood’s rich canon of life-after-death movies.

From “Heaven Can Wait” and “It’s a Wonderful Life” to “The Sixth Sense” — still the most successful horror movie of all time — Tinseltown has been offering a window into the heavenly realm for decades.

The latest take on the hereafter is “Flatliners,” a reboot of the 1990 cult classic about student physicians shocking themselves to the other side and back — with a young new cast and a masters degree in medical authenticity.

“Death is the last great unknown, in some ways. It’s like the depths of the sea and the depths of space,” Danish director Niels Arden Oplev told AFP.

“We know more about the Big Bang than we do about the final countdown.”

Movie-goers over the age of 40 will remember the premise of “Flatliners”: a group of devil-may-care medical students, obsessed by the mystery of what lies beyond, embark on an audacious, dangerous experiment.

Stopping their hearts for short periods, each triggers their own near-death experience as their colleagues monitor their brain activity, to see if they can find any proof of the afterlife.

A cast of established talent and rising stars replace the original ensemble led by Kiefer Sutherland, who gets a sizeable cameo this time around, Kevin Bacon and Julia Roberts.

‘Shortcut to greatness’

Led by Oscar nominee Ellen Page (“Juno,” “Inception”) “Flatliners” 2017 co-stars Diego Luna (“Milk,” “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”) alongside Nina Dobrev, James Norton and Kiersey Clemons.

Co-produced by Hollywood veteran Michael Douglas, a producer on Joel Schumacher’s original, the reboot turns up the dial on the psychological scares.

But Oplev, who made 2009’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” the most successful Scandinavian film of all time, says the new “Flatliners” is also a metaphor for American culture’s obsession with getting ahead.

Oplev’s characters discover that having flatlined and faced death, they not only experience what the afterlife might be like but also come back with enhanced abilities.

“The competition to carve out a career and job for yourself for young people today is so much harder and so much more crazy than 27 years ago. And young kids today, they take all kinds of crap to study 12 hours, to stay awake,” Oplev says.

“They all have this desire to take a pill to shortcut to greatness. And then suddenly you realize that was a lot of fun, that was great, and now there’s a bill to pay that I did not foresee coming.”

The bill in “Flatliners” is steep: as the characters experience death and resurrection, they are forced by horrific supernatural visitations to confront past actions they deeply regret.

Science has advanced dramatically over the last quarter century, and the director worked with medical experts to ground the scary thrills and spills in modern technology.

‘Small liberties’

He brought on medical consultant Lindsay Somers and her network of nurses, radiologists and neurosurgeons to ensure the action was as accurate as possible.

Every diagnosis and prescription had to be authentic, while the actors were shown how to carry equipment correctly and give injections the way a real physician would.

Despite what Hollywood leads us to believe, you can’t actually shock someone who is flatlining back to life without first getting a heartbeat, says Somers.

Even those ubiquitous paddles aren’t used any more, but were kept in the movie because, well, they look more dramatic than glued-on pads.

“Obviously, because we’re making a Hollywood film and not a documentary, we took small liberties with some things. But overall we tried to keep it as accurate as possible,” says Somers.

Another difference between Oplev’s film and Schumacher’s is the intensity of the psychological horror, which has been jacked up for a less easily shockable generation.

“The film language — especially within scary films — has changed a lot in 27 years. The audience expects more than the audience of 1990,” Oplev told AFP.

The 56-year-old filmmaker, who was approached by Sony in 2013 to helm the remake, says he only watched the original twice during his production.

“The old film is a great inspiration, although we are definitely not remaking it as much as we are reinterpreting it,” he told AFP.

“Flatliners” opens in US theaters on Friday.

If that wasn’t enough, there was an extra special surprise for Star Trek fans: all fifteen episodes of “Star Trek: Discovery” will be available to watch on Netflix with Klingon subtitles.

The series follows the voyages of Starfleet on their missions to discover new worlds and new lifeforms, and one Starfleet officer who must learn that to truly understand all things alien, you must first understand yourself.

Set roughly a decade before the events of the original Star Trek series and separate from the timeline of the concurrent feature films, “Discovery” explores the Federation–Klingon cold war while following the crew of the USS Discovery.

Sonequa Martin-Green stars as Michael Burnham, the first officer of the USS Shenzhou and later the USS Discovery. Also starring are Doug Jones, Shazad Latif, Anthony Rapp, Mary Wiseman, and Jason Isaacs. Michelle Yeoh appears as a guest star as Philippa Georgiou, Captain of the Shenzhou.

Star Trek, one of the most iconic and influential global television franchises, returns to television 50 years after it first premiered with “Discovery”. The series will feature a new ship, new characters and new missions, while embracing the same ideology and hope for the future that inspired a generation of dreamers and doers.

Episodes show on Netflix at 2pm Bangkok time every Monday, following the US episode broadcast on CBS.

It ousted horror hit “It”, which had held the crown for two weeks.

With a star-studded cast featuring Colin Firth, Channing Tatum, Halle Berry and even Elton John, “Kingsman” raked in $39 million for the weekend, according to box office monitor Exhibitor Relations.

The sequel to “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” “The Golden Circle” sees British spy organization Kingsman join forces with American counterpart Statesman to take on a new global threat.

“It,” based on a Stephen King novel and starring Bill Skarsgard as a creepy clown who menaces a sleepy Maine town, earned $29.8 million — half its take from last weekend.

But having stormed the box office in its opening weekend with revenue of $123 million, “It” still boasts impressive earnings of $266.1 million in only three weeks.

In at third was new animation “The Lego Ninjago Movie”, the third installment of Warner Bros.’ “The Lego Movie” franchise, which made $20.4 million.

Trailing far behind in fourth was “American Assassin,” starring Dylan O’Brien as a CIA “black ops” recruit who teams up with crusty veteran agent Michael Keaton to fight terrorists. The film took in just $6.3 million, bringing its total earnings to $26.2 million in two weeks.

Paramount’s “mother!” added just $3.3 million to last weekend’s $7.5 million, itself the lowest opening gross for a Jennifer Lawrence film in wide release.

Darren Aronofsky’s movie follows Lawrence and her husband, played by Javier Bardem, as their tranquil lives are upended when strangers (Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer) show up at their country home.

The movie drew a rare “F” from the ComScore website, despite a relatively strong 67 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Rounding out the top 10 were:

“Home Again” ($3.2 million)

“Friend Request” ($2 million)

“Stronger” ($1.611 million)

“The Hitman’s Bodyguard” ($1.608 million)

“Wind River” ($1.3 million)

The 3D computer-animated martial-arts comedy from Warner Bros is based on the Lego Ninjago line of toys.

The American-Danish co-production is the first theatrical film based on an original Lego property and the second spinoff of “The Lego Movie”.

The film features the voices of Dave Franco, Justin Theroux, Michael Pena, Kumail Nanjiani, Abbi Jacobson, Zach Woods, Fred Armisen, Olivia Munn and Jackie Chan.

They bring to life the main characters of the Ninjago franchise, led by Lloyd Garmadon, who’s struggling to accept the truth about his father even as a new threat emerges to endanger his homeland.